On the Books That Most Influenced the Great David Bowie
BY JOHN O'CONNELL NOV 19, 2019 9 MINUTES
On the Books That Most Influenced the Great David Bowie from Saved
Widely acknowledged as one of the most influential artists and pop-cultural icons of the 20th century, David Bowie created music that was laced with symbolism and references. This not only showcased Bowie’s talent as an artist but proved Bowie was an avid consumer of art himself. Below are some of the books that influenced and helped shape the artist and personality of David Bowie.
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange (1962)
The debt owed by David Bowie’s first hit song, “Space Oddity,” to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey couldn’t be more obvious. But Kubrick’s next film, a chilly adaptation of Anthony Burgess’s novel A Clockwork Orange, is where the story really gets interesting.
Set in a totalitarian, future-present Britain, A Clockwork Orange is the story of delinquent, Beethoven-loving schoolboy Alex, the leader of a gang that spends its nights raping and pillaging while wired on amphetamine-laced “milk-plus.” Kubrick had set aside his planned biopic of Napoléon Bonaparte to make a movie version after being given a copy of the book by screenwriter Terry Southern, with whom he’d worked on Dr. Strangelove, and falling in love with it. In 1972 Bowie repurposed its swagger and shock value for his career-making turn as “leper messiah” Ziggy Stardust, a bisexual alien rock star with fluffy red hair and a weakness for asymmetric knitted bodysuits who ends up being killed by his fans.
Ziggy was a collision of unstable elements—some obscure (drugaddled rocker Vince Taylor; American psychobilly pioneer the Legendary Stardust Cowboy), others less so. It’s easy to see what Bowie took from Kubrick’s movie because, like his hijacking of the melody from “Over the Rainbow” for the chorus of “Starman,” the borrowing is so blatant. Bowie-as-Ziggy walked onstage to Beethoven’s Symphony no. 9, as played by Moog synthesizer maestro Wendy Carlos, while his band the Spiders’ costumes were modeled on those of Alex and his droogs—“friends” in Burgess’s invented language Nadsat.
The early 70s was a grim, embattled era in England. John Lennon sang in 1970 that the (hippie) dream was over. But 1971 was the year things turned brutish as the alternative society splintered into a mass of competing factions such as the radical-left urban terrorists the Angry Brigade—Britain’s answer to Germany’s Baader-Meinhof gang—who launched a string of bomb attacks against Establishment targets. Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange came out in the UK in January 1972, five months before The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. The following year the director withdrew it from cinemas after receiving death threats; the gesture amplified the film’s air of leering menace while saying a good deal about the febrile social climate.
Both the movie and its source novel celebrate the exquisite sense of belonging that being in a gang affords. But they’re also interested in the aftermath: what happens when the gang dissolves and the power that held it together leaks away. You can, if you want, see Alex as Ziggy and his droogs as the Spiders—the fictional band, not Bowie’s actual musicians Mick Ronson, Woody Woodmansey, and Trevor Bolder. In Bowie’s opaque Ziggy narrative they’re cast as bitter sidemen who bitch about their leader’s fans and wonder if they should give him a taste of the old ultraviolence by crushing his sweet hands. . . .
The novel itself had a tragic genesis. The story goes that in 1959 Burgess was diagnosed incorrectly with terminal brain cancer. Spurred into action, he wrote five novels very quickly to support his soon-to-be widow. A Clockwork Orange took him three weeks and was inspired by a horrific incident in April 1944 where his first wife, Lynne, pregnant at the time—she subsequently miscarried—was assaulted in a blackout by a group of American soldiers. She’d been on her way home from the London offices of the Ministry of War Transport where she was involved in planning the D-Day landings. A Clockwork Orange is interested not just in what might drive someone to carry out this kind of attack, but also in the ethics of rehabilitation. Can you force someone to be good by torturing them, as per the Ludovico Technique aversion therapy Alex undergoes?
If Burgess and Kubrick were equally important to Bowie, it’s worth noting the differences in their visions, differences Burgess considered so stark he ended up renouncing the novel because he felt the film made it easy for readers to misunderstand the book. He meant that his handling of sex and violence was more nuanced than Kubrick’s, which might be true, though in some ways the novel is nastier—for example, the scene where Alex rapes two underage girls after getting them drunk. In the movie they are clearly adult women, the sex is clearly consensual, and Kubrick uses a fast-motion technique to blur the action and create a slapstick tone.
The biggest difference, though, has to do with the ending. The British edition of the novel ends on an optimistic note, with Alex turning his back on violence and contemplating fatherhood. But the original US edition on which Kubrick based his screenplay omits this epilogue. It ends with Alex saying sarcastically, “I was cured all right,” having just shared with us his dream of “carving the whole litso [face] of the creeching [screaming] world with my cut-throat britva [razor].”
Burgess had been intrigued by the razor-packing teddy boys of the late 1950s. Kubrick picked up on the androgyny of the mod culture Bowie flirted with in the mid-1960s. For example, Kubrick turned Alex’s false eyelashes—bought in bulk from hip London boutique Biba, bombed by the Angry Brigade shortly after the shoot concluded—into a key visual motif. Nadsat, the Anglo-Russian slang spoken by Alex, crops up in “Suffragette City.” But the way Bowie used it decades later in one of his final songs, “Girl Loves Me,” suggests a deeper appreciation that leads back to the rich linguistic textures of the novel. For in “Girl Loves Me,” Bowie mixes it knowingly with the secret gay language Polari, reinforcing the cultural historian Michael Bracewell’s point that A Clockwork Orange was an audit on modern masculinity. Finding men to be in crisis, the movie hastened the birth of a new kind of loner—the young soul rebel, who offset corruption with an intense emotional idealism. That sounds like Bowie to me.
