What's the wierdest fiction book you've ever read?

Gabba Flamenco Crossover

High Sierra Skullfuck
I was reading a review of the new film of A Scanner Darkly, which set me off thinking about wierd books.

The most headfucking book I ever read was also by Phillip K Dick - The Divine Invasion. It has the kind of plot that resists easy synopsys, but basically a woman living on a colony in the far galaxy realises she's pregnant with the son of god, and makes her way back to earth to give birth. This is a warped take on the second coming, and there's frequent diversions into jewish mysticism. Towards the end, the action changes totally and all the characters appear to be living normal american lives, then they realise the devil is making them hallucinate and they are in hell. The final scene ends with the devil, who has taken the form of a massive glass kite, lying smashed to bits on a roof in downtown Los Angeles -'the broken pieces of what once was light'.

So come on, tell us the wierdest novel you ever read, and make an attempt at summarizing the plot.
 

John Doe

Well-known member
I think the strangest novel, and one of the most challenging in terms of structure, that I've ever read is Nabokov's Pale Fire. It takes the form of an introduction to a poem, the poem itself, and then lengthy notes following the poem in which the editor/narrator Kinbote interprets the poem in which he obsessively reads references to his own life and unlikely biography. The poem's author, John Shade, Kinbote states, was killed by an assassin who supposedly targeted Kinbote. Of course, as a narrator he's crazily unreliable and its apparent that his account of events is entirely delusional. (He claims to be a king who has fled the kingdom of Zembla after it experienced a Russian style revolution). Eventually, the reader can surmise that Kinbote is insane and fixated on the writer Shade and is almost certainly responsible for the poet's death.

It sounds (relatively) straightforward told like that, but reading the novel is a very strange experiece: disorientating, amusing, difficult, sometimes annoying and one in which all frames of reference, all relationships between that which is established as 'real' and 'unreal', are continually thrown into flux. It is also very very funny in Nabokov's characteristically sly and cruel manner, but not an easy read (although a rewarding one).

Something similar happens in another favourite of mine, Italo Calvino's If On A Winter's Night a Traveller... This starts off with chapter one in which a narrator congratulates you, the reader, on buying this book and runs through the whole delicious ritual of buying a new novel and preparing to open and read it. Then, in the next chapter, the actual novel If On A Winter's Night a Traveller begins. Several pages later it stops. Chapter 2 explains that the reader (who figured in chapter 1) can't continue because the first few pages have been reprinted. The edition is corrupt. So he returns to the bookshop to get a new edition, but is told there's been a mistake and the novel he inteneded to buy has a different title, 'Outside the Town of Malbork (sp?). He duly takes away his novel and begins to read. But 'Outside the Town of wherever' is an entirely different novel - but this too breaks off, and the reader/character again has to search for the novel, which, when he gets it, is entirely different again. This structure continues throughout and the novel itself is constructed out of 8 beginnings to entirely different kinds of novels interlinked by the central character/reader figure who undergoes a series of adventures as he searches for the book he wants to read... Wonderful, warm, inventive and deligtful fiction (and rather more approachable than the Nabokov).
 

Freakaholic

not just an addiction
most of what ive read from Philip K Dick is the strangest thing ive ever read.

that and Clive Barkers Books of Blood.

However, the strangest thing ive read was a one paragraph story by Dick in "We can remember it for you Wholesale".

In less about 100-200 words he manages to tell the most twisted, grandest story imaginable. i wish i could remember the name...
 

ice bat

(cheshire cat)
Ferdydurke, Witold Gombrowicz.

An adult man is inexplicably forced to live as a teenage boy. Utterly demented, venomous, and hilarious absurdist satire of modern (that is, mid-20th century) European culture.

First published in Poland in 1937; banned by the Nazis and the Soviets, un-banned in Poland in the late 1950s, then banned AGAIN when too many dissidents started getting into it. Still relevant, and a fantastic and deeply disturbing read. Several English translations are now available; to my mind the best one is still the first, by Eric Mosbacher, from 1961.

To give a better idea of what this book is like than anything else I could say: By the end of the novel, the sun has turned into a giant arse in the sky.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
anyone here into "experimental literature" ?

a friend of a friend runs a publishing house that deals exclusively with this type of material...

a narrative made with only the words used during the weather forecast of a particular radio station between certain dates;

made-up words, alphebets, letters either by them/it self or intermingling with "normal" english;

pages with holes punched through them;

etc. etc.

Dada to the Nth degree... like system based art meets Gysinian cut-up meets Cage meets stream of consciousness of the Beats... post modern super mind-fuck.

very interesting actually.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
so is this bloke considered to be one of main initial proponents of the genre of "experimental literature"? besides the obvious other precedents some of which I've already mentioned.

has anyone read any of his 7 novels? worthy of time? sounds like they might be from the guardian piece.
 

ice bat

(cheshire cat)
How about Kenji Siratori?

:://I torture the bloodelectric molecule/::bondage-script/of the human body – the medium ofgene="TV" – boy-roid nervous system that was murdered savagely>Themasses of flesh that accelerated DOWNLOAD>>burn up the miracle of the assassin that was sent back out to kill in the blood stream of thezirconium acidHUMAN beast<>//
 

Buick6

too punk to drunk
At Swim Two Birds by Flann O'Brien

and FRISK by Dennis Cooper. Guys licking each others assholes and then eating each other. fucken prentious, and crap.
 

Troy

31 Seconds
The Bible

The Bible by ???

All powerful being creates universe. Places two humans on a planet, and their procreative efforts eventually populate the whole planet. Massive floods, lots of intervention by said Creator, war. Inhabitants have trouble following Creator's 'rules'. A Savior is born, rules change a bit, Savior somewhat "hippy-dippy-ish", "turn the other cheek" replaces "and eye for an eye". Savior is persecuted and dies, but erases the worlds sins in the process.
Confusing.
 

Canada J Soup

Monkey Man
At Swim Two Birds by Flann O'Brien

Definitely. Although I always found The Third Policeman to be just that little bit odder.

I've always wondered what people who haven't spent time in Ireland make of Flann O'Brien. His particular strain of surreal / absurd / gently mocking humour resonates of late night drunken conversations in a certain type of Dublin pub to such an extent that I wonder how much more bizarre it is to people who haven't experienced that. Similarly, if you weren't regaled with legends of the Fianna by cultural nationalist Irish primary school teachers does the image of Fionn mac Cumhaill running through a field with a brace of cattle secreted in his hempen drawers have quite the same parodic Jingoism-deflating effect?
 
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tate

Brown Sugar
The Bible by ???

All powerful being creates universe. Places two humans on a planet, and their procreative efforts eventually populate the whole planet. Massive floods, lots of intervention by said Creator, war. Inhabitants have trouble following Creator's 'rules'. A Savior is born, rules change a bit, Savior somewhat "hippy-dippy-ish", "turn the other cheek" replaces "and eye for an eye". Savior is persecuted and dies, but erases the worlds sins in the process.
Confusing.

Creation stories (of universe and humankind) are about as common as dirt once a person begins to look into comparative mythologies and folklore.

As for the 'Bible' so-callled, you will want to recall that the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament are two different corpora with very, very different origins.
 
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