Rimbaud, Kurt Vonnegut, Jack Kerouac and Patti Smith number among the REM singer's top ten favourites when it comes to books.
Stipe recently told The New York Times that Jack Kerouac’s classic novel, On the Road even became REM’s template. “To explore the country and do it all — having a great big time — on our terms, and no one else’s. Hooray!
Rimbaud's Complete Works - which he read when he was 16 - came top of the list. He loved Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut because it introduced him “to irony and self-deprecating humor. I can’t say I learned the lesson well, but a B - for effort.” He praises Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov for the author’s “humour and grasp of humanity and language thrill.”
The musician ranked Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan among his all-time favourites. “She was so young,“ he remarked. “It’s so very French in its desperate and elegant melancholy.”
He also picked Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delaney. “Where I learned in eighth grade, I think, that in the future you could have unbridled sci-fi sex with every man and woman within reach, without guilt, fear or weirdness, and have great end-of-times adventures. Just like my dreams! Fantastically futuristic!”
Stipe’s list also included All Families Are Psychotic by Douglas Coupland, Play It as It Lays by Joan Didion, Four Plays by Aristophanes, translated by William Arrowsmith, and Just Kids by Patti Smith.“Because I’m reading it as I write this, and it’s amazing,” he said of Smith's work.
He snuck in one more book after the Kerouac, written by a fellow Beat generation legend. "Followed by The First Third by Neal Cassady. The muse speaks, writes, smokes, drinks, seduces.”