Read it while listening to: “Girl Loves Me,” “Suffragette City”
If you like this, try: Graham Greene, Brighton Rock
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Yukio Mishima, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea (1963)
In the Berlin flat where he lived while he was recording “Heroes”, Bowie slept beneath his own painting of Yukio Mishima, the handsome Japanese multihyphenate (author, actor, playwright, singer, terrorist) who committed suicide by hara-kiri in November 1970 after he and four members of his Tatenokai private militia failed in their attempt to incite a coup intended to restore the power of Japan’s emperor.
What did Bowie find so admirable in Mishima’s warrior machismo? Perhaps the fact that it was so obviously a performance. Film historian Donald Richie, who knew Mishima, thought him a dandy whose talent was bound up with his understanding that if you behave the way you want to be, you will become it: you become who you are by practicing.
As a child, Kimitake Hiraoka—Yukio Mishima was a pseudonym—was raised in isolation by his deranged, bullying grandmother Natsu, who refused to let him play with other boys or be exposed to sunlight. Encouraged by her, he read everything he could lay his hands on and emerged a model of poised, precocious elegance. To exorcise his shame at having been rejected by the army on health grounds, an event recounted in his semiautobiographical first novel Confessions of a Mask, he transformed his weedy body into a solid knot of muscle. He learned the ways of the samurai, becoming skilled at kendo (swordsmanship).
Despite having a wife and two children, Mishima was openly gay rather than bisexual; he rationalized this paradox in a later autobiographical work, Sun and Steel, as a means of embracing contradiction and collision. (Another key scene in Confessions of a Mask is his first, explosively successful attempt at masturbation, electrifyed by a painting of St. Sebastian pierced all over by arrows.) To please his ailing mother, his marriage was an arranged one, in traditional Japanese fashion. Among Mishima’s requirements were that his bride should be no taller than he; pretty, with a round face; and careful not to disturb him while he worked. Eventually he settled on Yoko Sugiyama, the 21-year-old daughter of a popular Japanese painter.
Having himself come out as bisexual in 1972, albeit in what was felt to be a publicity stunt, Bowie was still talking up his fluidity four years later. His gay side was mostly dormant, Bowie explained to 19-year-old Cameron Crowe in a deliberately outrageous interview in the September 1976 issue of Playboy, but visiting Japan always roused it reliably: “There are such beautiful-looking boys over there. Little boys? Not that little. About 18 or 19. They have a wonderful sort of mentality. They’re all queens until they reach 25, then suddenly they become samurai, get married and have thousands of children. I love it.”
An allegory of Japan’s postwar humiliation not usually ranked among Mishima’s best works, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea has the brutal symmetry of one of the Grimms’ fairy tales Mishima devoured as a child. It unfolds in a suburb of Yokohama in the aftermath of the war. Fusako, a widow who runs a store selling European luxury goods, takes a sailor, Ryuji, as a lover. Her son Noboru watches them have sex through a peephole in his room. At first Noboru idolizes Ryuji as a hero who has traveled the world, but the next day, on the way back from killing and vivisecting a stray kitten with his sociopathic school friends, he meets Ryuji again and decides he is weak and ineffectual because he has sprayed water on himself to keep cool.
Ryuji swaps his seafaring life for domestic security with Noboru’s mother. But Noboru is unimpressed, even more so when Fusako catches him looking through the peephole a second time, and Ryuji refuses to punish Noboru despite Fusako’s urging. Noboru and his gang decide to restore Ryuji’s lost honor by giving him the full kitten treatment.
Anyone who managed to miss the Mishima-ish themes (affronted honor, repressed homosexuality) of Nagisa Oshima’s Second World War drama Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, in which Bowie played imprisoned British officer Major Jack Celliers, could find elucidation in the title of David Sylvian and Ryuichi Sakamoto’s haunting theme song—“Forbidden Colors,” after Mishima’s novel of the same name. Bowie himself returned to Mishima on 2013’s The Next Day, borrowing Spring Snow’s ominous image of a dead dog obstructing a waterfall for the lyrics of the sparse, Scott Walker–style “Heat.”
Read it while listening to: “Blackout”
If you like this, try: Yukio Mishima, Confessions of a Mask
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James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (1963)
The song “Black Tie, White Noise” from the 1993 album of that name is one of Bowie’s least elliptical lyrics and represents perhaps his most personal statement on the subject of race. Hiding from the 1992 LA riots in a hotel room, the recently married Bowie and Iman are having sex. But in the thick of this intimate moment Bowie looks into his Somali wife’s eyes and wonders if, despite being a well-meaning white liberal, he really understands her blackness, or if he’s living in a Benetton-advert multicultural fantasy world. He hints that he is scared himself, as a famous white man, by the rioting black crowds below. Assuming there’s a part of Iman that shares their anger, is any of it directed at him? In an astonishing line which he repeats three times, Bowie reassures himself that Iman—and by extension Al B. Sure!, with whom he is duetting and who functions as a sort of proxy for Iman in the song—will not kill him. Then he admits he sometimes wonders why she won’t, given white people’s appalling racism and mistreatment of black people through the centuries.
Of course, the reason Iman won’t kill him is because she loves him. And as James Baldwin assures us in The Fire Next Time, one of the wisest polemics ever written, “Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.”
The book, which is in two parts, had its roots in a letter to Baldwin’s nephew on the centenary of black America’s “emancipation.” The elegance of Baldwin’s sentences, with their teeming subclauses and rich biblical cadences, is a function of anger, the same anger that energized the LA rioters. It is also a desperate need to cancel out the real white noise—the spurious national mythology white people invoke to convince themselves that their ancestors were wise, fair-minded heroes who always treated their neighbors and ethnic minority populations honorably.
