Off the Cushion
Recently, one of my students mentioned that he’d be curious to see a list of general recommendations I might have in terms of arts and literature. Not long after, in an interesting coincidence, Cornel West’s Hope on a Tightrope: Words and Wisdom found itself on my reading table: Dr. West ends the book with a list of the books and music that “made him.” I took that as a hint from the universe that I should take a moment to answer my student. I’m not sure how interesting this will be to the rest of you, but it was a good exercise for me and I hope it directs somebody to something that transforms them as much as it did me.
Like Dr. West, I feel deeply shaped by certain books and pieces of music. I also feel deeply shaped by quite a few films as well. (I was once a film major — it’s a medium that speaks to me.)
I’ve chosen to stick with Dr. West’s way of doing the lists: by artist’s name, with the specifically influential works noted.
Again, these are works that “made me” — not an attempt to name the “bests” in these areas. (I’m aware, for example, that no films by Howard Hawks, Federico Fellini, Ernst Lubitsch, Luis Buñuel, Satyajit Ray, Nicholas Ray, Mike Nichols, Preston Sturges, or Quentin Tarantino — to name just a few — make the cut. That’s simply because I don’t necessarily “feel” the influence of their work in my life the way I most certainly do with the others I’ve listed.)
In terms of process, I simply listed as fast as I could — “first thought, best thought” — and then went back a second time and added things that it occurred to me were missing. I have invariably forgotten important influences, but I think each is fairly representative of the works of art and literature that have made me the fellow I am today.
Please enjoy. And please share yours with us in the comments if you’re so inclined!
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FILMS
Terrence Malick – whole corpus, but especially The Thin Red Line and The Tree of Life
Errol Morris – whole corpus, but especially The Thin Blue Line and The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara
Charles Chaplin – whole corpus, but especially Modern Times, City Lights, and The Great Dictator
Steven Spielberg – Lincoln, Schindler’s List, Munich, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, Amistad, Empire of the Sun, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, War Horse, Catch Me If You Can, and The Sugarland Express
Spike Lee – 4 Little Girls, When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, If God Is Willing and da Creek Don’t Rise, 25th Hour, Malcolm X, Inside Man, and Do the Right Thing
Peter Weir – whole corpus, but especially Fearless, Witness, and The Mosquito Coast
Martin Scorsese – whole corpus, but especially Mean Streets, The Last Temptation of Christ, Kundun, Goodfellas, and The Departed
Warren Beatty – Reds and Bulworth
Robert Duvall – The Apostle
Jonathan Demme – Cousin Bobby, The Agronomist, The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia, Jimmy Carter: Man from Plains, and Swimming to Cambodia
Woody Allen – Crimes and Misdemeanors, Hannah and Her Sisters, Broadway Danny Rose, Annie Hall, Manhattan, Sweet and Lowdown, Deconstructing Harry, Husbands and Wives, Bullets Over Broadway, Sleeper, Zelig, and The Purple Rose of Cairo
Richard Attenborough – Gandhi and Cry Freedom
Michael Moore – whole corpus, but especially Roger & Me and Bowling for Columbine
Christopher Nolan – whole corpus, but especially Memento and The Dark Knight
Tim Robbins – whole corpus, but especially Dead Man Walking
Sean Penn – whole corpus, but especially The Indian Runner and The Pledge
George Clooney – Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Good Night, and Good Luck.
Mira Nair – Monsoon Wedding
Arthur Penn – Bonnie and Clyde and Little Big Man
David Anspaugh – Hoosiers
Noah Baumbach – Kicking and Screaming, Mr. Jealousy, and The Squid and the Whale
Wes Anderson – Rushmore and The Darjeeling Limited
Michael Mann – The Insider, Ali, and Heat
Cindy Meehl – Buck
Orson Welles – Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, Touch of Evil, Chimes at Midnight, and F for Fake
Jean Renoir – Grand Illusion and The Rules of the Game
Akira Kurosawa – whole corpus, but especially Ikiru, Ran, Seven Samurai, Red Beard, Rashomon, High and Low, Yojimbo, Dersu Uzala, and Dreams
Alfred Hitchcock – whole corpus, but especially Vertigo, North by Northwest, Rear Window, Psycho, and Shadow of a Doubt
John Ford – The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and The Quiet Man
Fred Zinnemann – High Noon
Ross McElwee – Sherman’s March
Frank Capra – It’s a Wonderful Life and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
John Huston – The Man Who Would Be King, The African Queen, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Maltese Falcon, The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, and Prizzi’s Honor
George A. Romero – Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Martin
Joel and Ethan Coen – Raising Arizona, Miller’s Crossing, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, A Serious Man, The Man Who Wasn’t There, True Grit, and O Brother, Where Art Thou?
