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John Sayles’ new novel, “To Save the Man,” is set in 1890 and follows several students coming of age at a Pennsylvania boarding school for Indians. Below, the veteran director and Oscar-nominated screenwriter names six books that he says “shook my world.”
‘Treasure Island’ by Robert Louis Stevenson (1883)
How we react to a novel is always partly based on how old we are and where our head is at when we read it. I was 10 when I worked my way through this book, and some of the language was over my head. But the story kept me going. This was a thick, much-handled hardback that had the great N.C. Wyeth illustrations in it, which I constantly jumped forward and back to. One of the cornerstones of young adult fiction, it had a welcome message to impart: Don’t trust adults. Buy it here.
‘The Black Stallion’ by Walter Farley (1941)
As a kid, I liked books with adventure and animals in them, and this really delivered. Again at 10 or 11, I was blown away by the last chapter, where the author switched point of view to a character totally new to the story. First time I ever thought about the writer making decisions. Buy it here.
‘Somebody in Boots’ by Nelson Algren (1935)
I read this novel early in high school and realized it was about a Depression-era Jim Hawkins and Long John Silver relationship. I had spent time in the American South when there were still chain gangs along the roads and segregated drinking fountains, and this tempered the celebratory stuff we were fed in the classroom. Buy it here.
‘Invisible Man’ by Ralph Ellison (1952)
Another book, not assigned, that I read while I was in high school. The novel is a journey of terrible knowledge for Ellison’s protagonist, with loads of bravura sequences. Buy it here.
‘As I Lay Dying’ by William Faulkner (1930)
I read a bunch of Faulkner my freshman year in college (instead of going to class), and this one was not only short and fun, it showed me you could write a successful novel while constantly shifting point of view. Buy it here.
‘The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter’ by Carson McCullers (1940)
This is an incredible first novel. The depth of McCullers’ understanding and empathy for her many characters got me. Only much later did I learn that she was just two years older than me (she was 23) when she wrote it. Buy it here.
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