The seven books that influenced Shirley Manson the most
It was Shakespeare, through the mouthpiece of his addled protagonist Hamlet, who said it best: “Words, words, words”. We are surrounded by more books, writings, musings, and artworks than is comprehensible to the human mind that shape us, and we shape them, so how can we ever pick the most influential when we are forever implicated within the arena of words and language?
Shirley Manson, who has been tearing up the alt-rock scene since the early 1990s as lead vocalist and primary songwriter of pop-punk band Garbage, has taken up the mantle to do just that and outlined seven books that have influenced her the most, painting a picture of feminist resistance and twisted, dystopian musings.
First on her list, a book recommended by so many other writers and musicians like Marina Abramović and Annie Clark, is by her contemporary, Patti Smith, in the form of Just Kids, which follows Smith’s lifelong friendship with Robert Mapplethorpe in memoir form, which she deems a “small masterpiece”.
Manson’s love for the book is tied up in her love of Smith’s enchanting, confessional music, wherein she wrote, “I was 19 when an old boyfriend played me her music, and she’s inspired me ever since. The first time I met her, I burst into tears. I’ve never done that before, but she put her hand gently on my arm, which calmed me down.”
Two highly influential childhood books for Manson is, first, Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, which inspired an “adventurous spirit” in her that’s so evident when she devours the stage, thrashing and head-banging to her charged, spunky songs, and the second is, When We Were Very Young by AA Milne, one of the first books she delighted in as soon as she had learned to read, which “inspired” her lifelong love of poetry.
Her love for JD Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye puts her in the league of other fans such as Axl Rose, Kurt Cobain, Hozier, and Scarlett Johansson, a novel which follows the thrums and threads of the spiralling life and times of a disillusioned teen, Holden Caulfield. These themes chimed closely with Manson: “I was a difficult teenager and turned to books as an escape. I saw my alienation and angst reflected in the story of rebellious Holden Caulfield, and I would mimic him by calling everyone ‘phoney’. It made such an impression on me that in Garbage’s video for ‘Why Do You Love Me’, I’m reading my dad’s old copy.”
One more pick which sees a young teenage boy at the heart of the story is Iain Banks’ The Wasp Factory, which is, in Manson’s words, “violent, dark and twisted”, and it shouldn’t be surprising to anyone that this hit home immediately, wherein she deemed it a “depraved and subversive treasure that appealed to me in my late teens”.
Moving on from the male psyche, Manson is also inspired by female writers, most notably Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s essay, We Should All Be Feminists, an “incredibly comforting” piece that inspired her through the reassurance of delineating a term that has often been obscured in the modern age. While Adichie’s essay might be clarifying complicated territory, the very last book that has inspired Manson is an eyebrow raiser for sure, and it relates to pure, uninhibited sex.
The singer has admitted that her parents never got around to having “the talk” with her, but Shere Hite’s The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality was there to fill in the blanks, with Manson sharing, “When my best friend thrust this book into my hands with a glint of mischief in her eye, it was a revelation. When I was younger, I didn’t even know the female orgasm existed, so it changed my life. It made me aware how hidden information about female pleasure was.” What a friend indeed!
Shirley Manson’s seven inspirational book picks:
- Just Kids – Patti Smith
- The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
- When We Were Very Young – AA Milne
- The Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
- The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
- We Should All Be Feminists – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality – Shere Hite