David O. Russell – Three Kings and I (Heart) Huckabees
Alexander Payne – whole corpus, but especially Election, About Schmidt, and Sideways
Ingmar Bergman – Wild Strawberries, The Seventh Seal, and Persona
Billy Wilder – Sunset Blvd., Double Indemnity, and Some Like It Hot
Robert Altman – Nashville, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, M*A*S*H, and Short Cuts
Stanley Kubrick – whole corpus, but especially Paths of Glory and Dr. Strangelove: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Francis Ford Coppola – The Godfather, The Godfather: Part II, The Conversation, and Apocalypse Now
Carol Reed – The Third Man
Joseph von Sternberg – The Last Command
Clint Eastwood – A Perfect World and Unforgiven
Jim Sheridan – In the Name of the Father
Werner Herzog – Grizzly Man
Lindsay Anderson – O Lucky Man!
Paul Thomas Anderson – Magnolia
Jean-Luc Godard – Breathless
Francois Truffaut – The 400 Blows, Jules and Jim, Fahrenheit 451, and Day for Night
Sidney Lumet – Network, 12 Angry Men, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, The Verdict, and Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead
Davis Guggenheim – An Inconvenient Truth
Steven Soderbergh – King of the Hill, Out of Sight, Erin Brockovich, Che, Traffic, and The Informant!
Ridley Scott – Blade Runner
Robert Mulligan – To Kill a Mockingbird
Steve Buscemi – Trees Lounge
Glenn Gordon Caron – Clean and Sober
Bob Rafelson – Five Easy Pieces
Neil Jordan – The Crying Game
Robert Zemeckis – Contact and Cast Away
Jim Jarmusch – Dead Man
Roman Polanski – Chinatown and Repulsion
Edward Zwick – Glory
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MUSIC
Johnny Cash – whole corpus, but especially The American Recordings, At Folsom Prison, At San Quentin, At San Quentin, My Mother’s Hymn Book, “What is Truth,” “Folsom Prison Blues,” “Ring of Fire,” “Get Rhythm,” “The Ballad of Ira Hayes,” “What Do I Care,” and “The Man in Black”
Bruce Springsteen – whole corpus, but especially The Rising, Born to Run, The Ghost of Tom Joad, “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” “Man’s Job,” “American Skin (41 Shots),” “Beautiful Disguise,” “Mary’s Place,” We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, Lucky Town, “Lonesome Day,” “Girls in Their Summer Clothes,” and “The Rising”
Leonard Cohen – whole corpus, but especially The Future, Songs of Leonard Cohen, and “Democracy”
Woody Guthrie – whole corpus, but especially Dustbowl Ballads and “This Land Is Your Land”
Emmylou Harris – whole corpus, but especially Wrecking Ball, Red Dirt Girl, and “Deeper Well”
Elliott Smith – whole corpus, but especially Roman Candle, Either/Or, “Alameda,” “Last Call,” “Rose Parade,” “Waltz #2,” “Angeles,” “Pitseleh,” and “Son of Sam”
Bob Dylan – whole corpus, but especially Highway 61 Revisited, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, Bringing It All Back Home, Blonde on Blonde, Time Out of Mind, Blood on the Tracks, Oh Mercy, Love and Theft, and The Bootleg Series
Philip Glass – whole corpus, but especially Satyagraha, Solo Piano, and the soundtrack for Martin Scorsese’s Kundun
Aretha Franklin – whole corpus, but especially Amazing Grace and “I Never Loved a Man”
Marvin Gaye – whole corpus, but especially What’s Going On?
