Robert Anton Wilson's "Illuminatus! Trilogy".
Those books make everything listed so far read as linear as "See Spot Run" ;)
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Robert Anton Wilson's "Illuminatus! Trilogy".
Those books make everything listed so far read as linear as "See Spot Run" ;)
Naked Lunch - William Burroughs; enough said.
I agree about Kafka...just bizarre stuff.
[The weird books you've been mentioning that I've read I love them all. What does that tell about me, I wonder? And though I've never read Finnegan's Wake I'm sure it's the weirdest ever]
Good weird: anything by Daniil Kharms / Kafka / Ernst Jandl
Bad weird: is there such thing?
Don't-know-what-to-make-of-it weird: anything by Gertrude Stein
Years ago, I read this book called "How to Disapear Completely and Never Be Found" by Doug Richmond. It was really strange, but it still kept my attention. It was about this girl and her friend and a rat-man who writes comic books.
"Slaughterhouse-five" by Kurt Vonnegut was also really wierd, but also really good. I love the pictures drawn throughout.
Story of the Eye - Georges Bataille
I read it a while ago so my memory is a little hazy, but essentially it is about these two teenagers who have very strange sex, involving eggs and milk and urine. Everyone is insane. After some girl kills herself they go to Spain. More weird sex (this time with a bull's testicles). They rape a priest and pluck out his eye. The end.
Yeah , I'd go for the so-called Nova trilogy: The Soft Machine, The Ticket That Exploded, and Nova Express.Quote:
Originally Posted by Trystan
Burroughs had fully developed his cutting-up and folding-in techniques by then, to which Naked Lunch stands as a precursor. And on that note, Brion Gysin's The Process. Oh, and Der Prozess (The Trial) by Kafka. On a roll... ;)
Someone mentioned Flann O'Brien's Third Policeman. His At Swim Two Birds is the strangest thing I've read. And it's hilarious. But it helps if you drink Guinness while you read. Borges is bizarre in a magical way. Pirandello's Six Characters... is in the same vein as At Swim To Birds. Crying of Lot 49 was nicely weird, also.
The short stories of R. A. Lafferty.
The most bizarre book ever has to be "Naked Lunch". Then, Jose Saramago's Blindness and everything by Haruki Murakami are also quite bizarre/disturbing
The Bridge
Walking on Glass
both by Iain Banks.
Fabulous, but very trippy
Tupelo, I hope you have read The Wasp Factory by the same author. It's brilliant. I mentionned it on the same thread earlier this year.
http://www.online-literature.com/for...761#post664761
Of course!Quote:
Originally Posted by lupe
I loved The Wasp Factory. Also Dead Air and Espedair Street, although it's a good while since I've read any of them. I may give them another look.
Well, it's a 'low-budgety' translation of a Japanese pulp novel that became a famous movie--so the prose is fine, but just basically functional (fast-moving and intelligently assembled plot, though). HOWEVER, on every other criteria, Battle Royale by Koushun Takami fits the bill perfectly.Quote:
Originally Posted by Chrysanthus
Probably the weirdest - and also the bleakest - fiction I have read is Jonathan Bowden's disorientating novel Kratos. The latter deals with insanity from a Nietzschean perspective.
http://www.jonathanbowden.co.uk/images/thumb_kts.jpg
And at the very high end of the scale, particularly with regard to literary skill, is Alexander Theroux's Darconville's Cat. The novel reads like a completely misanthropic Hermann Meville, but what makes the it unusual is its very multilayered construction and the sheer baroqueness and density of the prose. Really extraordinary.
http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172583713m/193408.jpg