How Basic Pop Culture Informs My Reading Habits

I blame Alyssa Milano. I’m blaming her for how pop culture informs my reading habits. She was reading Wuthering Heights on an episode of Who’s The Boss. She is only a year older than me in real life, so I figured reading books like that would impress girls like her. It didn’t, but I love that book. And I kept looking for books I should be reading because of pop culture.

Reading Wuthering Heights led me to become obsessed with Laurence Olivier. This led to me falling in love with Henry V, Hamlet, and Richard III. Ms. Milano had, indirectly, turned me into a Shakespeare nerd. It also led me to Kate Bush and all of her fantastic music.

Not long after, I decided to read The Stranger by Albert Camus. I was just getting into The Cure at the same time, and my obsession with them led to me finding out that “Killing an Arab” was about the book (and not about actually killing an arab). I remember picking it for a book report. Other kids were upset that the teacher let me read it since it was so short. She knew it wasn’t an easy read. I recently had a chance to thank her the other day for not stopping me.

In college, I read The Screwtape Letters because it was in a scene in U2’s “Thrill Me, Hold Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me” video.

This wasn’t just a teenage phase. It still happens today. I’ve just started reading short stories by John Cheever thanks to The National’s “Carin at the Liquor Store.” The lyric that refers to him is morbid, but having read some about Cheever’s life, it is fitting.

Same with John Berryman’s poetry. Nick Cave, for whom I have a longer blog sharing my admiration, has long been influenced by Berryman. He directly mentions him on “We Call Upon the Author” and references Berryman’s Dream Songs on the title of Cave’s album Henry’s Dream.

Does it matter what inspires us to read as long as we read? How many kids know about Marcus Garvey because Kendrick Lamar’s name drops him? In fact, the best of hip-hop, because of the pure amount of wordplay, often makes pointed references to literature (and history).

At 45, I see so many posts about how music today sucks and all that “get off my lawn” garbage. Of course, the music of your youth was better for you because it was often all that mattered in your childhood (for me it was The Replacements). It was the only thing that sometimes made us feel we were not alone.

Instead of trashing on today’s music, interact with it. Or better yet, encourage those that do like it to explain it to you. As an official middle-aged man, have them explain what the words mean. What it makes them feel. Don’t be a “get off my lawn” person.

Who knows, you might recognize an allusion to a book, movie, or other music and open a whole new world to a kid the way Alyssa Milano did for me.