04 Oct 2013 02:40:51
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.
