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comment by illasinsick
illasinsick  ·  4069 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Mind-blowing literature?

Disregarding what's already in this thread (Vonnegut!): Ken Kesey: One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. The Grandfather of LSD culture, but also an incredible author. The visceral descriptions and unreliable narrator make for a very interesting read to say the least. Then there's the colorful cast of characters... Joseph Heller Catch-22. A dark comedy with a Kafkaesque bent. Reflects upon a lot of society in the modern age. Albert Camus: The Stranger. The definitive piece of absurdist fiction. Also very short and exciting. Jean-paul Sartre: No Exit. OK, yes I like French existentialists. No Exit (or In Camera, The Others, or a couple other translations iirc) is the source of the oft-misunderstood quote "HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE". A short play with characters who find themselves spending an afterlife together. Thomas Pynchon: V and Gravity's Rainbow. Haven't read the rest of his work, but these are brilliant, wide ranging, complex woven narratives featuring masses of interconnected characters and events over years. Taking on one of these novels is a journey itself with their dense prose (and occasional lyrical interludes), confusing subplots and gargantuan length. But it's a journey full of rewards as well. and on a slightly different note Douglass Hofstadter: Gödel, Escher, Bach. A description of elements of number theory and Gödel's Incompleteness Theorum and application to computing, art, consciousness, music, puzzles, and more. Also poetic interludes.





kleinbl00  ·  4068 days ago  ·  link  ·  

| OK, yes I like French existentialists. |

That's all the excuse I need to link to The Jean Paul Sartre Cookbook.

user-inactivated  ·  4068 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    Rather, I now seek a single recipe which will, by itself, embody the plight of man in a world ruled by an unfeeling God, as well as providing the eater with at least one ingredient from each of the four basic food groups.

This is the funniest thing I've read in months.

illasinsick  ·  4068 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Hah. The bits on Camus are gold.

user-inactivated  ·  4068 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Hey, don't forget about Le blog de Jean-Paul Sartre either!

Or, similarly, Existential Star Wars.

kleinbl00  ·  4068 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The blog I'd seen. Star Wars I hadn't. The former is amusing. The latter is epic.

marston  ·  4066 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I personally have a preference for Camus' The Plague.

ButterflyEffect  ·  4069 days ago  ·  link  ·  

You've gotten through Gravity's Rainbow? I've tried twice now and just haven't had the time to stick with it. The Crying of Lot 49 is another very good Pynchon novel, and a shorter one at that.

Also, I second reading The Stranger and Catch-22, those are both very good books.

illasinsick  ·  4068 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It takes a few months unless you're reading all the time. Lot 49 is on my list.