How Books Can Change the Course of Your Life If You Allow Them To

Drenching yourself in literature of any kind can change the course of your life. That is if you allow yourself to be touched by it by opening yourself up to the work. This is very similar to H.G. Gadamer’s position on art, if I understand him correctly, we can go into a dialogue with the art piece by opening up ourselves to be touched by these works. This asks of us to remain open and be receptive to what the work of art or piece of literature wants to tell us, communicate to us, and the ways in which it wants to change the course or path of our lives.

The tremendous opportunity created by @creativemary and co for us to think about the books that changed the course of our lives is such a wonderful opportunity to think back and look at how exactly these books impacted our lives. It is something I knew in the back of my mind, but I never really thought about consciously. Now with this prompt in mind, it is the perfect opportunity to think about these books and how they changed the course of my life in more detail. I already made a comment about two important books that changed the course of my life, especially regarding my PhD and my studies. In this post, I will talk more broadly, giving a type of autobiographical reconstruction of how all of the special books I have read changed my life. Because without books I would not be who I am today. So books did not just change or transform my life or help me through a tough period, books in fact created the very pathway of my life, they literally constructed my very being-in-the-world. To be more metaphorical, my life path is paved by a cacophony of different pages from so many books.

My journey into books started at a relatively young age. I found my first Stephen King book at a Bargain Book shop, a shop where you could, and still can, buy three books for a R100 or about $6 USD. I bought so many of them, and so my obsession with Stephen King started. I read many of these new books, but I also started collecting older books, second hand ones. Here I found a treasure trove of books, especially Stephen Kings. I remember one old lady selling her collection of Stephen King books, over 30 of them, some brand new hardcovers, probably never read, for under $15 USD. I asked her if she was sure, and she said she needed the money. But in the coming years, I managed to get about 90 of Stephen King’s books, buying them at second-hand shops and on sales.

Through sheer luck, of if you believe that your destiny is pre-determined it was just meant to happen, I stumbled upon a book titled If Minds Had Toes by the author Lucy Eyre. At that time, I was about 16 or 17 and I was studying art at the local art school. I was clueless about philosophy, and all the big philosophy names did not make any sense to me. But it set a course for my later obsessions and study field. But it also helped me start to appreciate the nuances in life. Life was not merely black and white, yes or no. I appreciated the conundrums in life that asked you to reflect on it, so that it brewed or fermented in your mind, where grey answers were all that was available. This lead me to read various books like James Frey’s A million little pieces and the sequel My friend Leonard, Philip Pullman’s His dark materials, JR Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, various strange books by Stephen King, and all of the other strange finds that I managed to buy for next to nothing at these second hand bookshops and cheap bookstores.

As quickly as the Stephen King and strange book collecting/hoarding obsession started, a new one was born. Philosophical/Existential literature enters. One afternoon, sitting in an art class at university, three years or so after my obsession with reading started, the lecturer started discussing existential literature. He named Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Herman Hesse, Colin Wilson, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Friedrich Nietzsche. I remember running after class to the library. I borrowed a plethora of books, most prominent was Sartre’s Nausea, and Camus’ A Myth of Sisyphus, The Plague, and The Outsider. I drenched myself in existential literature, as I mentioned in the comment linked above. This new world that opened up in front of me sent me in new obsessions.

I constantly thought about these books and the situations they created. Camus brilliantly set up the strange idea of how small things can have big impacts on your life, the same with Sartre’s Nausea, where the single sound could take away one’s existential dread.

Through this drenching, I also found existential and absurd literature in my own language. Ten or so years after Camus and Sartre, existentialism came to South Africa and Afrikaans literature. Again by chance, the lectures discussed books like Etienne Leroux’s Sewe Dae by die Silbersteins, a brilliant piece of literature blending existential philosophy and Jungian theories of individuation; Andre P. Brink’s Die Ambassadeur, an excellent work blending South African identity problems in the 1960s with existential philosophy and art and geopolitics; and Eben Venter, who wrote some amazing books dealing with contemporary South Africa, emigration and the accompanying existential issues, changing traditions in Africa, and many other issues, in titles like Horrelpoot (translated into english as Trencherman), an incredibly disturbing dystopian novel set in South Africa, and Ek stamel ek sterwe, a depressing look at drugs and sex in contemporary South Africa where identities from different cultures bleed into each other.

These books changed my life yet again, showing me the potential of literature, “forcing” me to confront these issues in my life through my art, poetry, and prose. At this stage, I was still too much into literature to realise the emancipatory aspects of philosophy itself, but these books slowly began laying the foundations for what was to come.

On this journey, I found writers like Orhan Pamuk with his brilliant book My name is Red, Snow, and White Castle, José Saramago’s brilliant book Blindness, and Franz Kafka’s The Trial and Metamorphosis. I literally drenched myself in these books and writings, I could not get enough. I bought a library’s worth of books from second hand bookshops. Some of these classics were sold for less than R10 or $0.5 USD. I read so much of them, and each one of these books imparted a unique feeling into my life. I opened myself to be touched by these books.

From Camus’ absurd character that did not cry at his mother’s funeral, to the abrupt change in Sartre’s character after hearing a certain musical piece, to the absurd comedy of Becket in Waiting for Godot, to Kafka’s K not knowing why they are after him, to the dystopian future of South Africa and the strange characters dealing with new issues that might arise.

It is difficult to explain how these books change you if you allow them to speak to you. The simplest thing to say, which is probably not so profound, is to declare that these books broaden your world, they allow you to see the world differently, they allow you to understand different things in life, they give you more color to your world, they give you the ability to explain things better and more encompassing. Kafkaesque, absurd hero figures, the absurdity of waiting, the beautiful and poetic writing of Pamuk, these works fundamentally transform who you are. You will not live the same after reading such a book. I know I could not.

And I knew that philosophical literature was going to be my saviour. Before turning to philosophy, I wanted to be the Stephen King in my language, Afrikaans. I wanted to be a writer. But the readership if I pursued this route was iffy, as Afrikaans and horror does not go so well. Neither does philosophical literature appeal to the general taste of the population. So without these philosophical and existential novels, I would not have pursued philosophy. These books opened philosophy for me, they made it possible to think about a career in philosophy. They started to lay the foundation of a hidden and emancipatory world.

This was undergraduate. As I then made the choice to pursue a postgraduate degree in philosophy, another happenstance or random occurrence exposed me to something that would change my life, however, this one would really change my life as it literally created the very study fields I am working in at this moment. The last module of the year was on Philosophical Counselling, and the article I needed to present to the class was on Pyrrhonism and counselling. I did not think much of this until I read the article. Pyrrhonism was yet another obsession, lying in its embryonic stage… From there on, I started my Master’s degree on Pyrrhonism and Philosophical Counselling, which would not have happened if not for that module and the prescribed article. As I mentioned in the comment linked above, I stumbled upon my university’s library section on ancient Greek philosophy, seeing by chance the Pyrrhonian books they had on the shelves. I borrowed them all taking them back home. From drenching myself in existential literature, I found myself drowning in Ancient Sceptic literature pertaining to Pyrrho. I received the translation of one of the most important texts by Benson Mates, one of the only charitable readings of Outlines of Pyrrhonism.

Two perchance events in my life, both pertaining to books, changed the course of my life. If I never read the books by Camus and co, and if I did not stumble upon that shelve in the dark library corner, I would not have been here. I am busy with my PhD in philosophy (albeit in a totally different field now), and the only reason why I am busy with it is because I opened myself to be touched by these books. I allowed them to transform my life. I allowed them to chart a path and I gladly walked alongside it. I did not resist this change, I did not close myself to be touched by these books.

From the early Stephen King moments, exposing me to horror and strangeness, to the absurd and existential literature of philosophy, to ancient Greek philosophy, which became my way of life. Pyrrhonism also fundamentally changed my very being-in-the-world, which almost became a perfect vehicle for the earlier exposure to existentialism and horror. I took to heart its profound insight into our beliefs about things and how they can create so much worry, anxiety, and disturbances. I tried my best to separate my beliefs from how I live, I tried to rid myself of these extra layers of beliefs that caused unnecessary stress. I tried to live this philosophy.

Maybe I can go so far as to state that without me walking into that bookshop buying the Stephen King book, I would not have been sent down this road I am going down now. Without that event the unlocking of the many different roads that somehow lead to where I am now would never happened. The dominos would not have fallen. If I did not find that first Stephen King book, my obsession with books might never have caught flame, and I would not have found the book by Lucy Eyre, thereby not exposing me at that early age to philosophy even though in this extremely rudimentary format.

All because of inconsequential events. All because a lecturer selected a certain book to be covered in their lectures. All because of the decision of one person. But also because of these books, which I found because of the lecturer and the happenstance of walking into a bookshop at an early age. It is strange how such events can change your life, transform the course of your life, lay the very bricks of the road with pages from books…

As a type of conclusion to this post, which is already very long, I want to briefly look at some of the quotes that I have gathered throughout the years that helped pave the way for my philosophical disposition. Most of them come from Albert Camus, because his works are probably the only ones that I have read more than 4 times. I already shared a quote of Camus in the original comment on which this post is based. I will briefly touch upon that one as well.

“Because I longed for eternal life, I went to bed with whores and drank for nights on end.”

