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.

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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.
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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.