5 Books That Made A Difference to David Duchovny
The sexy bad boy of Californication —Agent Mulder, to X-Files fans—enjoys brilliant essays and American authors with provocative conspiracy theories.
By Karen Holt
2 of 5
The Crying of Lot 49
By Thomas Pynchon
160 pages;
Harper Perennial Modern Classics
"I thought for a long time, What would this be like as a movie?
I'm not sure it's possible." Pynchon's satirical, weirdly inventive
novel centers on Oedipa Maas, a woman who stumbles onto what may or may
not be a wide-reaching conspiracy by a secret mail-delivery
organization. It's a wild ride, but at its core, it is a surprisingly
poignant story about a woman on a quest for self-knowledge. "To me this
book is about recovering human feeling. I remember that Oedipa Maas
fills her sunglasses with tears. Because they're bubble sunglasses the
tears don't fall, so she's actually looking through her own tears at the
world. What a powerful image."
— As told to Karen Holt
Published 03/25/2011