As to the ten books that have made my life worse, I've backed
off from compiling that list.
Sorry.
The fault was not in the books.
There are books that have mattered to me unduly because I
was in need of such.
Books that have misled me because I needed to be led.
Books that have intoxicated me. Should books be controlled
substances? Should you need a script?
Books that are pure shit. When I think of scraping them off I
conclude that, too, would be a mistake, since how else would I know where and
by whom these stinkers are likely to be deposited?
And then there is aging: I remember Vladmir Nabokov
commenting that revolutions should be made only by the old, that only the aged were
entitled. I raged against Nabokov for that. But I was so young.
Based on my experiences I think that existentialist writers such as Camus, Sartre, Kierkegaard should not be read until at least the age of 21. Adolescence is an existential enough time as it is without confirming it as a permanent state-of-being on the impressionable.
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