robert smith's complete reading list - compiled
primary source -
2003 'rock and folk' article:
http://www.picturesofyou.us/03/03-08-rockandfolk-fr-1.htmhere's
everything, with his own words where he gave them:
ROBERT SMITH'S READING LIST: COMPLETE
1. THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA — C.S. Lewis
His father read it to him at age four to send him to sleep. His own words: "I adored running away in those tales, it was my only reassuring moment — I was just discovering the incredible power of literature, the one of consolation and evasion."
2. THE COMPLETE WORKS OF FRANZ KAFKA — The Trial, The Metamorphosis, The Castle, Letters to Felice
His teenage obsession. His own words: "For the first time, the narrator's voice was mine. I was the narrator. I was blending myself in his words."
3. THE STRANGER (L'ÉTRANGER) — Albert Camus
The book that produced the first single. Killing an Arab is a direct lyric engagement with the beach murder scene — Meursault, the sun, the trigger pulled in existential blankness. Smith studied French at Crawley College and encountered Camus there. His own words: "The theme of the absurd has always fascinated me."
4. NAUSEA (LA NAUSÉE) — Jean-Paul Sartre
His own words: "His description of the human condition stays unmatched, and I defy anyone to do better than Nausea."
Foundational existentialist text.
5. THE FLOWERS OF EVIL (LES FLEURS DU MAL) and selected poems — Charles Baudelaire
Several direct connections. How Beautiful You Are is based on Baudelaire's prose poem The Eyes of the Poor. Smith's own words: "Some poems, like Baudelaire's 'The Eyes of the Poor,' impressed me so much that I wanted to make a song of them. Their style already had a kind of musical rhythm. Singing 'How Beautiful You Are' is like going into an oral tradition."
6. CHARLOTTE SOMETIMES & TWO (OR THE BOOK OF TWINS AND DOUBLES) — Penelope Farmer
The source of the song Charlotte Sometimes — the story of a girl who wakes up in a boarding school forty years in the past, inhabiting another girl's body and life. Smith's own words: "I was obsessed by Charlotte Sometimes, this idea of temporal downfall, of duality, of personality trouble and the torture that follows."
7. THE GORMENGHAST TRILOGY — Mervyn Peake
The source of The Drowning Man from Faith (1981). The character of Fuchsia — the wild, sensitive, doomed daughter of Lord Groan — haunted Smith deeply. His own words: "Fuchsia was my dream. This idea of infinite, of unreal, of dying innocence... At that time I was considering myself as her, as a victim." Plus the books probably inspired All Cats Are Grey too. Highly recommended. Among my favorite books of all time.
8. THE RAVEN AND SELECTED POEMS — Edgar Allan Poe
Named alongside Salinger and Rimbaud as teenage reading. His own words: "Edgar Allen Poe, who wrote 'The Raven', a masterpiece of modern poetry."
9. THE CATCHER IN THE RYE and selected stories — J.D. Salinger
Named twice in the interview. The story Bananafishbones is directly referenced in the Cure track of a similar name. Smith's admiration is partly for the work and partly for the life: "He's a character that I admire and that intrigues me also: isolating himself from the world, living as a recluse in a monastery, giving up writing and refusing any contact with the outside, it's fascinating."
10. PARADISE LOST — John Milton (1667)
The influence on Pornography (1982). His own words: "Pure poetry, fabulous, a must for an English grammar school pupil and very influencing on romantic writers. The style is strong, incredible. It strongly influenced Pornography. The idea of being a victim was still there, but it was becoming unbearable. I had decided to struggle in front of a world I hated. It was Devil against God. The fight was lost in advance."
11. ILLUMINATIONS and A SEASON IN HELL — Arthur Rimbaud
Named alongside Salinger and Poe as teenage reading. Rimbaud's project — the dérèglement de tous les sens, the systematic derangement of all the senses as a means of accessing transcendent vision — is the most direct precursor to Smith's image-chain technique (multiple songs use it, clearest example is probably 'Dropping through sky, through the glass of the roof
Through the roof of your mouth, through the mouth of your eye
Through the eye of the needle, it's easier for me
To get closer to heaven than ever feel whole again' from the title track of Disintegration. For another bit of music history, Patti Smith & Bob Dylan both like Rimbaud a lot. Highly recommend, along with his other works.
12. THE VIEW FROM NOWHERE — Thomas Nagel
Nagel is an American philosopher whose The View From Nowhere argues that objective and subjective perspectives on reality are both legitimate and irreducibly different — that you cannot fully step outside your own experience to see the world as it is in itself, but you also cannot reduce the world to your experience of it. The tension between these two perspectives is permanent.
Smith connects this to his obsession with twins: "Being able to go out of myself, leaving my body to observe me." The desire for an objective view of the self — to see yourself as you actually are rather than as you experience yourself — is the impossible desire. You are always inside your own perspective. You can imagine the view from nowhere but you can never occupy it.
I thought this kinda links to Disintegration: The album is narrating disintegration, but how, as the narrator themselves is disintegrating?The speaker on every track is trying to see themselves clearly and cannot.
ADDITIONALLY MENTIONED BUT NOT IN THE FORMAL LIST:
Jorge Luis Borges — Fictions: Smith mentions him with explicit humility — "It's quite frustrating to understand I would never reach their level, I would never touch the art of Jorge Luis Borges' words."
Nick Hornby — High Fidelity: "A classic for music maniacs. Brilliant, perfect, I have all the records mentioned in it!"
The Bible: He's taken it on tour in the past. "It's useful to hit the others, better than a phonebook." During the Faith tour he read passages each evening. He insists he never really read it properly but Nausea covers the same territory.
