Experimental Books that are also good

IdleRich

IdleRich
In the thread about Roth there was a mention of how the novel has lost its way... someone said that they have the impression that there are loads of academic books which are almost in-jokes, filled with literary references and hard for anyone to follow that isn't part of a very specific dialogue. So, I'm interested here in books which are kind of experimental in form or content or both - and yet which are possible to read for yer man on the street and which add up to more than a dry academic game. Enjoyable, have a good story, even pack an emotional punch. And really I mean new-ish books, from this century or near enough.
I can think of a few for myself that just about meet these requirements.

Tom McCarthy - Remainder
I always mention this book as it really did impress me when I read it. The story concerns a guy who has some kind of unspecified accident and then receives a large amount of compensation which he uses to buy a tower block and populate it with actors that he pays to repeatedly act out various scenes from his previous life trying to capture some elusive... something. The fairly interesting film Synecdoche NY stumbled on the same plot a few years later (by coincidence they claim) but the book is far preferable having this overwhelming strangeness captured within its simple and precise language.

Mark L Danielewski - House of Leaves
This book obviously caused quite a stir when it appeared (actually mid to late 90s I think) - and deservedly so cos despite it having a kind of nested structure of stories within stories within stories and writing that disappears into footnotes or which is written in spirals that force you to rotate the book as you read it, plus inserts representing supposedly factual reports and other pages that are seemingly pointless lists of random information (some real and some made up), it all adds up to a surprisingly effective horror story. I think they call it ergodic literature and this is a perfect marriage of experiment and pulp novel.
Danielewski has written some other novels and I understand they push the unusual structure even further, maybe I should check them out.

Ryan O'Neil - Their Brilliant Careers
I picked this up after being intrigued by the description Jenks gave on the "what are you reading now" thread and I'm glad I did cos I enjoyed every second of it. In fact I had to lend it to a friend cos I was laughing so much when I was reading it at his house and he basically demanded the chance to find out what all the fuss was about. Anyway, each chapter is about a different Australian author - one is a mystery writer, one a plagiarist, some are poets and so on - and each chapter is a potted biography of each one, there are loads of jokes about literature (er, so it fails to satisfy my original point, although it's jokes about James Joyce or Agatha Christie or whatever, it requires a basic knowledge of literature of the 20th century I guess but it's not esoteric or elite knowledge to my mind) and the book grows in power as you go on because the lives overlap and you gain more and more insights into this imaginary Australian scene and how it fits together. And yeah, it's really very very funny in parts. And, it actually made me go and read the book Tarnsmen of Gor, the first in John Norman's interminable sci-fi series of books whose incredibly cheesey covers had fascinated me in book shops as a child. Though to be honest that's not a good thing.

Chris Krauss - I Love Dick
I hesitate to include this cos it's only half good - and I guess it also involves literary knowledge now I come to think of it - but is an interesting book in that it chronicles the weird story of a woman who (pretty much) decides to fall in love with a guy (Dick) after meeting him one and then making her pursuit (stalking) of him a kind of shit artistic project consisting of discussions between her and her husband, letters that she wrote and didn't send to dick, letters that she did... and, more interestingly, other bits when she reminisces about the art scene in NY or writes really good reviews of films or shows or whatever. Those bits unconnected to the Dick story are the strongest, but overall the hodge-podge of bits and bobs are what make the book unusual and interesting. I have to say that I find the author quite unlikable, she has managed to build up a portfolio of property that she rents out which allows her to spend her time making failed films and so on and there is something quite unattractive at times about the way she moans about having to deal with all this stuff which basically makes her much wealthier and more independent than ninety percent of people on the planet.

Anyway, please give me tips for recent, weird new books in the above kind of ways (or others) - or tell me what you think of the above if you've read them or whatever really. It makes a change from talking about Roth and Updike anyhow right?
 
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IdleRich

IdleRich
Those synopses are all from the top of my head and pulled out of my memory so apologies if there are any big mistakes. Some of them I read a while back.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Cigarettes by Harry Matthews.

I've read a bit of summary of this somewhere but I'm pretty sure he started with simply paired names and spun them through some kind of mathemtical variants pairing off against each other in turn and used this to create the compelx plot. It's background is art and fraud as they play out for a group of upper class New Yorkers over 40 years or so. It's brilliant and contains some of my favourite passages of writing.

Tlooth on the other hand I couldn't get anywhere with. I have The Conversions somewhere and I still haven't read it.
 
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catalog

Well-known member
Good list there, ive heard a lot about house of leaves.

You might like ‘argonauts’ by maggie nelson, its a bit like chris kraus writing style, except more expansive and less stalkery. She talks about loads of stuff, including her trans partners transition and two academics having an altercation. Those are the bits i remember most but it has loads of good bits, all pithy notes covering a wide range of topics, written in a breezy, first person voice. Ienjoyed it, but probably preferred i love dick of the two. Shes written another called bluets but i couldnt get along with that at all.

Theres another similar writer which ive not read, called jenn ashworth. She has just done a book called ‘notes made whilst falling’ which she wrote over several years, its supposed to br really good.

