Blank Generation is a special album for me too! Richard Hell is a genuinely foundational artist for my musical tastes, along with much of his NYC cohort. You know Blank Generation is going to be remarkable right out of the gate when you hear Hell wailing “Love comes in spurts! Oh, god… it hurts!”
I’m not familiar with Kharms, but a cursory search tells me that he checks a lot of boxes for what I like. Do you have any recommendations as to where I should start with him?
In no particular order:
The Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire
A Season in Hell by Arthur Rimbaud
Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong
Six Records of a Floating Life by Shen Fu
The Red Night Trilogy of William S. Burroughs (Cities of the Red Night, The Place of Dead Roads, The Western Lands)
On the Road: The Original Scroll by Jack Kerouac
Book of Haikus by Jack Kerouac
The Stranger by Albert Camus
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
After Dark by Haruki Murakami
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain
I’m hanging on to my account until June 30th—so I can say a bittersweet goodbye to Reddit is Fun—and then I’m deleting it; Reddit is only going to get worse from here, and I don’t want to be around to see it. I’m grateful that this mess has driven so many of us to seek out kinder, more thoughtful communities, and I hope said communities can retain their exceptional cultures as the Reddit exodus continues to escalate.
I finished reading Love’s Executioner by Irvin Yalom recently, and it has immediately become one of my favorites! Yalom is one of the foundational thinkers behind Existential Psychotherapy, and the book is a collection of ten case studies presented in a short-story format revolving around themes of love, grief, and authenticity.
It’s pretty refreshing to read case studies where the therapist doesn’t present themselves as an all-seeing, all-knowing genius; Irvin Yalom is very open about his uncertainties and mistakes with his clients. The cases he presents are fascinating, and he does a great job of illustrating his philosophical and therapeutic principles throughout. I highly recommend it for anybody interested in psychology, the human condition, or personality-centered short stories!
For me, poetry has the greater allure;
My prose is unsure and immature—
I’ve spent more time designing rhymes;
It used to be a hobby of mine!
A few of my favorite poets that come to mind:
Charles Baudelaire
Arthur Rimbaud
Paul Verlaine
Ezra Pound
Gregory Corso
Sappho
Sylvia Plath
Li Bai
Dostoevsky is one of my all-time favorites! The Idiot made me weep the first time I read it.
Excellent—thank you for the recommendation!