Baldwin has news for his nephew: it’s not for white people to decide it’s within their gift to accept him. Nor should he try to impersonate them in any way or be tempted to believe that he is what the white world thinks he is—inferior. Why should black people have respect for the standards by which white people claim to live when it’s clear those standards are illusory?
He sounds implacable. Yet Baldwin, like Bowie, believes that the future has to be postracial. Hybrid. Tolerant. There can be no frisson of shock, no disapproval on either side, when it comes to interracial marriage and mixed-race children. When, in the book, Baldwin meets with Elijah Muhammad of the separatist Nation of Islam, he understands the doctrine of black self-sufficiency and self-respect Muhammad preaches but is suspicious of the groupthink he inspires in his followers. Baldwin has white friends he would trust with his life. Can he set this fact against the historic evilness of white people? Muhammad would say no. But for Baldwin there is no other way forward.
There is an invented aspect to racial difference, Baldwin felt. Which is how it becomes a tool of oppression: “Color is not a human or a personal reality. It is a political reality.” Views like this set him apart from the radical black movements of the late 60s and early 70s, some of whose followers and leaders—Eldridge Cleaver, for example—saw Baldwin’s homosexuality as deeply suspect, even treasonous. Baldwin had no wish to be typecast, or to be a spokesman—hence his move to France at the age of 24.
Plenty of the books on Bowie’s list are thrilling, fun, or informative. Many of them are important. The Fire Next Time is essential.
Read it while listening to: “Black Tie, White Noise”
If you like this, try: James Baldwin, Another Country
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From Bowie’s Bookshelf: The Hundred Books that Changed David Bowie’s Life by John O’Connell.
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Product description
Review
"Entertaining and informative (and, perhaps, a template for your book club picks for the next decade or so)."
--Vogue
"The author displays a breadth of knowledge not just about Bowie's life and his music but also the authors and genres on the list... His thoughts on how Bowie transformed practically everything he consumed into his stage personae are insightful... With illustrations and suggestions for read-alikes and Bowie songs to listen to while reading each book, this is a fun peek at what stirred and shaped a legend. For Bowie fans and devotees of offbeat reading guides."
--Library Journal
"I encourage any fan of Bowie or fine literature to pick up Bowie's Bookshelf ... Readers should be inspired to seek out the books on this list, along with the musical suggestions for pairing and even the links to other similar works... It feels good knowing that a list like this exists and, in essence, keeps Bowie's spirit alive, allowing all those who miss him to have another shared experience with one of their heroes."
--Book Reporter
"If there's a Thin White Duke fan on your gift list this year, check him or her off with Bowie's Bookshelf ... While not quite a biography, nor quite a memoir, it's close enough to be categorized as one. I'd like to think Bowie himself would admire the rather unique effort."
--Bookgasm
"Providing thoughtful historical context and commentary... O'Connell's brief essays on each book include anecdotes and trivia that will interest both casual and ardent Bowie fans, or anyone curious about ways art begets art... Bowie's Bookshelf is a quietly electrifying collection, a tribute handled with reverence and respect, celebrating the guiding stars that books can be."
-- Shelf Awareness
"While guiding readers through the book list, Bowie's Bookshelf also acts as an unconventional biography of an artist who helped define modern music and pop culture."
--Mental Floss
"O'Connell is gently witty, and clearly enjoys riffing on Bowie's own playfulness... [Bowie's Bookshelf] is a handy, amusing and, thankfully, light-touch precis, tracking the musician's high modernist influences while remaining aware of his flightiness and fondness for self-editing."
--The Guardian
"A revealing look at the artist."
--Furthermore
"If you're also a fan of David Bowie, you'll likely love this insight into his mind."
--Book Riot
"O'Connell's diligently documented book on the literary influences on David Bowie is a fantastic voyage... His introduction is informative and crucial in framing Bowie's library; it's also very entertaining... An exciting book."
--Booklist
"Okay, so not technically a memoir. But O'Connell works off and analyzes material that Bowie himself provided late in his life: the 100 books that changed his life."
--Entertainment Weekly, "Biggest Music Memoirs Being Published this Fall" round-up
"You can only truly know a pop star through his bookshelf. John O'Connell's brilliant, gossipy book gives you a whole new secret David Bowie: the reader. This is the unwritten Bowie book that needed writing."
--Caitlin Moran, bestselling author of How to Be a Woman
"Former Time Out editor O'Connell does an outstanding job ... An artful and wildly enthralling path for Bowie fans in particular and book lovers in general."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"O'Connell, a veteran music journalist, gamely delivers brief essays on each title, with context on what influence Bowie might have drawn from them... There are a few surprising anecdotes--e.g., Alberto Denti di Pirajno's obscure 1956 memoir, A Grave for a Dolphin directly inspired Bowie's classic song 'Heroes'... O'Connell's approach does underscore the range and playfulness in Bowie's reading, from hefty tomes on the Russian Revolution to laddish comic books like The Beano ... Enlightening."
--Kirkus
About the Author
John O'Connell is a former Senior Editor at Time Out and music columnist for The Face. He is now freelance writing mainly for The Times and The Guardian. He interviewed David Bowie in New York in 2002. He lives in south London.
Start reading Bowie's Books on your Kindle in under a minute.
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David Bowie's top 100 must-read books
This article is more than 8 years old
Jack Kerouac, Spike Milligan and Sarah Waters among star's favourite authors, revealed at exhibition in Ontario
Three years on: David Bowie dies of cancer at 69
David Bowie in 1973
Well red … David Bowie in 1973. Photograph: Masayoshi Sukita
Liz Bury
Wed 2 Oct 2013 00.00 AEST
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As a new version of the exhibition David Bowie Is opens this week at the Art Gallery of Ontario, curators have revealed a list of his top 100 must-read books, giving a fascinating insight into the mind of the influential musician and style icon.
