Disturbing books.

[Dharmabeat]

Naked Lunch. I read it recently and it was the most disgusting book I have ever read. I noticed the point that Borroughs was trying to make in some of the chapters (such as the one about the 'Island', the 'Sender', which stick out in my mind) but the rest of it just felt like rampant pedophelia, homosexuality and mutilation.

I completely agree there. It really confused me, as I first picked up 'Junky' and thought it was quite a nice easy read albeit a tad on the gruesome side. So I picked up 'Naked Lunch', and it just seems so different - and about ten times more morbid than anything else I've ever read.

[kelby_lake]

The Trial
Les Enfants Terribles. Mad is Cocteau but very good!

[monad]

Don Quixote by Kathy Acker

[Kafka's Crow]

Don Quixote by Kathy Acker

Kathy was mad, absolutely mad. A punk in every sense of the word. I have a copy of The Empire of the Nonsense upstairs. I read some of it, weird writing indeed. I have a copy of Blood and Guts in High School as well. If you could find it anywhere, listen to Pussy, King of the Pirates, very,very different stuff:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pussy-King-P...8159653&sr=8-4

[DeadAsDreams]

The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

[Kafka's Crow]

As I was reading through everyone's posts I was wondering if someone would mention A Confederacy of Dunces. It was the first book to come to mind. It was weird in a very disturbing way.

Same with She's Come Undone.

Actually, both books were weird in a BAD way. A Fool on The Hill was an odd book, too.

Others have mentioned Fear and Loathing; that was weird in a GOOD way. So was Alice in Wonderland.

The Master and Margarita (which I am reading now) is a bit weird, too, but it's a good read so far.

I love A Confederacy of Dunces. It is dark, it is hilarious, it is sad but weired it is not. John Barth's The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailer is weired with two plots running parallel. A huge book and a weired one on top of that!

http://www.amazon.com/Last-Voyage-So.../dp/0385422202

[monad]

Kathy was mad, absolutely mad. A punk in every sense of the word. I have a copy of The Empire of the Nonsense upstairs. I read some of it, weird writing indeed. I have a copy of Blood and Guts in High School as well. If you could find it anywhere, listen to Pussy, King of the Pirates, very,very different stuff:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pussy-King-P...8159653&sr=8-4

Nice to see someone that recognizes her name, she's certainly got a unique style and refreshingly twisted perspective.

Funny, it seems like this hard-edged lesbian punk writer is mostly digested in the comfortable ivory towers of university postmodernist / lit theory courses (this is where I first encountered her work).

[Kafka's Crow]

Nice to see someone that recognizes her name, she's certainly got a unique style and refreshingly twisted perspective.

Funny, it seems like this hard-edged lesbian punk writer is mostly digested in the comfortable ivory towers of university postmodernist / lit theory courses (this is where I first encountered her work).

Well, that's where I discovered her back in 2000-2001. I first came across her name in Nicholas Zurbrugg's book The Parameters of Postmodernism. A rubbish book but still I managed to extract two good things out of it: Kathy Acker and John Cage.

[integrity]

I love A Confederacy of Dunces. It is dark, it is hilarious, it is sad but weired it is not.

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.)

[Jueno]

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!

[EricP]

"The 120 Days of Sodom" by Marquis de Sade

[DecemberSun]

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.

[Seabird111]

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...

[book_jones]

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.

[cipherdecoy]

A Clockwork Orange maybe?