Cult Novels
 

Moving the discussion from the Baker's Dozen thread, what is a cult novel?

What are some of your favourite novels that you would consider to be 'cult'.

Tokolosh's definition:

I generally looked at it as "a novel with a cult following". I'm not too sure, but if I did have a favourite, I think it would be:

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

which has a huge following since the novel series came out in the late 70's.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas or pretty much everything Hunter S. Thompson ever wrote and published as a book.

Ditto on the HST.

I'd add anything by the beats (however you'd define that grouping), Kurt Vonnegut, William Blake, Art Rimbaud, Chuck Pahlaniuk, Ferdinand Celine, Terry Southern...

ESPECIALLY Terry Southern. If you haven't read any of his work, I'd recommend you immediately drop whatever pointless pursuit you're currently engaged in, jump in your car, and hunt down a copy of "Now Dig This"... by any means necessary. I mean it. If you don't, I'll fry yr brain with my mind bullets.

a clockwork orange and ulysses are definately "cult".
clockwork orange moreso i suppose.

Great book, great movie. I hate to say it in public, though, because the majority of clockwork orange's fans are really lame assholes.

i feel offended.

hmm.. great movie, not so great book in my opinion.

"Perv-A Love Story" by Jerry Stahl Definately a cult novel. Partly because it hasn't been made into a movie yet. "Permanent Midnight" too but since that has been made into a film more people probobly have read it.

"Geek Love"-Kathrine Dunn This is a great novel that people seem to rediscover or someone reccomends it to them, I read it and really enjoyed it.

Blake et Rimbaud ne sont pas battus d'écrivain, bêtes.

 

:)


Arthur Rimbaud - 150 ans : www.rimbaud-arthur.fr- [ Translate this page]
Divertir apprenant le site page de rimbaud avec les animations.

Babylon Babies
Maurice G. Dantec
Translated by Noura Wedell

This sci-fi thriller is now being made into a movie by Mathieu Kassovitz. Set in the hidden "flesh and chip" breeding grounds of the first cyborg communities and peopled by Serbian Mafiosi, Babylon Babies has as its hero a hard-boiled leatherneck veteran of Sarajevo named Thoorop who is hired by a mysterious source to escort a young woman named Marie Zorn from Russia to Canada. A garden variety job, he figures. But when Thoorop is offered an even higher fee by another organization, he realizes Marie is no ordinary girl. A schizophrenic and the possible carrier of a new artificial virus, Marie is carrying a mutant embryo created by an American cult that dreams of producing a genetically modified messiah, a dream that spells out the end of human life as we know it.

Inspired by Philip K. Dick, William S. Burroughs, Gilles Deleuze, and other extrapolationists of the future, Babylon Babies unfolds at breakneck speed as Thoorop risks his life to save Marie, whose brain -- linking to the neuromatrix -- loses all limits and becomes the universe itself. Exploring the symbiosis between organic matter and computer power to spin new forms of consciousness, Maurice Dantec rides Nietzsche's prophecy: "Man is something to be overcome."

Maurice G. Dantec was born in Grenoble in 1959. A former advertising executive and songwriter for a French rock group, he is a shameless lover of science fiction, crime novels, metaphysics, and rock and roll. He has published The Red Siren, The Roots of Evil and Villa Vortex as well as three huge journal essays, Theatre of Operations.

Reviews
"The book deals with the breakdown of community and political certainty. It is gingered with snippets from Dantec's favourite philosophers and loaded with thoughts of his own. The result is a real workout for the reader. Babylon Babies is a vast encyclopedia of the future as seen through a crystal ball with cracks in the glass. . . . Babylon Babies is part of a genre that makes play with religious ideas. You might call it theo-fiction."
-- The Sydney Morning Herald
"Dantec has created a compelling story with evocative ideas that may prove even more illuminating with subsequent readings, and a reader who undertakes the arduous journey from cover to cover will be rewarded with an entertaining tale."
-- Arthur Bangs, sffworld.com
"Dantec is a literary revolution."
-- Science Fiction

James Blonde wonders when did people start to use such terms as "cult novel" or "cult movie", why was it needed all of a sudden?

I'd say naked lunch, but it's considered a literary standard, so i'd say check out other buroughs and jg ballard.

Yeah, I suppose the Burroughs following that devours stuff like The Western Lands and Nova Police trilogies are fairly cult-ish.


I've never read Perv.

Back in the nineties, this guy who was a supposedly good friend of many years (and my roommate at the particular time) stole most of my valuables and unexpectedly moved to Washington, D.C., while I was working as a cook one night.
He was the typesetter editor for "Geek Love."
Also of note was one Marquez volume and he did many of Hiassen's books too.

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The Secret Game by Donna Tartt is a title that's been recommended by word-of-mouth for many years now.

Oh fuck how could i forget.. ANYTHING by peter sotos.

Definitely him.

I've heard of J.G. Ballard, but not Sotos.

----------------
You know, Kafka and Hesse, in particular, always seem to stay prettty popular with each generation of new young readers.

This is off the subject slightly, but in fiction, there are definitely very strong camps for Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Joyce as best fiction writer.
In drama, you've got your die-hard Shakespeare, Ibsen, and Ancient Greek Tragedian proponents.
-----------------


You should watch DiCaprio play him in Total Eclipse if you haven't seen it. The movie also has yet another remarkable performance from the great David Thewlis.

Allen Ginsberg, and the whole beat generation. They obviously have a cult following.