The show, which offered unprecedented access to Bowie's own archive, became the most popular ever mounted by London's V&A when it ran there earlier this year.
As the Guardian's Alexis Petridis pointed out at the time, the Bowie story is so well-known that "unless it's content to retell a very hackneyed story indeed, David Bowie Is has to find a way of casting new light on some of the most over-analysed and discussed music in rock history."
The reading list, with books presented in chronological order rather than order of preference, provides Ontario with a new angle.
American classics of the 50s and 60s are strongly represented –
- On the Road by Jack Kerouac, Truman Capote's In Cold Blood – as are tales of working-class boys made good, which emerged in the postwar years: Keith Waterhouse's Billy Liar and Room at the Top by John Braine, and
- The Outsider by Colin Wilson, a study of creativity and the mindset of misfits.
- RD Laing's The Divided Self speaks to a fascination with psychotherapy and creativity,
- as does The Origin of Consciousness in the breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, by Julian Jaynes.
There is no evidence that Bowie's scientific inquries extend beyond psychology – Stephen Hawking's cosmic theories are out – but his tastes are otherwise broad.
Political history features, in titles such as Christopher Hitchens' The Trial of Henry Kissinger, and Orlando Figes' A People's Tragedy, as well as collections of interviews.
A broad taste for fiction emerges, too, from early Ian McEwan (In Between the Sheets) and Martin Amis's definitive 1980s novel, Money, to 21st-century fictions such as Sarah Waters' Fingersmith and Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz.
He also displays a penchant for irreverent humour, with the inclusion of Spike Milligan's comic novel Puckoon, and the entire oeuvres of Viz and Private Eye.
And, of course, there's music – with soul music especially prominent. Bowie selects Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom by Peter Guralnick, and Nowhere to Run: The Story of Soul Music by Gerri Hirshey, as well as Charlie Gillett's The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll.
David Bowie's top 100 must-read books
- The Age of American Unreason, Susan Jacoby (2008)
- The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz (2007)
- The Coast of Utopia (trilogy), Tom Stoppard (2007)
- Teenage: The Creation of Youth 1875-1945, Jon Savage (2007)
- Fingersmith, Sarah Waters (2002)
- The Trial of Henry Kissinger, Christopher Hitchens (2001)
- Mr Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder, Lawrence Weschler (1997)
- A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1890-1924, Orlando Figes (1997)
- The Insult, Rupert Thomson (1996)
- Wonder Boys, Michael Chabon (1995)
- The Bird Artist, Howard Norman (1994)
- Kafka Was the Rage: A Greenwich Village Memoir, Anatole Broyard (1993)
- Beyond the Brillo Box: The Visual Arts in Post-Historical Perspective, Arthur C Danto (1992)
- Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, Camille Paglia (1990)
- David Bomberg, Richard Cork (1988)
- Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom, Peter Guralnick (1986)
- The Songlines, Bruce Chatwin (1986)
- Hawksmoor, Peter Ackroyd (1985)
- Nowhere to Run: The Story of Soul Music, Gerri Hirshey (1984)
- Nights at the Circus, Angela Carter (1984)
- Money, Martin Amis (1984)
- White Noise, Don DeLillo (1984)
- Flaubert's Parrot, Julian Barnes (1984)
- The Life and Times of Little Richard, Charles White (1984)
- A People's History of the United States, Howard Zinn (1980)
- A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole (1980)
- Interviews with Francis Bacon, David Sylvester (1980)
- Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler (1980)
- Earthly Powers, Anthony Burgess (1980)
- Raw, a "graphix magazine" (1980-91)
- Viz, magazine (1979 –)
- The Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels (1979)
- Metropolitan Life, Fran Lebowitz (1978)
- In Between the Sheets, Ian McEwan (1978)
- Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, ed Malcolm Cowley (1977)
- The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes (1976)
- Tales of Beatnik Glory, Ed Saunders (1975)
- Mystery Train, Greil Marcus (1975)
- Selected Poems, Frank O'Hara (1974)
- Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s, Otto Friedrich (1972)
- In Bluebeard's Castle: Some Notes Towards the Re-definition of Culture, George Steiner (1971)
- Octobriana and the Russian Underground, Peter Sadecky (1971)
- The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll, Charlie Gillett(1970)
- The Quest for Christa T, Christa Wolf (1968)
- Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: The Golden Age of Rock, Nik Cohn (1968)
- The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov (1967)
- Journey into the Whirlwind, Eugenia Ginzburg (1967)
- Last Exit to Brooklyn, Hubert Selby Jr (1966)
- In Cold Blood, Truman Capote (1965)
- City of Night, John Rechy (1965)
- Herzog, Saul Bellow (1964)
- Puckoon, Spike Milligan (1963)
- The American Way of Death, Jessica Mitford (1963)
- The Sailor Who Fell from Grace With the Sea, Yukio Mishima (1963)
- The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin (1963)
- A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess (1962)
- Inside the Whale and Other Essays, George Orwell (1962)
- The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark (1961)
- Private Eye, magazine (1961 –)
- On Having No Head: Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious, Douglas Harding (1961)
- Silence: Lectures and Writing, John Cage (1961)
- Strange People, Frank Edwards (1961)
- The Divided Self, RD Laing (1960)
- All the Emperor's Horses, David Kidd (1960)
- Billy Liar, Keith Waterhouse (1959)
- The Leopard, Giuseppe di Lampedusa (1958)
- On the Road, Jack Kerouac (1957)
- The Hidden Persuaders, Vance Packard (1957)
- Room at the Top, John Braine (1957)
- A Grave for a Dolphin, Alberto Denti di Pirajno (1956)
- The Outsider, Colin Wilson (1956)
- Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov (1955)
- Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell (1949)
- The Street, Ann Petry (1946)
- Black Boy, Richard Wright (1945)
Bowie's Bookshelf: The Hundred Books that Changed David Bowie's Life
by John O'Connell
3.77 · Rating details · 927 ratings · 230 reviews
Part epic reading guide and part biography of a music legend, Bowie’s Bookshelf is a collection of mini-essays exploring David Bowie’s list of 100 favorite books in the context of the artist’s life and work.
