Perhaps it wasn't the writing itself that was strange, but the main character was entirely offbeat and subhuman-ly bizarre. (And, if I may add, loathsome.)Quote:
Originally Posted by Kafka's Crow
Printable View
Perhaps it wasn't the writing itself that was strange, but the main character was entirely offbeat and subhuman-ly bizarre. (And, if I may add, loathsome.)Quote:
Originally Posted by Kafka's Crow
The five people you meet in heaven by Mitch Albom.
A friend of mine recommended it for me, but I just didn't get it!
"The 120 Days of Sodom" by Marquis de Sade
Weirdest book?
I don't know if I'd call it weird, but 'The five people you meet in heaven' was very diferent as to what I had expected. I had read that some people thought of it as a future classic, but that I really can't see.
The Book's of Blood Volume One by Clive Barker is probably the strangest thing I've read.
I mean, bodies of citizens from two different towns in Yugoslavia forming two giant monsters!?!? Seriously...
Hands down The Robber Bridegroom by Eudora Welty. Most strange books don't really surprise me. I wasn't surprised when Ulysses turned out to be weird. However, this one really surprised me. She wrote many strange stories, but none quite so much as this one.
I sure am dissapointed that everyone associates weirdness with drug use. It seems that a book written by someone on drugs or about someone on drugs usually isn't very weird because you expect unusual things to happen. I have much more respect for writers who pull their strange ideas from the real world. That makes a book much more interesting for me.
A Clockwork Orange maybe?
Rather than weirdest... one of the 'Pornest'...:DQuote:
Originally Posted by EricP
ha ha! how about grossest:sick:Quote:
Originally Posted by EricP
Woman of the Dunes by Kōbō Abe is weird, it's about an entomologist who is trapped in a house at the bottom of a sandpit by some locals and made to dig for sand to keep the house from caving in.
Also by Kobo Abe: The Kangaroo Notebook. A story about a man who finds radishes growing on his legs one day. Very, very strange.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallon
Yes i must seek more Abe, it was ages ago i read WITD.
OK, interesting topic and I'll bite...(newbie here)...
The majority of works of literary fiction that I have read so far certainly could be described as "bizarre or eccentrlc". I read in a DFW interview that a creative writing teacher advised him that good writing should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable...
I second all those that mentioned Beckett, Kafka, Joyce etc as all being "weird". Breaking of old previous accepted traditional forms in any medium would probably be called that...
I agree that some works are weird with seeming goal to sell themselves or to be heard, as in "shock value"-ie. Weirdness for weirdness sake (could be a good thread topic for debate!)
Read any drama by Ionesco (major writer from the theater of the absurd school) will make Beckett seem like the Sunday Times...
I loved the "weirdness" of Pynchon, Brautigan and Barth. Barthelme's short stories are pretty out there!
I can't wait to try Murakami's books from what I have heard!
From reading this thread, I need to find the Third Policeman from O'brien and some works by Abe
Hi malwethien! "A Painted Bird" was one weird novel; I am with you on this one. I read it when I was in college along with "Steppenwolf" - I agree, that was pretty weird too, although I do like Hermann Hesse's other works very much. "Steppenwolf" was good, but strange and mostly based on dreams/fantasies, I believe. He probably was on drugs when he wrote it.Quote:
Originally Posted by malwethien
Yes, some of James work certainly is weird, at least to me. Some of Virginia Wolfe's later work is a bit strange, I think, such as "Orlando". I didn't read it but heard it was different and a bit weird.
This might not count because it is a short story - but 'The Yellow Wallpaper' is super strange but good. 'A Rose for Emily' is another strange short story but interesting.
I want some completely out-there concepts- what are some of the strangest books you have heard of or read yourself?
Thanks as always!
The Bible
LOL! I'm with you on that....:thumbs_up
This will probably get joined with the other thread like this, i recommended Kobo Abe's Woman in the Dunes. Abe is generally bizzare.
What do you mean by bizarre?
For example you can have something completely twisted like Apolinnaire's Eleven Thousand Rods or something rather crazy like Perec's Disparition (a novel with no letter "e"). Gombrowicz's Ferdydurke is quite crazy as well, Boris Vian's Écume des jours, Beckett in general, Joyce's Finnegan's Wake, or Broch Death of Virgil, Lautreamont's Maldoror, Caroll's Alice in Wonderland (why not?), Borges too could fit that category often, Raymond Queneau's Exercises of Style, etc.
But maybe being more precise in what you're looking for would help...
Check out the Oulipo, a group of writers which might interest you (Perec and Queneau previously mentionned were members of that group, and so was Calvino).
Any of the middle to late works of Samuel Beckett, and Absurdity in general.
Thanks everyone- it's funny because I was originally going to write "Bizzare in the vein of Abe's work, as I am a fan." I suppose I am looking for books that deviate from being defined as a certain type of literature, books that you have read that discuss things you don't ever read of elsewhere. I suppose I don't know what I am looking for exactly, just some different stuff so I appreciate the replies I have gotten so far, as I will check this all out.
