John O’Connell’s analysis of the musician’s 100 essential books is witty and enlightening, while academic Will Brooke’s earnest attempt to explain his significance misses the markTo coincide with his retrospective at the V&A in 2013, David Bowie drew up a personal canon of 100 books. It was made up of the “most important and influential” works for the musician, rather than his favourites: biographies of artists,
20th-century fiction, books that touched on dadaism and surrealism, two histories of soul music… There were plenty of titles that suggested a curator who had come of age in the early 60s (On the Road, Billy Liar, Colin Wilson’s The Outsider), though with the inclusion of every issue of Viz, Private Eye and the Beano alongside Dante and Homer, the list was democratic, and clearly intended to give pointers on how to live a good life as much as signal an iconoclastic education.