Imagine a beloved friend sharing their favorite books with you—the ones that shaped them, made them who they are, and inspired them to achieve their dreams. Now imagine that friend is David Bowie.
Three years before he died, Rock & Roll Hall of Famer and Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award-winning artist David Bowie shared a list of the hundred books that changed his life—a wide-ranging and eclectic selection that spans beloved classics like F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and George Orwell’s 1984, to more esoteric gems like Fran Lebowitz’s Metropolitan Life and Hubert Selby Jr.’s Last Exit to Brooklyn, and even cult comic strips like Beano and Raw.
Bowie’s Bookshelf celebrates each of Bowie’s favorite books with a dedicated mini-essay, exploring each work within the context of Bowie’s life and its role in shaping one of the most versatile, avant-garde, and cutting-edge musicians of the twentieth century. A fresh approach to celebrating the enduring legacy of David Bowie, Bowie’s Bookshelf is a resounding tribute to the power art has to change our lives for the better. (less)
Hardcover, 320 pages
Published November 12th 2019 by Gallery Books
Write a review
Jan 02, 2020Julie rated it really liked it
Shelves: non-fiction, 2020, e-book, edelweiss-review, books-about-books, biography, hardcover, music, goodreads-first-read, giveaways
Bowie’s Bookshelf by John O’Connell is a 2019 Gallery Books publication.
Because reading is, among much else, an escape—into other people, other perspectives, other consciousnesses. It takes you out of yourself, only to put you back there infinitely enriched.
This is such a cool little book! I won a copy of this book from a Goodreads giveaway and was smitten with it the instant I laid eyes on it.
Book people tend to like other book people, and Bowie should get a nod of approval from voracious readers, even if you are more of a casual fan, because -as his son, Duncan, has pointed out, he was a ‘beast of a reader’. In 2013, David drew up a list of a hundred books that had influenced him the most.
I had never seen or read his list before now. Naturally, I was very curious to see what books might have influenced someone as diverse as David Bowie. However, I was a little worried that I might not know any of the books on the list. I had imagined David Bowie’s taste in reading material would differ vastly from my own simple taste.
However, I was pleasantly surprised by how many books on the list that I recognized. That doesn’t mean I’ve read them, just that I’d at least heard of them. In truth, I’ve only read three books on his list. But I plan to add more than a handful of them to MY list.
Naturally, Bowie was well read and had a wide range of interests. The list itself is very telling. What John O’Connell has done here, is to write a brief composition about each book, speculating on how or why it may have made an impression on Bowie.
One would have to know Bowie pretty well, I’d think, to assume such a task, but the author did an admirable job, in my opinion. Since I’ve only read three of the books, I can’t really speak to how close to the mark O’Connell’s theories were, but it was fun to read his hypothesis, even if a few of them were a bit odd. Sometimes, the influence is very clear, though, and I had a few “a ha” moments while reading these essays.
There were some interesting tidbits about Bowie sprinkled throughout as well- including how he traveled by train, never in airplanes, and carried with him an entire trunk full of books, neatly arranged.
The author also gives readers a suggested Bowie tune to listen to while reading each specific title on the list.
I thought this book was unique and original, and is one that Bowie fans will relish, and book lovers will cherish. The book is insightful and informative, maybe a little nostalgic and poignant, but also really fun too!
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Jul 23, 2019Diane S ☔ rated it really liked it
Shelves: lor-2019, 5000-2019
I've never been the type of person into hero worship, not if a group, singer nor movie star. There have been groups I've loved, singers I've enjoyed but I wasn't one who screamed and yelled myself horse in an audience. Bowie wasn't a favorite but I liked some of his music, some I didn't. I am guilty if being surprised of what an avid reader he was, couldn't pass up the opportunity to find out what he read. So interesting.
The books are listed one by one, with a description of what the book entails, what it meant to Bowie and why. Where was he in his life at the point that the book spoke to him. Some of the books are strange ones, some I've heard of and read, some comics and cartoons that those in the UK had heard of, I did not. He loved to read about art, critical evaluations of literature, hard hitting fiction, and so many others. Varied interests depending where he was in his life.
This was such an intriguing read. It has been said that it was possible to get a feel for a person based on the books they've read. If that is so, Bowie was a talented, well read, multifaceted but a flawed one with many issues he had to overcome.
I found this absolutely astonishing.
"Bowie hates aircraft so he mostly travels across the States by train, carrying his mobile biblioteque in special trunks which open out with all his books neatly displayed on shelves. In New Mexico the volumes dealt mainly with the occult, his current enthusiasm." This portable library stored fifteen hundred titles, enough to make Clark's later observation to a journalist that Bowie "really read alot" while making The Man Who fell to earth seem like s but of an understatement."
A list of his books are included.
ARC from Edelweiss.
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Aug 16, 2019Andrew Smith rated it really liked it
Shelves: music, netgalley, memoirs-biographies, non-fiction
I was a big Bowie fan back in the early seventies, a time when I was in my teens and he was releasing what to me remain his most iconic albums: Hunky Dory & Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. He was fresh, his voice just a little off and his lyrics somewhat strange but always conveying a story. I wasn’t quite so enamoured with the albums that followed but in 1983 he released Let’s Dance in which a re-invented Bowie produced a collection of tracks that everyone I knew loved and played to death. And he would, of course, continue to re-invent himself, as he always had – often when I wasn’t watching.
But what of the man? I knew surprisingly little of him really, and I certainly hadn’t perceived him to be a voracious reader. I suppose his lyrics had to come from somewhere; something had to be feeding his mind, planting seeds for the many varied stories he told in his songs. Bowie is described an an autodidact, who struggled with formal education but spent a lifetime self-educating. So it turns out he was a huge reader, reading constantly including sometimes from a library of circa 1500 books he often carted around with him when he travelled. This book provides a list of the one hundred books he considered most important and influential (note – these are not necessarily the books he most enjoyed).
There’s a real mix here. I recognised quite a few but there are only two books (plus one magazine and one comic) that I can actually claim to have read. There are about half a dozen books I’ve sometimes planned to read but haven’t gotten around to yet (by authors such as Hitchens, Martin Amis, DeLillo and Capote), quite a few I really don’t fancy and a fair few more I’d never heard of. There’s a good sprinkling of science fiction, a little philosophy, some poetry and much of the rest is an eclectic mix of the avant-garde and the obscure. Getting on for a third of the books were written before he was born.
The author tries to explain in what way each book was significant for Bowie, what he took from it or how his discovery of the text tied in to a particular song he wrote (for example the phrase homo superior in ‘Oh! You Pretty Thing’ was scavenged from Olaf Stapledon’s science fiction novel Odd John). There’s also a thread of autobiographical commentary running through the piece, so we learn quite a bit about Bowie’s development as a person and as an artist as we make our way through the list of books. In fact, I found one if the most interesting elements to be how the books seemed to help shape the man and that the changes wrought duly steered him towards an ever more off-centre collection of books.
I didn’t find myself wishing to rush out and grab many titles listed here but I did find it a fascinating study of this chameleon of a man.
My sincere thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing Plc & NetGalley for supplying an early copy of the book in exchange for an honest review. (less)
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Nov 25, 2020BAM Endlessly Booked rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Shelves: british-nonfiction, e-book, own, bowies-bookshelf
This book ended way too soon. I could have read it if it had been three times as long
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Nov 13, 2019Louise Wilson rated it really liked it
These are not David Bowie's favourite books, thrynarenthe ones that had a material difference on him. Bowie was such a talented and creative person whom liked to surround himself with new information. This is a list of 100 books that influenced him and there is essays on why he thought they did. This is a well researched and written book. This is a boo that fa s old and new will enjoy. After all, I enjoyed it and I wasnt a fan at all.
I would like to thank NetGalley, Bloomsbury Publishing (UK & ANZ) and the author John O'Connell for my ARC in exchange for an honest review. (less)
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Nov 08, 2019Karen R rated it liked it
I had no idea David Bowie was such a voracious reader. The vast spectrum of literature he embraced, his compulsion with books and how they inspired, influenced and impacted his life are meticulously documented by the author. I am an avid reader but so many books referenced within that I had never heard of. Enjoyable biographic bits and backstory peppered into the mix. Thanks to Gallery Books for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.
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Oct 10, 2019Christine rated it really liked it
Shelves: dance-music, libraries, netgalley-and-arcs, literary-criticism-biography
Disclaimer: ARC via Netgalley in exchange for a fair review.
2016 was a horrible year. It started with the death of Bowie and ended with the death of Carrie Fisher. And let’s not talk about the election okay?
If one knew anything about David Bowie, other than his music and Iman, one knew that he loved to read. There was a list of 100 books that influenced Bowie that was released before his death in conjunction with a show of his costumes at the AGO (Art Gallery of Ontario). After his death, his son, Duncan Jones, founded the David Bowie Book Club, a podcast series that is working its way though the list. O’Connell’s book provides a brief overview of each work on the list, but, perhaps more importantly, the influence it might have had on Bowie as well as pairing the book with one or more of his songs as well as further reading.
One question this book raises is if the complete 100 book list is easy enough to find online, why read this book? Part of it is because of the essays that accompanies each work. The essay not only serves as an introduction to the various books but also details about when Bowie most likely read the book for the first time, biographical information about the author and Bowie, and details about what songs refer to the book. There are also references to Iggy Pop.
Some of the books on this list were introduced to Bowie by his half brother Terry. This includes the influence of the Beats as well as writers that he felt an affinity for – such as Fitzgerald and Carter. It also includes writers who wrote about him such as Camille Paglia or authors that he met or wanted to meet.
Some writers, like Carter and Fitzgerald are not a surprise, but Bowie also read heavily into history – not only Howard Zinn but also a door stopper about the Russian Revolution. There are some writers or books that are somewhat surprising - such as The Leopard or Day of the Locust (tbh, I’m surprised that anyone likes Day of the Locust). Beano and Homer even make the list, and there is a good number of Harlem Renaissance Works on it and less famous works as well. I want to read A Grave for a Dolphin now, and I had never heard of it before. There are stories about recommendations that he made to friends and backing musicians, such as the Street by Ann Petry.
O’Connell’s writing is engaging, and the book is an easy one to dip in and out of. The hardest part is dealing with the grief of Bowie’s death. (OH, and not wanting to strangle O’Connell when he writes that Bowie read the most of any person on Earth type hyperbole because I know some people he should meet.
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Jan 12, 2020Tosh rated it really liked it
Shelves: books-bought
Kimley and I are going to discuss this book on an upcoming episode of Book Musik.
