Marc Maron

last updated 8 January 2015

Buy The Jerusalem Syndrome at Amazon

Home Land by Sam Lipsyte (Picador, $13). Lipsyte is not only a master of language and prose, but he is the funniest writer I know. His most recent novel will make you laugh the kind of laugh that can crumble into tears of recognition for those of us who feel that our lives didn’t quite work out the way we dreamed they would.

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The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker (Free Press, $14). The first time I saw this book it was screaming at me from a bin at a Los Angeles Goodwill store. The title seemed to sum up and explain its surroundings, and when I picked it up, I believed it could explain me. This is a heavy, dense book that shouldn’t be read while on medication because it will have no effect. It will explain why you’re on medication and probably shouldn’t be. I keep it nearby at all times.

Straight Life by Art Pepper and Laurie Pepper (Da Capo, $22). I wasn’t a big jazz fan when I read this autobiography of the great alto sax player Art Pepper, but the reason the book is awesome is that it is also an autobiography of addiction. It’s an insane, egocentric screed—about 50 pages of sax and 250 pages of drugs, jail, and insanity. In the end, though, Pepper puts across a simple code for living: Don’t be a rat.