If you can get your hands on it, Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America (1967) :D
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trout_Fishing_in_America
--
Thanks, for a while I tried to get ahold of that, I need to try a bit harder.
I suppose I am bored with literature and am looking for something so different that it might re-inspire me as to what writing can accomplish?
I like the idea of finding more books like Joyce's Finnegan's Wake, Abe's Kangaroo Notebook or Dante's Divine Comedy.
Well The Kangaroo Notebook is pretty out there!
Have you ever read anything by Haruki Murakami? If you like more obscure works I'd recommend Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World which is pretty surreal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard-Bo...d_of_the_World
And if you like Joyce then I guess you don't mind wordy prose. Might be worth checking out something by Angela Carter, perhaps Heroes and Villains http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/12/2...-villains.html
or The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Inf...Doctor_Hoffman
Richard Brautigan is a good recommendation too. I've read In Watermelon Sugar and Trout Fishing in America quite recently. I prefered Watermelon Sugar personally. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Watermelon_Sugar
What about Time's Arrow by Martin Amis? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time's_Arrow_(novel)
Good luck with your search, and if you find anything interesting on the way let us know!
Why not read House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. It is a very bizarre book.
Naked Lunch is always a classic option for anyone wanting bizarre and odd.
Thanks everyone, these are some great finds- Also I have Wind-Up Bird chronicles by Murikami and I start it but then something always gets in the way- and its funny because I was trying to decide between that one and Hard-Boiled when in the store, but I'll check out Chronicles and see where it takes me.
Thx again
I second Trout Fishing in America and recommend Brautigan's novel In Watermelon Sugar as well. People live in a town where most everything is made of watermelon sugar and the sun is a different color every day. Wednesday is black silent sun day in which there is no sound.
Check out Joyce's "spiritual" father-figure, Lawrence Sterne. Fernando Pessoa blurs fiction and poetry. Julio Cortazar's Hopscotch, Augusto Monterroso's Complete Works and other Stories, Gerard de Nerval's Selected Writings, Anne Carson's Red and Plainwater, Donald Barthleme's stories may all take you in the right direction.
I've said it before and i'll say it again.
The Third Policeman by flann O' Brien. By far the weirdest book i've ever read.
The Balcony by Jean Genet.
More than a bit disturbing.
Yeah Finnegan's Wake is definitely bizarre and if you don't care whether you understand it completely, it is an amazing read to just read right through the first time.. the second time though, you may want to get a companion volume explaining it, and spend months going through it, as the companion volume is generally longer than the book if it is a good one lol...
for disturbing bizarre (not for the faint of heart).. well there is a good list here...
The Marquis de Sade-- 120 days of Sodom
Georges Bataille-- story of the eye
Octave Mirbeau-- the torture garden
Donoso -- The Obscene Bird of Night
Lautreamont-- Maldoror
I don't know how I managed to finish a few of these, but just thinking about what I read in them makes me feel sick...
for not so disturbing, yet still somewhat bizarre,
Beckett
some Kafka
Nabokov's --- Invitation to a Beheading
Calvino
Jean Genet-- The Balcony
much of Borges
Etienne's list is quite good..
And I will agree with Niamh again that The Third Policeman defies the more typical Menippean forms we have come to treat as classics, like Gulliver's Travels, which it bears some affinity to, but I do not think it is *spaced out* literature as such. Its coy playfulness has its own kind of odd coherence.Quote:
Originally Posted by Niamh
If I had to choose something bizarre, it would not be Tristram Shandy either, as luke suggests. Sterne is one of a kind, but what he actually does in Shandy, is deconstruct the novel's traditional framework. It is not freaky so much as delayed climax and frustration, a story which unravels itself.
My pick, oddly enough, would be Clive Barker's speculative fiction. Not because it is gross, or graphic, so much as strange, and something not entirely understood by me. He is not a tiresome panderer the way more commercial authors like King or Rice can be, but he isn't altogether easy to pin down, and as a reader I felt uneasy with the themes he seemed to be pushing.
I don't generally read works which are too weird, but some years ago I made the mistake of picking up a Charlee Jacob paperback, and if you like punk horror, she can probably turn your stomach. She isn't much of an original, actually, but disgusting, yes.
Try Green Grass, Running Water by Thomas King; that work uses blends of post-modernism and traditional Native American techniques to a bizarre, yet highly original effect.
Der Sandmann (forgot the author) Clockwork Orange
E.T. A. HoffmannQuote:
Originally Posted by pgwodehousefan
it's been awhile but i remember the douglas adam's hitchhiker books being pretty out there. i could be wrong. i am confident however that kafka's metamorphosis was a doozie!
I'm adding Raymond Roussel books. I'm almost done with Impressions from Africa (nothing to do with a travel book, by the way), and that is very weird.
Any book from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe series.
The Gormenghast Trilogy - Titus Groan, Gormenghast, Titus Alone - by Mervyn Peake.
'bizarre' hey - how about Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville, it's a short story so you can read it one sitting - probably intensify the 'bizarre' experience. Do you mean 'bizarre' in the Absurdist sense?