Her avant-garde per­for­mance art endeared her to the New York art world long before she dat­ed, then mar­ried, one of the most influ­en­tial men in rock and roll. Her work has at times been over­shad­owed by her more con­ven­tion­al­ly famous part­ner and col­lab­o­ra­tor, but after his death, she con­tin­ues to make chal­leng­ing, far ahead-of-its-time work and rede­fine her­self as a cre­ative force.

No, I don’t mean Yoko Ono, but the for­mi­da­ble Lau­rie Ander­son. In addi­tion to her exper­i­men­tal art, Ander­son is a film­mak­er, sculp­tor, pho­tog­ra­ph­er, writer, com­pos­er, and musi­cian. Her sur­prise elec­tron­ic hit “O Super­man” (above) from her debut 1982 album Big Sci­ence, “warns of ever-present death from the air in an era of jin­go­ism,” writes David Gra­ham at The Atlantic.

Ander­son her­self explains the song as based on a “beau­ti­ful 19th-cen­tu­ry aria by Massenet… a prayer to author­i­ty. The lyrics are a one-sided con­ver­sa­tion, like a prayer to God. It sounds sinister—but it is sin­is­ter when you start talk­ing to pow­er.”

“O Super­man” speaks, mock­ing­ly, to Amer­i­can mil­i­tary hege­mo­ny and to a par­tic­u­lar his­tor­i­cal event, the Iran hostage cri­sis. As such, it is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of much of her work, meld­ing clas­si­cal instincts and musi­cian­ship with elec­tron­ic exper­i­men­ta­tion and a dark­ly com­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty that she often wields like a crit­i­cal scalpel on U.S. polit­i­cal attitudes—from her huge, five-record 1984 live album Unit­ed States (with songs like “Yan­kee See” and “Demo­c­ra­t­ic Way”) to her 2010 project Home­land.

One of Anderson’s most recent pieces, Dirt­day, “responds,” she says above, to “a very trag­ic sit­u­a­tion… a decade after 9/11… so much fear. Dirt­day was real­ly inspired by try­ing to look at that fear… almost from a point of view of ‘what is it when a whole nation gets hyp­no­tized?’” Her art may be polit­i­cal­ly oppo­si­tion­al, but she also admits, that “as a sto­ry­teller, I find my ‘col­leagues’ in pol­i­tics, you know, a lit­tle bit clos­er than I thought.” The admis­sion belies Anderson’s abil­i­ty to incor­po­rate mul­ti­ple per­spec­tives into her com­plex nar­ra­tives, as all great writ­ers do. And great writ­ers begin as read­ers, their work in dia­logue with the books that move and shape them.

So what does Lau­rie Ander­son read? Below, you’ll find a list of her top ten books, curat­ed by One Grand, a “book­store in which cel­e­brat­ed thinkers, writ­ers, artists, and oth­er cre­ative minds share the ten books they would take to their metaphor­i­cal desert island.” Her choic­es include great com­ic sto­ry­tellers, like Lau­rence Sterne, and chron­i­clers of the lum­ber­ing beast that is the U.S., like Her­man Melville. Oth­er well-known nov­el­ists, like Nabokov and Annie Dil­lard, sit next to Bud­dhist texts and cre­ative non­fic­tion. It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing list, and if you’re as intrigued and inspired by Ander­son­’s work as I am, you’ll want to read, or re-read, every­thing on it.

• With­in the Con­texts of No Con­text, George W.S. Trow: “Hilar­i­ous and Dan­ger­ous. Dead-on analy­sis of what makes Amer­i­ca so big.”
• The Tibetan Book of the Dead: “The most visu­al lan­guage of any book I know.”
• Moby Dick, Her­man Melville: “The words were songs, the flow embraced the way we actu­al­ly think.”
• The Life and Opin­ions of Tris­tram Shandy, Gen­tle­man, Lau­rence Sterne: “The ulti­mate shag­gy dog sto­ry.”
• Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov: “Poet­ry dis­guised as prose.”
• Auto­bi­og­ra­phy of Red, Anne Car­son: “An epic poem. Plus very, very fun­ny.”
• The Well-Tem­pered City, Jonathan F.P. Rose: “Deeply Inspir­ing.”
• Peter the Great, Robert K. Massie: “Imme­di­ate­ly made me want to read all his oth­er books.”
• Pil­grim at Tin­ker Creek, Annie Dil­lard: “Reminds me to be in the present.”
• When Things Fall Apart, Pema Chodron: “Reminds me that dis­as­ters can be pos­i­tive.”

Skip on over to One Grand to read Anderson’s com­plete, wit­ty com­men­taries on each of her choic­es.

Also check out, UBUweb, which has a nice col­lec­tion of Lau­rie Ander­son­’s ear­ly video work.

via The New York Times Mag­a­zine

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pat­ti Smith’s List of Favorite Books: From Rim­baud to Susan Son­tag

David Fos­ter Wallace’s Sur­pris­ing List of His 10 Favorite Books, from C.S. Lewis to Tom Clan­cy

David Bowie’s Top 100 Books

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness