For his bookshop and website One Grand Books, the editor Aaron Hicklin asked people to name the 10 books they’ take with them if they were marooned on a desert island. The next in the series is the artist Lisa Yuskavage, who shares her list exclusively with T.
"The Palm at the End of the Mind," Wallace Stevens
I bought this in 1985 and have read it constantly since. It is always near me. Stevens's poems often reflect on the act of creating, and he evokes exquisite mental images that are thrilling. One of my favorite poems is "The Snow Man." "For the listener, who listens in the snow, And, nothing himself, beholds Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is."
"A Bend in the River," V.S. Naipaul
I first read this book 10 years ago and was so taken with the fluidity of the prose that I read it a second time, and then a third. And then to my surprise, I listened to it several times as an audiobook. I could not and did not want to escape that place at the bend in the river. It is a total experience of a place and a time, and a thrilling read. The hard opening line still haunts me: "The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it."