Theres also this guy called lee rourke, who is friends with tom mccarthy, i think they had a club together. Ive read a book of his called the canal which is really good, very spare and like beckett. I went to a reading thing with him and he said hes nicked his whole style off beckett. But yeah, you might like him, hes got a new novel out called glitch.

Would also recc simon sellars ‘applied ballardianism’, it again is covering a few different things, wrapped up into a loose story. I enjoyed it alot.

Thats all i can think of for now.
 

kumar

Well-known member
dont care what anyone says i like stewart home, a lot of it may seem smartarsed and referential to the point that might feel repugnant but why not give it a go, its fun to read and has many redeeming qualities, i only know a couple like down and out in shoreditch and hoxton and 69 things to do with a dead princess, but i reckon theyre crowd pleasers, i'm surprised you don't see him on panel shows.
 

luka

Well-known member
My knee jerk response is that there aren't any. experimental is always bad, in music, in literature, in art. It's off putting isn't, just the sound of it. You just know its going to be gratuitous and arbitrary. No spunk.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
My knee jerk response is that there aren't any. experimental is always bad, in music, in literature, in art. It's off putting isn't, just the sound of it. You just know its going to be gratuitous and arbitrary. No spunk.

Naked Lunch tho?
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Cigarettes by Harry Matthews.
I've read a bit of summary of this somewhere but I'm pretty sure he started with simply paired names and spun them through some kind of mathemtical variants pairing off against each other in turn and used this to create the compelx plot. It's background is art and fraud as they play out for a group of upper class New Yorkers over 40 years or so. It's brilliant and contains some of my favourite passages of writing.
You lent me that didn't you?

Tlooth on the other hand I couldn't get anywhere with. I have The Conversions somewhere and I still haven't read it.
Both very weird books. I enjoyed them a lot, kinda like William Burroughs via Oolipo I feel, very weird but also playful and fun at times. Wouldn't claim to have understood them though.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
dont care what anyone says i like stewart home, a lot of it may seem smartarsed and referential to the point that might feel repugnant but why not give it a go, its fun to read and has many redeeming qualities, i only know a couple like down and out in shoreditch and hoxton and 69 things to do with a dead princess, but i reckon theyre crowd pleasers, i'm surprised you don't see him on panel shows.
Too busy doing those knife striptease things I guess.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
My knee jerk response is that there aren't any. experimental is always bad, in music, in literature, in art. It's off putting isn't, just the sound of it. You just know its going to be gratuitous and arbitrary. No spunk.
I know what you mean actually... arguably it's a bad choice of word. What I mean is weird literature... but weird not just by dint of its story or narrative. I mean what you're saying there just doesn't apply to House of Leaves or Remainder or... yeah... Naked Lunch, but those are the kind of books I meant.
 

catalog

Well-known member
There's one Stewart home book I really liked, can't remember what it's called, but it's the one about his mum in Notting hill and Michael X and rachman and all that. But I've had a go with others of his and had to walk away.

But you might wanna check out the publishers 'bookworks', he did a series for them called semina, after Wallace Berman (well worth checking him out) which are all experimental.

Ive read one of the series, by iphgenia Baal, although I've read the book when it was republished by Jarrett kobeks press, as 'death and facebook'. Pretty shit tho, I wouldn't recommend. I bought it and everything. Yeah a lot of experimental lit is proper tosh I agree, but so is 95% of everything.

I would recc jarett kobek btw, 'i hate the internet', it's sort of experimental but not very. More conventional than experimental, but very good.

Also his press has put out one of my favourite books of recent years, the Kodak mantra diaries, which is Iain Sinclair's first proper book, that he originally issued on his own press. It's really really good, think I've mentioned elsewhere. It's a diary about him trying to make a film, I'd say it passes for experimental but again not very out there.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I have got one of those Semina ones actually, and, yeah, I think what you're saying - and if so I'd agree - is that they are exactly the kind of self-regarding, cold and academic stuff that isn't good outside those parameters and so is basically what I'm trying to avoid here.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
Tainted Love was the one Stewart wrote about his Mum iirc.

Come Before Christ was an earlier on in the vein of 69 Dead Princesses.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
I like Stewart Home's nerdy essays defending left communism against proudhonian anarchism the most. :D

most of his fiction isn't available electronically i think, 69 things is.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
My knee jerk response is that there aren't any. experimental is always bad, in music, in literature, in art. It's off putting isn't, just the sound of it. You just know its going to be gratuitous and arbitrary. No spunk.

I dunno man a lot of experimental music has more spunk than some normie music, esp in the japanese free jazz area.
 

luka

Well-known member
I'm mystified by Home. I don't get it. He was knocking round with Lewis Parker for a bit but I think they fell out over Nina Power.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Certainly Lewis and he seemed to be collaborating for a while.. dunno about the second part to be honest. It reads as though it were a love triangle but sadly I don't think that's what you mean.
 

luka

Well-known member
Certainly Lewis and he seemed to be collaborating for a while.. dunno about the second part to be honest. It reads as though it were a love triangle but sadly I don't think that's what you mean.

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