Will Oldham's Reading List

"Cassandra at the Wedding, by Dorothy Baker. Unbelievable."

"It is essentially a long-form nonfiction prose poem about swimming everything swimmable in Britain, inspired by John Cheever's story The Swimmer."

"Probably Demon Copperhead."

"Neider does some minimally experimental and maximally effective explorations in style, which can gently massage the momentum of the reader's psyche into wildly and necessary new directions."

"Undeniably, Art Pepper's Straight Life. My friend T.R. Johnson first showed me the book about a quarter of a century ago. It's better [than promised]."

"If we stick with westerns, they could look to Butcher's Crossing, by John Williams."

"The first novels of workers-in-song Nick Cave (And the Ass Saw the Angel) and Jimmy Buffett (Where Is Joe Merchant?) functioned as primers for exploring the basic idea that a song is this itty-bitty thing hinting at entire worlds."

"That Paul Gauguin saw the traveling extravaganza overseen by Buffalo Bill Cody in Paris in 1889 and was so inspired that he bought himself a 10-gallon hat. (Learned from Wild Thing, by Sue Prideaux.)"

"I have a thing for accounts of lives lived in Hawaii. Some of my very favorite books are Waimea Summer, by John Dominis Holt."