Peter Sotos isn't really a "novelist" to my mind. More of an "essayist," and you need a really strong stomach for that stuff. I have the Sotos compilation "Total Abuse," and while it is interesting enough, I have to really be in the mood. I can't relate to him in most ways, but his persepctive is interesting if disturbing on several levels.
That guy seriously offends most people.


Edit:
I stand corrected. He has written several novels.
http://www.nndb.com/people/381/000069174/

Hubert Selby Jr could do with a mention,bless him.

There are certainly some writers whose work appeals to the young.

I loved Hesse, Camus, Dostoyevsky and any writer who, to my young mind, captured the feeling of confusion and alienation felt at that age (The Outsider was the perfect book to me).

Camus was of special appeal because he looked so damn good in pictures, sort of a literary Brando.

Thank you, Pookie, I was thinking that Colin Wilson's The Outsider might be too fringe (even) for this thread. It's great.

Yeah, porkmarras, Last Exit to Brooklyn is a modern prose masterpiece.

All the beats, especially Ginsberg and Kerouac get their mentions,
And people often write about Bukowski here. Burroughs too (Junky is great though). But dammit, everyone should read Last Exit to Brooklyn.

How good is it?
Not as good as On the Road, but better than Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by a slight margin, so it's well worth reading.

And Selby's The Demon is well worth a read as well.

Not exactly a beat and not exactly a hippy, but I sure like Richard Brautigan a lot. Not sure if that's "cult" stuff or not, but it resonates with me and some of it is pretty inventive.

I love you.I think that and some of his books opened my eyes about a lot of things.Thanks for this thread,i'm always up for good reading suggestions.

How about "Catcher in the Rye"? Doesn't get much more of a cult novel then that. Love it, hate it most have read it at least once.

For a maniac, Hinckley was a pretty damn good shot.

Yes, you have struck topic gold with that one, LifeDistortion.
This isn't the first time you've schooled me either.

When you first read The Catcher in the Rye it's a bit of a disappointment. It's almost like viewing the Mona Lisa or something, because you can't read it with a blank slate with no expectations due to overwhelmingly-storied subcultural undercurrents at work.

But, each time you read it, it gets better and better.

For a long time, I preferred Franny and Zooey.

Loved it, but I don't know if a book that is standard-issue reading for High School English classes can really be considered to have "cult" status.

That's a good point.

Although The Red Badge of Courage and The Old Man and the Sea aren't quite as prevalent in the culture haha.

Wow, how'd you get "Total Abuse"? I REALLY want to read that. I think it's pretty rare nowadays..

I got it when I worked at the record store. My boss didn't want to sell it on the internet!

Damn. Well let me know if you ever want to part with it.

I had the same problem with Tokolosh classifying Lord of the Flies as "cult". But it's a set text in school's in England, but not necessarily in other countries.

And conversely with Catcher in the Rye, it's not read in schools (at least not when I went to school) so I came at it fresh, knowing nothing about it, and its satuts as a cult novel is sound, in my mind at least. I loved it by the way.

Catcher in the Rye definetely is a cult novel. Even if it is read in school's. People still get it after they are done with it.

I don't know anyone who read Sarah Kane and wasn't deeply affected by it [Hello, syntactically awful sentence]. Meanwhile, she's largely unknown to a public at large (or small).

Personally, I love Aaron Williamson's poetry, and he's a bit cult-y. I'm a bit of a loss otherwise, as I suspect you've heard of all the other good writers I can think of (thereby undermining their cult status) apart from philosophers, and they don't count (academic, see?).

[quote=Glice]

Personally, I love Aaron Williamson's poetry, and he's a bit cult-y. quote]
I have something that you might like if i find it in this mess.

No rush, but yes I probably would if you come across it.

"cult" is something of general crappy qualities that somehow manages to be really good and gain a "cult" following.

what is a cult novel? p.k. dick comes to mind-- a brilliant mind, wrote with his feet due to bad wives/need to pay several alimonies/being in a total hurry/addicted to amphetamines.

but with the general decline of english prose im thinking he's moving in our perspective closer to the belles lettres.

a lot of what starts as "cult" becomes mainstream as the public's tastes change. i'm thinking of john waters, he may have been a "cult" filmmaker back in the day, but in the XXI century he stands as a towering american classic-- well not yet perhaps but when i buy TCM with my illicitly-acquired fortune, everyone will get a weekly diet of pink flamingos, female trouble, and multiple maniacs.

[...]

edit:

re-thinking about this, it occurs to me that something does not need to be "generally bad, but bearing some good qualities" in order to be "cult". "scorpio rising" comes to mind-- very good quality stuff, just weird enough for the general public that has a small following confining it to "cult" movie status.

as for novels.. nothing comes to mind at the moment, and it's not like i have the day to sit and ponder this. :p

Here it is my lovely.It's Aaron Williamson's 'And How Do We Connect Language Up To The Body?' from an album of spoken poetry that i've bought about five years ago.Short but awesome and the first time i heard his name.At first i thought he was insane but now i adore him and he makes total sense.
http://www.badongo.com/file/1984298

Profoundly deaf, did you know that? I've never heard his audio stuff - I went out with a girl who had a case but no CD - but his writing is fucking awesome.

Thanks ever so much for that, I've not found (nor looked for, truth be told) any of his audio.

Edit: Someone rep Porky on my behalf? Cheers.

Second Edit: This is fucking awesome. I must make it my mission to find a CD.