Image by David Shankbone

Michael Stipe’s tenure as front­man and lyri­cist for R.E.M. cer­tain­ly revealed a lit­er­ate mind. A for­mer art major at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Geor­gia and cur­rent art teacher at NYU, his best lyrics scan well as poet­ry.  One can imag­ine being invit­ed over for a din­ner par­ty to Mr. Stipe’s place, and, glass of wine in hand, absolute­ly hav­ing to nose through his book­shelf. What does the writer of “Nightswim­ming” read? With the his­tor­i­cal ref­er­ences that course through those ear­ly albums, would he have socio-polit­i­cal books about Amer­i­ca? Would he pull a book off the shelf and say, here, “You have to read this. It will change your life”?

Won­der no more, because Stipe was recent­ly asked to write down his Top Ten list of books to take to a desert island. The list was pub­lished in The New York Times. Find a skele­tal ver­sion here:

• Com­plete Works — Arthur Rim­baud
• On the Road — Jack Ker­ouac
• Dhal­gren — Samuel R. Delaney
• Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons — Kurt Von­negut
• All Fam­i­lies Are Psy­chot­ic — Dou­glas Cou­p­land
• Loli­ta — Vladimir Nabokov
• Play It as It Lays — Joan Did­ion
• Four Plays by Aristo­phanes (trans­lat­ed by William Arrow­smith)
• Bon­jour Tristesse — François Sagan
• Just Kids — Pat­ti Smith

Some of these are classics—for exam­ple Ker­ouac’s On the Road, which Stipe calls “my band’s template”—and the one poet on the list, Rim­baud, is very much an ear­ly influ­ence on his writ­ing. Dhal­gren was also a favorite of David Bowie’s, who based a lot of Dia­mond Dogs on the nov­el. The Copeland and Did­ion choic­es stand out, most­ly by being less obvi­ous selec­tions from their bib­li­ogra­phies. And as he says that he’s cur­rent­ly read­ing the Pat­ti Smith book (now being turned into a series on Show­time), we can’t take the selec­tion too seri­ous­ly. Maybe he just wants to take it to the desert island to fin­ish it.

Stipe has includ­ed a few sen­tences on each book to explain his choic­es. Find them here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

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

David Bowie’s Top 100 Books

Bri­an Eno Lists 20 Books for Rebuild­ing Civ­i­liza­tion & 59 Books For Build­ing Your Intel­lec­tu­al World

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

Not long after David Fos­ter Wal­lace died, his fans found them­selves with a new place of pil­grim­age: not his tomb­stone, in the man­ner of a Jim Mor­ri­son or a Kurt Cobain, but his lit­er­ary archives. You’ll find them at the Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin. From their col­lec­tion, we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured Wal­lace’s fall 1994 Eng­lish 102 syl­labus from when he taught at Illi­nois State Uni­ver­si­ty, his Eng­lish 183A hand­out break­ing down (in the way that only he could) five com­mon usage mis­takes, and the lan­guage books con­tained in his per­son­al library.

Any read­er even casu­al­ly acquaint­ed with Wal­lace’s nov­els and essays will imme­di­ate­ly sense his deep inter­est in lan­guage. But if you browse through the Ran­som Cen­ter’s col­lec­tion of 321 books from the author of Infi­nite Jest and A Sup­pos­ed­ly Fun Thing I’ll Nev­er Do Again’s own shelves (most of them seem­ing­ly well-anno­tat­ed), you’ll find a good deal of evi­dence about what else inter­est­ed him. The Awl’s Maria Bustil­los did a post on the sur­pris­ing vari­ety of self-help books found there­in. Oth­er rep­re­sent­ed types of books include:

• Mass-mar­ket thrillers like Thomas Har­ris’ The Silence of the Lambs, Han­ni­bal and Han­ni­bal Ris­ing, and Stephen King’s Car­rie
• The nov­els of his peers like Rick Moody’s The Divin­ers, Richard Pow­ers’ Gain, Galatea 2.2, and Oper­a­tion Wan­der­ing Soul, Mark Leyn­er’s Et Tu, Babe and My Cousin, My Gas­troen­terol­o­gist, Jonathan Franzen’s Strong Motion, Cor­mac McCarthy’s Blood Merid­i­an and Nichol­son Bak­er’s Room Tem­per­a­ture
• Books he wrote about like Bryan Gar­ner’s A Dic­tio­nary of Mod­ern Amer­i­can Usage, Edwin Williamson’s Borges: A Life, John Updike’s Toward the End of Time
• Books on his own work like William C. Dowl­ing’s A Read­er’s Com­pan­ion to Infi­nite Jest
• Books on the mid­west from which he came like A Place of Sense: Essays in Search of the Mid­west
• Books clear­ly used as research mate­ri­als for his final, incom­plete, IRS-cen­tric nov­el The Pale King like Michael J. Graet­z’s The U.S. Income Tax: What It Is, How It Got That Way, and Where We Go from Here, William L. Raby’s The Reluc­tant Tax­pay­er, and Mar­ty Kaplan’s What the IRS Does­n’t Want You to Know: A CPA Reveals the Tricks of the Trade
• My own favorite nov­els like Joseph Heller’s Some­thing Hap­pened, Richard Yates’ Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Road, and Alexan­der Ther­oux’s Dar­conville’s Cat

Have a look, and maybe you too can find a few of your own cur­rent or future favorite books. We could all do worse, after all, than to read like David Fos­ter Wal­lace did, even if it leads us to the occa­sion­al vol­ume like Mus­cle: Con­fes­sions of an Unlike­ly Body­builder; Barbed Wire: A Polit­i­cal His­to­ry; or Jack B. Nim­ble’s The Con­struc­tion and Oper­a­tion of Clan­des­tine Drug Lab­o­ra­to­ries. And for a week­end activ­i­ty, we could do worse than com­par­ing Wal­lace’s per­son­al library to that of Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe, which we fea­tured last year.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Fos­ter Wallace’s 1994 Syl­labus: How to Teach Seri­ous Lit­er­a­ture with Light­weight Books

David Fos­ter Wallace’s Love of Lan­guage Revealed by the Books in His Per­son­al Library

David Fos­ter Wal­lace Breaks Down Five Com­mon Word Usage Mis­takes in Eng­lish

David Fos­ter Wal­lace: The Big, Uncut Inter­view (2003)

30 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Fos­ter Wal­lace on the Web

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.