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Jul 26, 2019Sid Nuncius rated it really liked it
This is an interesting idea which is done well. John O’Connell has taken the list which Bowie made of the 100 books which had most influenced him (but not necessarily his favourite books, as O’Connell firmly points out) and has given a brief description of each book, something of its history and a suggestion of how it came to influence David Bowie.
In general, O’Connell does this very well. There is a lengthy introduction in which he describes Bowie’s almost addictive reading habit and relates this to the man and his extraordinary art. He generally (but not quite always, I think) manages to avoid pretentiousness and gives us a good idea of the influence of reading on Bowie himself. I liked this little passage: “This isn’t the story of David Bowie’s life… But it is a look at the tools he used to navigate his life, not to mention a shot in the arm for the unfashionable theory, one that I’ve always liked, that reading makes you a better person.” That gives an idea of the aims of the book and O’Connell’s style, both of which I liked.
The list is extremely eclectic, from Camus to Viz and The Beano and from art and philosophy to thrillers. O’Connell takes each book in the list and relates it to Bowie’s career and personal life. This is a tricky task, necessarily a little speculative in places, and he manages to do it credibly and engagingly. It’s one to dip into rather than read at a sitting, but a couple of sections at a time are rewarding and have suggested several things I may want to read myself.
I did baulk slightly at the end of each section where there is a “Read while listening to...” with suggestions of Bowie tracks. I wouldn’t dream of listening to Bowie while reading anything – it would be an insult to both Bowie and the book. Perhaps “After reading, listen to...” would have been better. This is followed by an Amazon-style “If you liked this, then try...” suggestion which I have to say I found rather patronising.
Minor quibbles aside, this is an interesting, readable book which I can recommend.
(My thanks to Bloomsbury for an ARC via NetGalley.) (less)
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Oct 25, 2019Crystal King rated it it was amazing
When Bowie first shared his list of 100 favorite books, I immediately started to work my way through them. It even inspired me to create and maintain my own list of 100 favorite books. So, of course when I saw this title, I knew I had to read it.
O'Connell thoughtfully dives into the history of Bowie in relation to the choices he made with the books, giving backstory and insight into how they may have shaped certain aspects of his life, or his art. As a Bowie fan I loved reading this unique take on his life, but as a reader, I loved reading about the books themselves and am using this to better prioritize my own reading choices. I think I will read many of those books even more thoughtfully as a result of O'Connell's information.
A must-read if you love Bowie, and a wonderful read if you just love books and want a glimpse into how words can change one's life. (less)
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Dec 01, 2019Mandy rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Not long before his death, David Bowie, always an avid reader, made a list of the 100 books that had most influenced him. This book comprises short essays about each of these books and the reasons why they had such an impact on him, and in so doing explores various aspects of Bowie’s life and ideas. It’s an eclectic choice of books, for sure, from Camus to Dante, Martin Amis to Flaubert. At the end of each essay there’s a “you might also like this” suggestion, plus a suggestion of what to listen to while (or preferably after) reading one of Bowie's recommended books. This is definitely not a book to plough through in one go, as that would become quite tedious, but as a book to dip in and out of I found it an original and engaging concept, well-executed and with some thoughtful insights into Bowie’s character and career. Not just for the Bowie fan, either, but for anyone interested in other people’s reading tastes. (less)
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Feb 21, 2021Leah K rated it it was ok
Shelves: library
As a fan of David Bowie and books, I had high hopes for this one. But instead of any real insight into why these books made it into Bowie's favorites, we get what feels like a fan giving a book review often followed by a "Bowie must have thought/felt/done/etc about this book". I would have been much happier with what he actually thought vs some magazine writer deciding what Bowie thought. I don't do well with nonfiction books where the author finds in necessary to guess what the subject was thinking - that's speculation, not fact.
Anyway, this book was slightly saved by, at the end of each chapter/book, the author lists a Bowie song that fits the book and another book that might of interest to the reader. The author was obviously working with what he had but unless Bowie left behind his own thoughts, I feel this book was better off not being written. (less)
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Nov 14, 2019Lou rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Many millions of music listeners the world over loved nothing better than to listen to the legendary musician David Bowie's instantly recognisable dulcet tones. However, many more, like myself, have been intrigued and fascinated by the music and literature which he himself was inspired. In Bowie's Books, author John O'Connell uses the list Bowie wrote in his last years, featuring 100 books, pieces of music and wider publications (e.g. Viz) that impacted him and his mindset, to set the structure of the book. The list is a diverse and eclectic one and covers iconic literature right through to pop culture favourites; all of whom are related back to Bowie and his life. His love of reading has always taken a backseat to his lyrical prowess but I am so pleased it is now laid bare in this fascinating book which can be read from cover to cover or dipped in and out of wherever and whenever you like.
From the Beano to Jack Kerouac and Albert Camus to Dante's Inferno, Bowie's Books links the ideas of these publications together and back to the enigmatic showman himself. The books, music and other publications mentioned are those you engage with when you are hoping to learn more about yourself or the world around you and would hardly be described as lighthearted or incongruous with many of the books we read today; in many respects, they are classics and have very philosophical messages to them. Being both a Bowie fan and a book advocate, I feel lucky to have picked this up and know it will appeal to a wide range of people. Seeing the sources from which he drew his inspiration was amazing and a real treat. This is a phenomenal work of non-fiction and one I know I will remember for a very long time to come. Genius. Gone too soon. RIP David. Many thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing for an ARC. (less)
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Aug 10, 2019Alex Sarll added it
An exegesis of that list Bowie made of the hundred books which influenced him the most, and one which at its best has some lovely and insightful turns of phrase, really bringing out their interconnections. Of Berlin Alexanderplatz's protagonist, say: "Biberkopf is Shakespeare's unaccommodated man, out on an existential limb – the kind of man Bowie flirted with becoming on the heaviest of his heavy nights out. But he could never quite get there. There was always someone around to step in and pull ...more
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Oct 18, 2019J Earl rated it really liked it
Bowie's Bookshelf: The Hundred Books that Changed David Bowie's Life from John O'Connell is a wonderful book on several levels.
