ANOTHER LIST

Here’s a different kind of list I made for myself to get back to sleep the other night. I thought of writers I love and have tried to read every book they ever published or anyone ever wrote about them.

But I soon realized I’ve actually done that with hundreds of writers, so, I decided they had to be dead and I had to be still re-reading the books they wrote, as well as still pursuing any new books about them, or re-reading old ones about them.

I know I know, but what can I say? I’m an intensely compulsive person. Better books than some other things.

To limit the list even more, since it was still pretty long, and since I think in threes so much, I thought I’d make a list of thirty-three writers whose every published book, as well as books about them, I have read (in English, which means for those who wrote in another language I have tried to read every English translation) and continue to read and re-read.

1. LADY MURASAKI
2. LAURENCE STERNE
3. WALT WHITMAN
4. EMILY DICKINSON
5. GERTUDE STEIN
6, RAINER MARIA RILKE
7. JAMES JOYCE
8. EZRA POUND
9. BLAISE CENDRARS
10. WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
11. E. E. CUMMINGS
12. JEAN RHYS
13. F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
14. HENRY ROTH
15. HENRY MILLER
16. MARTHA GELLHORN
17. WILLIAM SAROYAN
18. CHARLES REZNIKOFF
19. SAMUEL BECKETT
20. FRANCIS PONGE
21. THOMAS MERTON
22. JACK KEROUAC
23. BOB KAUFMAN
24. BRENDAN BEHAN
25. FRANK O’HARA
26. JAMES SCHUYLER
27. LARRY EIGNER
28. HUBERT SELBY JR.
29. D. A. LEVY
30. TED BERRIGAN
31. JOE BRAINARD
32. JAMES HAINING
33. TIM DLUGOS