This quote comes from Albert Camus in the book The Fall. To me, it plays on the notion that every day experiences are all that we have, and that we cannot go to some transcendent or spiritual experience. Many authors have conceptualised Camus’ characters as instantiating Pyrrhonian ideas. This quote captures the ideal of the Pyrrhonian life that we should live by “appearances” alone. What this means, in short, is that we should not live by authority figures that tell us what we should do, nor should we live according to tenets that try and dictate. We should listen to our stomach and eat when we are hungry, not because it is by nature good or bad, nor because some authority said we should eat, but because our stomach rumbles for food. The quote from Camus symbolises this lifestyle for me. The character who is speaking did not go to church or religion to find eternal life, he merely “returned to everyday life”, he lived by appearances.

“Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.”

Another Albert Camus quote, this time from The Myth of Sysiphus, encapsulates and summarizes the absurd philosophy of Camus. In short, Existentialism rebelled against religion in the sense that one found one’s meaning in religion. Why did the world have meaning? Because I found meaning in God or in religion. Life had meaning because of my religion. The existentialists, especially JP Sartre did not like this, and they said that things do not have meaning in themselves. We create meaning only after the world’s existence. The world does not contain meaning, we impose meaning onto it. But Camus did not like this, and he said that this constitutes a “leap”. The quote above highlights Camus’ position, one in which he states that we should not leap, we should not find meaning in a meaningless world. We should become the absurd “hero” and keep ourselves from finding meaning in the absurd world. We should constantly relinquish the need to “leap” and constantly proclaim that we do not find meaning in the meaningless world.

And I, too, felt ready to start life all over again. It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe. To feel it so like myself, indeed, so brotherly, made me realize that I’d been happy, and that I was happy still.

This is the last Camus quote, coming from The Outsider. In this quote, the Pyrrhonian life is again emphasised, and I really wonder if Camus did not somewhere in his life confront Pyrrhonism. But also, his absurd philosophy. Realising that the world is absurd, without meaning, and that we should constantly resist the temptation of finding meaning, we become happy realising that we do not need that extra layer of belief to make us happy. The religious extremist will never be happy unless he or she finds meaning beyond that of the simple explanation, it always needs to be in relation to the divine. The flower is not beautiful because of no reason beyond the simple beauty, it has to be beautiful because it is a sign of divine creation. The atheist needs to exemplify that it is not divine creation but evolution etc. There is always external meaning added onto the world, divine creation, evolution, some unknown scientific theory… The pure contemplation of beauty can only be appreciated through external theories that explain it. But through Pyrrhonism and absurdist philosophy, external meaning is relinquished to experience life for and in itself, there is no external theory needed to explain the beauty. If the flower is beautiful for me, I do not find it good or bad, I merely experience it for the beauty that is presented to me.

“The silence of snow, thought the man sitting just behind the bus-driver. If this were the beginning of a poem, he would have called what he felt inside him ‘the silence of snow’.”

This quote comes from the opening lines of Orhan Pamuk’s novel Snow. The book contains many such beautifully poetic lines. Most of Pamuk’s work goes through these poetic moments in which the reader is literally transposed from his/her reading position to the moment described by Pamuk. “The silence of snow” is beautiful in its simplicity. It takes me back to the first time I experienced snow in the streets of Sweden. We just got off the train in the small town of Lund, a black dustbin and a black crow sitting on the dustbin provided extreme contrast to the white snow that was still falling. It was the first time I saw snow, and in that moment everything was silent. I felt the silence which Pamuk wrote about, I felt the internal quietude, the slow falling snow, the crow juxtaposed against the white snow…

Good writers know how to tap your own memories.

I would like to discuss more quotes, but the post is already extremely long. It was a very cathartic experience to reminisce and think back to the books that transformed my life, and how the most insignificant moments can change the course of your own life. Most people will probably not find this transformation in Stephen King or Albert Camus, some people will vehemently protest Pyrrhonian scepticism. But that is the beauty of life, variety implies different stories. Not everyone needs to experience books in the same way, not everyone has to experience the same books, and not everyone has to experience change when they read a book. Life is beautiful in its complex variety and multiplicity.

I want to thank @creativemary again for this beautiful moment that they created, on in which we could think back to the books that changed our lives, and how exactly they changed it. As I said at the start of this post, I knew how important books were in my life, and I still know how important they are, as I search for new inspiration daily in reading different books. But only through this prompt have I realised anew how tremendously important role books have played in my life. Going through all of the books, and the context behind them, I found the experience of thinking back so beautifully poetic in itself.

The photographs used in this post are my own. I am busy camping so I could not photograph the books mentioned in this post. I only had a couple of books with me. All of the musings and writings are my own, unless stated otherwise, especially the quoted material.

P.S. I have to note that I have left out so many other influential books. When you have such a relationship with books, so many of them feel like your "children". By mentioning only one, or a handful (as I did above), it feels like you are neglecting so many others. Someday I will have a comprehensive list of all these books.