Writers you never grew out of

version

Well-known member
I was really into Hunter Thompson when I was sixteen, seventeen and over time wondered whether I'd lose interest or start to "see through" him -- I was initially drawn in via the drug angle -- but he in fact got better and better as I moved past that phase and read stuff like Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72.

luka mentioned in the top ten books thread that his would still be the stuff he liked as a teenager - Rimbaud, Rilke, Blake, Burroughs etc - and I'm curious as to whether anyone else is in the same boat. You can extend this to music or film or whatever too, if needs be.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Good question. I don't really revisit the authors I read as a teenager — I recently read some of Naked Lunch and thought it was pretty good, and appreciated it in a way that I can't possibly have as an 18 year old (though maybe I've lost something too, in the process, I don't see why not). Back then I imagine I waded through the verbosity to get at the nasty stuff — hence me only remembering the scene of adolescent boys being lynched either with erections or in service of inducing erections in spectators. The satiric thrust of all these nightmarish visions would have been mostly lost on me, I think. (And FUCK knows what I made of Kafka and Joyce, who I read prematurely, in an effort to be 'serious' and 'wise' that goes on to this very day, unfortunately.)

I really don't doubt that Kerouac would make me cringe now, having given me the expected effect as a teenager of sheer exhilaration. And again, I can't bring myself to see my teenage perspective as inferior, because I was high on emotion-juice at the time (sure), but I'm probably depleted of that stuff now. (Yeats "Bald heads forgetful of their sins... Edit and annotate the lines / That young men, tossing on their beds, / Rhymed out in love’s despair /To flatter beauty’s ignorant ear.")
 
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Corpsey

bandz ahoy
It's funny how either reading, or some other experience, can tilt your perspective and taste so that an author you once loved is made to look shitty by another you now love. Happens with music, too — not unlike how visiting a hot country can make British weather seem either (depending on your mood) dreary and miserable, or cool and wonderfully various.
 

version

Well-known member
I recently read some of Naked Lunch and thought it was pretty good, and appreciated it in a way that I can't possibly have as an 18 year old (though maybe I've lost something too, in the process, I don't see why not). Back then I imagine I waded through the verbosity to get at the nasty stuff —

Yeah, this was my experience of Naked Lunch too. I like Burroughs now much more than I did then. The stuff about language and control and whatnot completely passed me by at the time. It was just a superficially exciting and dangerous book to me as a teenager.
 

version

Well-known member
It's funny how either reading, or some other experience, can tilt your perspective and taste so that an author you once loved is made to look shitty by another you now love. Happens with music, too — not unlike how visiting a hot country can make British weather seem either (depending on your mood) dreary and miserable, or cool and wonderfully various.

I had this experience with David Foster Wallace. I liked him at first then the voice gradually wore on me then I went back to Pynchon and realised how much better he was then read DeLillo and realised how much Wallace had lifted from him too.
 

version

Well-known member
Is there a distinction to be made between "growing out of" something and just losing interest? The former seems to imply it's now beneath you and lesser in some way.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I think you can grow out of children's books, and children's literature — in the sense that those books are often pitched at an only partially developed brain and worldview.

2 caveats
1. This is a truism but: there are many children's books remain which remain worth reading whatever your age.
2. Other than biologically, "maturing" isn't a process of evolution towards an ideal state (though beyond a certain age it is an evolution — biologically — away from an ideal state). Depending on how you want to look at things, children's brains are superior to ours in certain respects (and inferior in others). On the other hand, it's hard not to look back at certain attitudes you had as an adolescent, in particular, that now strike you as ignorant and pathetic. And there are books/comic books/films aimed at teenage boys which you grow out of, when they haven't got any virtues beyond playing to that teenage lust for sex, violence and shallow wit...
 
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