For Bowie fans this takes Bowie's list of the 100 most influential (not necessarily favorite) books on his life and offers some contextualization with Bowie's life. There is certainly some educated guesses about exactly what each book may have meant or how it influenced his music, but for the most part the explanations make sense. Of course, without knowing from Bowie hi ...more
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Nov 14, 2019Caroline Barron rated it really liked it · review of another edition
4.5 stars.
I've actually got a different edition, white cover, paperback, published by Bloomsbury, titled Bowie's Books.
I loved this unique romp through Bowie's literary influences, and the links made to his creative output. John O'Connell is such a great writer, and his short essays really bought Bowie's books alive.
Review to follow in Otago Daily Times. ...more
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Jan 18, 2020Amanda rated it liked it
Shelves: movies-music
Not necessarily the best book, but had some interesting information about books that Bowie felt influenced him in some way. Felt more like a book you skim than one you sit and absorb, skimmed was all I did. One thing I did like was after each passage a song recommendation and another book if you enjoy that one.
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Feb 02, 2020Aria rated it it was ok
---- Disclosure: I received this book for free from Goodreads. ----
Was very excited to receive this. Anything that informed Bowie's mind I'm interested in, b/c he was just one of those singularly intriguing type of people that occasionally deigns to walk amongst us on this planet.
I'll try not to repeat what others have already said about this book. It is definitely the type of thing to read a bit of, set down, & then come back to again. Short brief bits of info. about the books on the list are provided, which I used to suss them out as possibilities for my "want to read" list. Some books unfortunately had too little information, & there doesn't seem to be any reason for the unevenness of the content. The song suggestions at the end of each section I found slightly annoying, although I can't say exactly why. Take them or leave them, they're only a sentence each, after all. Other readers seem to to appreciate them. My only real true complaint, however, is that the author inserts himself way too much into this. It's sold as an overview of the books on the book list Bowie provided for the gallery shows that occurred not long before his death. Technically, this is not a falsehood. Certainly though, this book is not sold on the author's re-telling of his ideas about Bowie, his Bowie encounter, or things (including books) he things Bowie would have liked. I couldn't be less interested in your thoughts, guy. I certainly don't appreciate your attempts to scatter them throughout my ingestion of material re: Bowie's influential life reads. That's not cool, man.
Short review: recommend for reading-types w/ an appreciation for the art that is/was Bowie.(less)
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Dec 01, 2019Hayley rated it really liked it
Shelves: ebook, read-2019, non-fiction
I’m a huge David Bowie fan so was very keen to read this book. It’s a really enjoyable book about the one hundred books that David Bowie considered the most influential. It’s a real mix of books and it’s fascinating to learn more about the ones I haven’t read yet (quite a few are now on my wish list now!). There is a list of all the books at the start so you get an overview of the titles. Then you get each title with a short essay about the book and what Bowie liked about it or what he took from it. At the end the author suggests a song or two that would work well with the book and I really liked that element. It made me take time to sit and think about the books and Bowie’s music and the influence that he took from what he was reading. Some of the links seems somewhat tenuous but others I knew of and it was interesting to get more understanding of them. I also have to mention how fab it was to see that the author thinks Tin Machine may get proper recognition one of these days – I’ve always thought they were under-rated and I love both of the Tin Machine albums. I definitely recommend this book to fans of David Bowie but I think readers in general who are looking to find some new books to read would also enjoy this.
This review was originally posted on my blog https://rathertoofondofbooks.com (less)
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Feb 26, 2020Morgan Thomas rated it it was amazing
Shelves: england
Not a Bowie fan, (I don't listen to much music to consider myself much of it) but I do love reading about people's favorite books and their reading habits. I don't find most people interesting readers but I was pleasantly surprised. Bowie had an eclectic list filled with everything from explorations of the occult to British mid century writers I have never heard of (but sound good enough to try). It was interesting to see such a broad exploration of titles and how they shaped his work and world view. Only drawback is he is such a fascinating reader who has such broad interests I would love to see his whole shelves.
I do suggest that anyone who is interested in reading any of these titles be aware that at times the author gives you a complete plot summary! And yes most of these books are old but many aren't especially well known. (less)
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Jan 17, 2020Kimley rated it liked it
Shelves: book-musik, 21st-century, british, music, 20th-century, critical-essays-theory
Tosh and I discuss this on episode 16 of our Book Musik podcast.
Any serious Bowie fan knows that Bowie was a voracious reader and the epitome of an autodidact. In 2013 the Victoria & Albert museum had a David Bowie exhibit and Bowie graced us with an additional memento which was this list of 100 books that changed his life. John O’Connell dissects each of these books and tries to surmise the specifics of influence and import to Bowie. It’s an impossible task but an amusing one that leads to further discussion on one of our favorite topics: David Bowie! (less)
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It's no surprise to hear David Bowie was a voracious reader. As a creative practitioner, I am always interested in the way artists absorb information and how they cultivate their influences and inspiration. This book offers a unique insight into Bowie's literary influences, and how what he read shaped both his life and work. A very original idea that is executed well. And it also made me wistful and nostalgic, knowing we are unlikely to see an artist of Bowie's intellect and creativity again any time soon. We were privileged to live in his time.
A must-read for Bowie fans!
Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an ARC. (less)
A must-read for Bowie fans!
Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an ARC. (less)