The Beatles – whole corpus, but especially “All You Need Is Love”
John Lennon – whole corpus, but especially Imagine, Double Fantasy, “Working Class Hero,” “Jealous Guy,” “Mind Games,” “Give Peace a Chance,” “Happy Xmas (War is Over),” “Nobody Told Me,” “Watching the Wheels,” “Power to the People,” “Instant Karma,” “Gimme Some Truth,” and “Imagine”
George Harrison – whole corpus, but especially All Things Must Pass, Living in the Material World, Cloud Nine, Brainwashed, “Fish on the Sand,” “Any Road,” “This is Love,” “What is Life,” and “Isn’t It a Pity?”
Patti Smith – whole corpus, but especially Gung Ho, Horses, and Twelve
U2 – whole corpus, but especially The Unforgettable Fire and “Beautiful Day”
Roy Orbison – whole corpus
Patsy Cline – whole corpus, but especially “Crazy”
Public Enemy – It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, Fear of a Black Planet, “Fight the Power,” and “He Got Game”
Sam Cooke – Greatest Hits
Billie Holiday – Greatest Hits
Tom Petty – Greatest Hits, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers: The Live Anthology, and “Have Love Will Travel”
The Travelling Wilburys – whole corpus
The Flatlanders – whole corpus
Jimmie Dale Gilmore – whole corpus
Stevie Wonder – Talking Book, Songs in the Key of Life, “Pastime Paradise,” and “I Wish”
Neil Young – whole corpus, but especially “Heart of Gold,” “Rockin’ in the Free World,” “Philadelphia,” and “For What It’s Worth” (with Buffalo Springfield)
Daniel Lanois – “The Maker” and Acadie
Bob Marley – whole corpus, especially “Three Little Birds,” “Redemption Song,” and “Get Up, Stand Up”
Beastie Boys – Check Your Head, Ill Communication, Hello Nasty, “Bodhisattva Vow,” “Stand Together,” “Unite,” and “Sure Shot”
Jeff Buckley – Grace
Bright Eyes – “Bowl of Oranges”
Lucinda Williams – Car Wheels on a Gravel Road
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BOOKS
Bhikkhu Bodhi – whole corpus of translation and original writing, but especially In the Buddha’s Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon and “A Challenge to Buddhists”
The Heart Sūtra
Vimalakīrti Nirdeśa Sūtra
Śāntideva – Bodhicaryavatara
Nāgārjuna – Mūlamadhyamaka-kārikā and Suhṛllekha
Candrakīrti – Bodhisattvayogācāracatuḥśatakaṭīkā
Geshe Rabten – Mind and Emotions
Mipham Rinpoche – Gateway to Knowledge
Gyalsé Tokmé Zangpo – Thirty-Seven Practices of the Bodhisattvas
Mahāyānottaratantra Śāstra
His Holiness the Dalai Lama – whole corpus, but especially “Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech” and A Flash of Lightning in the Dark of Night
Sulak Sivaraksa – Loyalty Demands Dissent, Seeds of Peace: A Buddhist Vision for Renewing Society, The Wisdom of Sustainability: Buddhist Economics for the 21st Century, and Conflict, Culture, Change: Engaged Buddhism in a Globalizing World
Maha Ghosananda – Step by Step: Meditations on Wisdom and Compassion
Aung San Suu Kyi – Freedom from Free, Letters from Burma, and The Voice of Hope (in conversation with Alan Clements)
Archbishop Desmond Tutu – whole corpus, but especially No Future Without Forgiveness, God Is Not a Christian: And Other Provocations, An African Prayer Book, The Rainbow People of God, and God Has a Dream: A Vision of Hope for Our Time
Mohandas K. Gandhi – whole corpus, but especially Non-Violent Resistance and The Story of My Experiments with Truth
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. – whole corpus, but especially Why We Can’t Wait, Strength to Love, and Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?
