It may well be the month for self-improvement, and though Virginia Woolf’s New Year resolutions are quite charming, we prefer to take a leaf out of Mark Twain‘s book (no, not that one): “Total abstinence is so excellent a thing that it cannot be carried to too great an extent. In my passion for it I even carry it so far as to totally abstain from total abstinence itself.” So, here are 3:AM‘s Top 5 anti- self-improvement books:
1) Kingsley Amis’ Everyday Drinking
“If asked what you think [about the wine], say breezily, ‘Jolly good,’ as though you always say that whatever it’s like. This may suggest that your mind’s on higher things than wine, like gin or sex.”
2) Simon Gray’s The Smoking Diaries
“The deep, dark swirling pleasures of the smoke being sucked in to fresh, pink, welcoming lungs, it took me just three or four cigarettes to acquire the habit.”
3) J.-K. Huysmans’ Against Nature
“Under the lowering sky, in the dull air, the walls of the houses drip black sweat and the cellar-openings stink; loathing of life is strong within the soul and the spleen is a torment to the flesh; the seeds of filthiness that every man has in his heart begin to bud; cravings for foul pleasures trouble the austerest and in the brain of respectable folks criminal desires spring up.”
4) Charles Baudelaire’s Artificial Paradises
“You are sitting and smoking; you believe that you are sitting in your pipe, and that your pipe is smoking you; you are exhaling yourself in bluish clouds. You feel just fine in this position, and only one thing gives you worry or concern: how will you ever be able to get out of your pipe?”
5) Keith Richards’ Life
“I realised, I’m running on fuel and everybody else isn’t. They’re trying to keep up with me and I’m just burning. I can keep going because I’m on pure cocaine. I’m running on high octane, and if I feel I’m pushing it a little bit, need to relax it, have a little bump of smack.”
And two bonus reads:
6) William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch
“Our national drug is alcohol. We tend to regard the use of any other drug with special horror.”
7) DBC Pierre’s Lights Out in Wonderland
“With him as my wingman I’ll turn these last hours into a perfect miniature of the age I leave behind, nothing less than a last wanton plunge to oblivion.”
[Image: Arthur Zaidenberg‘s illustrations for À Rebours (1931)]
