Books to Bury Me With: Vincenzo Barney

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

Lucid Dying by Dr. Sam Parnia, so that upon my death my loved ones will know to look up and wave happily at the ceiling before I hurtle joyously toward the light. That consciousness persists beyond death is now medical factum, and everyone with proximity to the grave should apprise themselves of this.

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

Blood Meridian, by you know who. Age 15. It made the Vonnegut and Sartre and Huxley I’d been reading up until then look like they’d only hit me like a ton of feathers. All of McCarthy’s work is a refutation that the novel is dead, but this one in particular is the most clear and hopeful evidence.

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

I’ve never cried at a book. No, wait, I did need a moment at the end of A Farewell to Arms. I finished it on a train in Napoli, so there was plenty of coffee, cigarettes and red wine, but I made sure its pristine pages bore no Italianate stains.

The book that shook my world like a goddamn hurricane:

Finnegans Wake. It is a piece of music. A non-Euclidean painting. The difference between being hit by a ton of bricks and a hurricane is that a hurricane lasts longer and tilts you in a particular direction. I must admit I tilt more in the direction of the Wake than Ulysses. When its westerlies start blowing, once a year, I do leave my little hut and gaze up at its skybed: 

“Bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!”

It should be paired with The Origins and History of Consciousness by Erich Neumann, a prolific student of Carl Jung.

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

My liver, sir, is in perfect health! That said, most of Hemingway. I’d like to live in a world in which I thought I could drink like that (for more than a weekend). Alas, I did for a paradisiacal autumn in Europe. White wine in the morning, absinthe in the evening, dreams all night…

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

The History of Western Philosophy. One chapter a night. The best piece of autodidacticism one can accomplish. For instance, we are exiting the imperial, cyclical age of skepticism, i.e. post-modernism, i.e. we are in decline. Marx was a unique combination of Enlightenment philosophy (impossible without Locke, who briefly contemplated equal distribution of land) and continental “philosophy,” i.e. counter — Enlightenment, i.e. post-modernism — a grand but pernicious artform.

The book that nearly drove me to madness:

The Road to Reality. Anyone who thinks they can be as smart as Sir Roger Penrose embarks upon a road to madness. But no other journey is worthwhile. I’d be remiss not to mention Gravity’s Rainbow as well, whose near madness could have had more to do with how I read it: locked into a one person study room in a haunted stone mansion at the top of campus, with four days to read its last 450 pages. No skimming. Students practicing Debussy and Satie in the rooms by day. Ghosts practicing omnitonal scores by night.

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

Inside Story. I love touching it. I love dipping in. Something so stylishly patrician, so effortlessly effete. Perfect, painterly sentences. It’s satisfying when a writer masters their late style. It was written, and I think most critics missed this, for my nascent, now ascending generation. I wish it were five hundred pages longer, which might explain why I own two copies.

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

Might I amend the question? Let us swap “pretending” with “because.” Infinite Jest. I am embarrassed to own it, but writers are readers, and books should never be thrown away, loaned out or burned, no matter who wrote them.

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

Madame Bovary. This novel actually affected me for days. Though I accept master Nabokov’s reading that it is bourgeoise to be devastated by it, I must admit that Flaubert makes of me the worst type of philistine.

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

David Foster Wallace. Take The Pale King. The only novel I know of that was produced by anti-frisson, uninspiration. Let us refer to Nabokov again. (We should always be referring to Nabokov.) The pleasure a great piece of art gives you is a tingle up the spine. Amis likens this to the “gorgeous reassurance” that inspiration gives you, working the same physiognomy. Can we rightfully imagine that a tingle raced up Wallace’s spine for a bronto-text about tax codes? It seems more likely that Wallace chose to write this novel, which, by the way, is Amis’s working definition for writer’s block: choosing rather than being chosen. That is a soul in torment.

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

I’m not Amish, but I do follow their line of thinking about tattoos, and would like to keep open the opportunity to be buried in their graveyards one day. But, if pressed, illustrations from Ladies Almanack by Djuna Barnes — as opposed to lustrations from. (Readers of this virtually unknown work can attest to the sense of purification its zodiac gives.)

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

Ice Planet Barbarians, recommended by my sister Kiley. Play this game: open to a random page and stop when you do not find either of the c-words. You will question everything.

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

I never loan out any books, but particularly those by Amis, McCarthy, Nabokov, Pynchon and essays by Hitchens, Mencken and Vidal. They are that damn good.

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

When the nights are their darkest, no book can save you. But I suppose Buddhist texts are your best bet. Find a way to detach without denying. It can take years to realize you have that muscle. The problem is what to do when you reattach.

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

Vidal’s United States, collection of essays. Weighing in at over 1200 pages and nearly as many pounds, “Bombs away!”

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

Ada, or Ardor. I fell in love with a woman when I was only 40 innocent pages in — when Nabokov was still imitating Tolstoy — and closed its covers in the bliss of requitement. I cannot bear now to reopen it, or read my marginalia. It is a closed Eden, a paradise lost. 

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

Paradise Lost. There are several books I could never have written, but this is the one I’m most envious of. Written at a time when our language was at its height of flexibility, nouns becoming adjectives, adjectives becoming verbs, language near-immaterial.

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

So much drinking going on! Something about Evelyn Waugh and Kingsley Amis makes one thirsty. I’ll go with The Old Devils, which I just reread.

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

Black Mischief, or any early Waugh. His cruelty is much more enjoyable than the world’s. But Lucid Dying, to bring death full circle, is also a great refuge. There is an experience beyond death, and it does not comport with any religion. A zone of consciousness exists beneath, behind, between this one — beyond dreams and beyond hallucinogens — and I think the point of imagination is to try to find that brightening seam. Creativity and discovery, imagination and memory — all are more intimately linked than Plato or modern day materialists will allow. But allowance is not up to them.

***

Might I suggest this as a last question?

Book I am reading now:

The Presence of the Past: Morphic Resonance and the Habits of Nature by Rupert Sheldrake. It pairs extremely well with Lucid Dying. I don’t believe in pan-psychism but I do believe in pan-mnemosynism. Or rather, I believe in a kind of imminent pan-psychism. Endlessly imminent. Memory is key to everything. It is the immaterial, morphogenic stage before consciousness. It’s the dark energy that keeps us coherent. Dark energy, sure, but what of dark matter? I’ll leave that for another time. 

Ciao.