Ralph Waldo Emerson – whole corpus, but especially “Divinity School Address”
Henry David Thoreau – whole corpus, but especially Walden and “Civil Disobedience”
Walt Whitman – whole corpus, but especially “Song of Myself”
Leo Tolstoy – A Confession, The Kingdom of God is Within You, War and Peace, and How Much Land Does a Man Need?
Mark Twain – whole corpus
John Steinbeck – The Grapes of Wrath
Harriet Beecher Stowe – Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Harper Lee – To Kill a Mockingbird
W. Somerset Maugham – The Razor’s Edge
N. Scott Momaday – House Made of Dawn
Sherman Alexie – The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
Tim O’Brien – The Things They Carried
Barbara Kingsolver – The Bean Trees
Upton Sinclair – The Jungle
Studs Terkel – whole corpus, but especially Working and Will the Circle Be Unbroken?
Jerry Mander – Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television
Louis Fischer – Gandhi: His Life and His Message for the World
Eknath Easwaran – Gandhi: The Man
David J. Garrow – Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Tony Hendra – Father Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul
Barbara Ehrenreich – Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
Breece D’J Pancake – The Stories of Breece D’J Pancake
Alice Walker – The Color Purple
Pablo Neruda – Collected Poems
Charles Bukowski – whole corpus
E.L. Doctorow – Ragtime, The Book of Daniel, and City of God
Art Spiegelman – Maus
Bill Watterson – Calvin & Hobbes series
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry – The Little Prince
Fred Rogers – whole corpus
John Irving – A Prayer for Owen Meaney and A Son of the Circus
Toni Morrison – The Bluest Eye
Herman Melville – Moby Dick
Charles Dickens – A Tale of Two Cities, A Christmas Carol, and Oliver Twist
J.D. Salinger – The Catcher in the Rye and Franny and Zooey
Emily Brontë – Wuthering Heights
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley – A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and Frankenstein
Audre Lorde – Zami: A New Spelling of My Name
Ernest J. Gaines – A Lesson Before Dying
Anonymous – Primary Colors
Herman Hesse – Siddhartha and Narcissus and Goldmund
Jostein Gaarder – Sophie’s World
Booker T. Washington – Up from Slavery
Hunter S. Thompson – Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72, The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time, and The Proud Highway: The Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman 1955–1967
T.S. Eliot – The Wasteland
William Shakespeare – whole corpus
Tennessee Williams – whole corpus
Eugene O’Neill – The Iceman Cometh, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, and Ah, Wilderness!
Tony Kushner – Angels in America
Moisés Kaufman and the Tectonic Theater Project – The Laramie Project
Eve Ensler – The Vagina Monologues
Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche – whole corpus, but especially Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior
Pema Chödrön – whole corpus
Judith Simmer-Brown – Dakini’s Warm Breath and “The Crisis of Consumerism”
Joshua Eaton – “It’s Time to Open Our Doors”
Kalu Rinpoche – The Dharma: That Illuminates All Beings Impartially Like the Light of the Sun and the Moon
Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche – Present Fresh Wakefulness: A Meditation Manual on Nonconceptual Wisdom
Vice President Al Gore – An Inconvenient Truth and The Assault on Reason
Jonathan Harr – A Civil Action
Randy Shilts – And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic
Sister Helen Prejean – Dead Man Walking
Rachel Carson – Silent Spring
Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn – Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide
Howard Zinn – A People’s History of the United States: 1492 to Present
Nelson Mandela – Long Walk to Freedom
Anne Frank – The Diary of a Young Girl
Elie Wiesel – Night
Frederick Douglass – My Bondage and My Freedom
Malcom X – The Autobiography of Malcolm X
C.S. Lewis – A Grief Observed, The Screwtape Letters, and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
Paul Rogat Loeb – The Soul of the Citizen and The Impossible Will Take a Little While (with others)
Dietrich Bonhoeffer – The Cost of Discipleship, Ethics, and Letters and Papers from Prison
Cornel West – whole corpus, but especially Race Matters, Hope on a Tightrope: Words and Wisdom, and The Rich and the Rest of Us (with Tavis Smiley)
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