From Steinbeck to Hemingway: John Prine’s favourite books of all time
For most folk singers, being a great writer doesn’t always come down to making a great tune. It’s all about the amount of pathos that is put into every single line, almost as if people could pick out any single line from the track and say that it somehow applies to their life directly. While it’s difficult for any creative person to be that emotionally blunt, John Prine was interested in literature that helped teach him everything he knew.
When looking through the best reads that he had in his collection, Prine picked out a number of John Steinbeck books growing up, including The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men. Despite being fairly cut-and-dry books, if you look at them with one glance, there’s a certain weight to those books that carry through many different folk songs today.
Something like Of Mice and Men is already a dark story about people seeing the darkness in humanity and the main character Lennie ultimately paying for it, but the fact that it’s so matter-of-fact is the same way all good folk songs are written. Just look at something like ‘The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll’ by Bob Dylan. It’s about one incident, yes, but it’s also one of the more compelling listens in his catalogue based on how much people are invested in the overtones of racial discrimination and the fear of history repeating itself further down the road.
Speaking of Dylan, Prine’s collection isn’t exclusive to just classic literature. He also was an avid fan of various musical biographies, talking about the best pieces of American music like the Sam Cooke biography Dream Boogie as well as Dylan’s autobiography, Chronicles Vol. 1. Although there are some more musical inclinations in the book than others, each has its own distinct character as well, including Dylan writing his piece like it was one long epic poem stretched over a novella.
Then again, the musical books feel less like the traditional rock and roll biographies that people see left and right today. As much as people love the idea of rockstars telling their stories, these are tales ripped straight out of American folklore at this point, as if you’re listening to accounts from ghosts of the past taking the reader to a bygone time.
In terms of Prine’s own writing, though, nothing sticks out more than The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. While it’s hard to call the book action-packed, hearing the various details of this man sitting in a boat and starting to think back on his life before he narrowly makes it back to shore is more in line with Prine’s style of writing.
Instead of hitting all the story beats that a novelist might have, Prine usually took his time on every one of his songs, as if he was trying to paint a picture of a scene rather than tell people how they should live their lives whenever he wrote. Sure, it’s not exactly an AC/DC record or anything, but when you hear something like ‘Hello In There’, it’s closer to the bone because of how much detail is put into every line.
Because Prine wasn’t designed to make music that focused on getting to the chorus. He was a storyteller, and if his literature collection taught him anything, it was about being able to sit back and capture a moment before it fades away.
John Prine’s favourite books:
- John Steinbeck – The Pastures of Heaven
- John Steinbeck – Of Mice and Men
- John Steinbeck – The Pearl
- John Steinbeck – The Grapes of Wrath
- Ernest Hemingway – The Old Man and the Sea
- Bob Dylan – Chronicles, Vol 1
- Peter Guralnick – Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke
- Booker T Jones – Time is Right — My Life Note by Note
- Tom Pizza – True Adventures with the King of Bluegrass: Jimmy Martin
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