Books to Bury Me With: Joshua Chaplinsky

The book I’d want to take with me to the grave:

In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust, because the only way I’m going to have the time to read a 7 volume, 4,215 page novel is if I’m dead. 

The first book that hit me like a ton of bricks:

If we’re talking emotionally, probably some Beverly Cleary or Madeline L’Engle book with a simple, saccharine romantic element I read as a child. There is a nostalgic sense of longing I associate with the reading of my youth that is probably better left unexplored. 

The book that’s seen more of my tears, coffee stains, and cigarette burns:

Well, I don’t smoke and I rarely cry, but coffee runs through my veins, and I’ve definitely spilled my share. There are only a handful of books I’ve reread in my adult life, so it’s not like I have some beloved text that I treat as a security blanket, but a book I’ve thumbed through a lot recently, revisiting snippets here and there, is There Is No Year by Blake Butler. 

The book that shook my world like a goddamn hurricane:

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. 

The book I wish I’d discovered when my liver was still intact:

I don’t really drink, but this is as good a place as any to put Liver: A Fictional Organ With A Surface Anatomy Of Four Lobes by Will Self, which is really a collection of 4 novellas relating to the titular organ.

The book I’d shove into everyone’s hands if I were king of the world:

Liminal States by Zak Parsons. One of the most inventive, genre-bending, least talked about books I’ve ever read.

The book that nearly drove me to madness:

The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe. But in a good way. 

The book I can’t keep my hands off of, no matter how many times I’ve read it: 

Again, I don’t reread a ton of stuff, but if by “hands” you mean “mind,” especially when it comes to the subject of nagging influence, I’d have to say House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. It is a specter that haunts me, much like the work of David Lynch.

The book I’d hide in the back of my closet, pretending I’m too highbrow for it: 

I’m not really a stickler when it comes to the delineation of highbrow vs. lowbrow, but I remember being recommended an ARC of The DaVinci Code by a bookseller friend before Dan Brown blew up and became a household name, and I remember enjoying the research behind the narrative and the conspiracy element. But I definitely wouldn’t allow that book on my shelves today. 

The book that left a scar I wish I could forget:

The fucking Bible. Forcing religion on your children is abuse. 

The author who made me think, "Now that’s a soul in torment":

That would be Dennis Cooper, the first book of who’s I read was Period, which remains a disturbing favorite to this day.

The book I’d get a tattoo of if I had the nerve:

I’m not interested in tattoos. 

The book that made me question everything I thought I knew:

The Magus by John Fowles. Has my entire life been a carefully orchestrated experiment presided over by a secretive cabal of intellectuals for their own nefarious purposes? HAS IT?!?!?

The book that’s so damn good I’d never loan it out: 

As a general rule I don’t like loaning out books because people never seem to read them or give them back. I have a signed, 1^st edition trade paperback of Fight Club that is especially off limits. 

The book that’s been my companion through the darkest nights: 

Gonna cheat and say my Kindle, because sometimes you gottaturn the lights off and it’s essentially a book with a built in light. 

The book I’d throw in someone’s face during a heated argument:

Infinite Jest, because it’s so heavy and I’m probably never going to finish it, so… no big loss.  

The book that reminds me of a lost love or regret:

Emotionally manipulative YA notwithstanding, I’d probably go with Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist. Heartbreaking. 

The book I wish I could have written, but know I never could: 

Zeroville by Steve Erickson. Believe me, I’ve tried. 

The book that makes me want to drink myself into oblivion: 

Again with the drinking. Not all writers are alcoholics! But if any book were to make me an alcoholic, it would probably be the New York Trilogy by Paul Auster (himself a famous lover of drink), because it is so goddamn good. 

The book that’s been my refuge from the world’s cruelty: 

Most of the books I’ve read are probably in some way about the world’s cruelty, and reading about said cruelty seems to be my refuge from said cruelty, as backwards as that sounds, so let’s go with one of the most cruel books I’ve ever read, which is American Psycho, but to be fair it is also one of the funniest, and I don’t have the balls to read Hogg by Samuel Delaney.