BOOKS: R.I. Members Suggested Reading Material Thread

[yesferatu]

Arthur Machen's The Great God Pan, among many others. All of his collected writings I believe can be found online, including that story.

Machen put Lovecraft's you-know-what in the dirt.

Ever get your hands on any works by the pre-HPL author Hodgson? namely "The House on the Borderland (1908) -- perhaps the greatest of all Mr. Hodgson's works -- tells of a lonely and evilly regarded house in Ireland which forms a focus for hideous otherworld forces and sustains a siege by blasphemous hybrid anomalies from a hidden abyss below. The wanderings of the Narrator's spirit through limitless light-years of cosmic space and Kalpas of eternity, and its witnessing of the solar system's final destruction, constitute something almost unique in standard literature. And everywhere there is manifest the author's power to suggest vague, ambushed horrors in natural scenery. But for a few touches of commonplace sentimentality this book would be a classic of the first water." - this is Lovecraft's own review

[Corvidaerex]

Philip K. Dick rarely wrote anything banal, and he wrote scores of novels and essays.

Here are a few that aren't as well known, but are very wise about our times .. plus, he's a helluva writer. PKD produces a very weird feeling of dread, in my mind at least. I also love his savage mockery of various American cultures: '50s Bay Area, '60s hippies, '70s Southern California, etc.

The Man in the High Castle
The Simulacra
Ubik
Confessions of a Crap Artist (not sci-fi)
VALIS

... all great, all horrific and strange. The Simulacra is one that slapped me around when I finally re-read it this year.

But, warning: Philip K. Dick can wreck your reality. He does it on a regular basis, for me. Picking up a PKD book I've never read (or one I read as a kid) is very close to doing acid. Time and place tend to shift in uncomfortable ways.

Cheers to the William S. Burroughs' books. They all offer something, but I've been drawn recently to his Yage Letters and Junkie and Queer. And those experiments in London and Paris. Much of the latter is online.

Ambrose Bierce is worth studying, as are Mark Twain's anti-imperialist screeds. For pure writing and bile, Hunter Thompson's political and outlaw books of the '60s and '70s are perfect and awful.

Whether in Spanish or English, Carlos Fuentes deserves to be read, carefully. "The Hydra Head" is especially twisted. And anything by Jorge Luis Borges wil exercise the brain muscles. Umberto Eco, a Borges fan, has also written some of the richest, strangest modern novels. Foucault's Pendulum is pretty much the user's manual for Rigorous Intuition, although it's *much* funnier.

[Gouda]

***

The Magus by John Fowles

...if there was any central scheme beneath the (more Irish than Greek) stew of intuitions about the nature of human existence—and of fiction—it lies perhaps in the alternative title, whose rejection I sometimes reject: The Godgame. I did intend Conchis to exhibit a series of masks representing human notions of God, from the supernatural to the jargon-ridden scientific; that is, a series of human illusions about something that does not exist in fact, absolute knowledge and absolute power. The destruction of such illusions seems to me still an eminently humanist aim; and I wish there were some super-Conchis who could put the Arabs and Israelis, or the Ulster Catholics and Protestants, through the same heuristic mil as Nichols.

-- J. Fowles, from the 1976 foreword to The Magus

***

[trachys]

Perhaps less interesting than the preceeding, but easier to find: David Graeber's Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology (pdf).

Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value (and his activism) got him fired from Yale.

[yathrib]

A couple: Dhalgren by Samuel Delany and a classic, Morning of the Magicians. Much more I could and probably will add, but pressed for time.

[blanc]

Where Angels Fear ...Laurie Matthew general overview of ra issues from someone in survivor support
In the Public Interest ... Gerald James .. one man's experience of the corruption in arms trade. you might not like where he's coming from, but a fair bit of info there.

[Et in Arcadia ego]

Arthur Machen's The Great God Pan, among many others. All of his collected writings I believe can be found online, including that story.

Machen put Lovecraft's you-know-what in the dirt.

Ever get your hands on any works by the pre-HPL author Hodgson? namely "The House on the Borderland (1908) -- perhaps the greatest of all Mr. Hodgson's works -- tells of a lonely and evilly regarded house in Ireland which forms a focus for hideous otherworld forces and sustains a siege by blasphemous hybrid anomalies from a hidden abyss below. The wanderings of the Narrator's spirit through limitless light-years of cosmic space and Kalpas of eternity, and its witnessing of the solar system's final destruction, constitute something almost unique in standard literature. And everywhere there is manifest the author's power to suggest vague, ambushed horrors in natural scenery. But for a few touches of commonplace sentimentality this book would be a classic of the first water." - this is Lovecraft's own review

Yep.

I even have Lovecraft's review you cite buried under some boxes in God knows where..Hundreds of first editions from the early-pre 20th century are sitting rotting in a Wheat Barn last time I checked..

[Et in Arcadia ego]

I know Jeff enough I can cite one of his recommendations:

The Holographic Universe.

I'll add 'Darwin's Black Box' to that one..

[Seamus OBlimey]

Just a few of the many to have made a lasting impression...

Dennis Wheatley - The Ka of Gifford Hillary
Xaviera Hollander - The Happy Hooker
Luke Rhinehart - The Dice Man
Robrt Shea and Robert Anton Wilson - Illuminatus
Robert M. Pirsig - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Iain Banks - The Wasp Factory
Le Marquis de Sade's Philosophy in the Boudoir
David Yallop - To the Ends of the Earth
Alternative 3
Peter Kropotkin - Memoirs of a Revolutionist

And one I'm particularly pleased about having rescued recently...

Lomax Guthrie Seeger - Hard Hitting Songs for Hard-Hit People

[ParisianAttackMonkey]

Here's my overly long list...


Witness to a Century - George Seldes

Wizard of the Upper Amazon - F Bruce Lamb

Mutual Aid - Peter Kropotkin

In the Spirit of Crazy Horse - Peter Matthiessen

Intelligence in Nature - Jeremy Narby

Ayahuasca Visions - Luis Luna and Pablo Amaringo

Philip K Dick - Ubik

A Sorrow in Our Heart: The Life of Tecumseh - Allan Eckert

The Insanity of Normality - Arno Gruen

Eternal Treblinka - Charles Patterson

Wind, Sand, and Stars - Antoine de Saint Exupery

The Underground History of American Education - John Taylor Gatto

Upside Down - Eduardo Galeano

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee - Dee Brown

Flatland - Edwin A Abbot

The Monkey Wrench Gang - Edward Abbey

Culture Against Man - Jules Henry

Open Secrets - Walter Truett Anderson

Columbus and Other Cannibals - Jack Forbes

Food of the Gods - Terence McKenna

Cannibal Culture - Deborah Root

Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television - Jerry Mander

Programmed to Kill - David McGowan

The Assasination of Julius Caesar - Michael Parenti

David Stannard - American Holocaust

David Stannard - Honor Killing

Derrick Jensen - The Culture of Make Believe

Derrick Jensen - Walking on Water

The Murder of John Lennon - Fenton Bresler

Harvey and Lee - John Armstrong

[streeb]

More Dick:

Flow My Tears the Policeman Said - it doesn't seem to come up as much as many of his others, but I think it's one of his best. I'm going from memory but I recall in an interview, Dick was asked why he would make his protaganist a cop despite his counter-culture leanings, and he said something to the effect that "it's important to be kind to the cop inside of all of us..." or something. It touched me at the time.

Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon. I'm sure this is a big one round these parts. Maybe even THE big one. How weird is it that he's been on the Simpsons???

[OpLan]

John Wyndham - Day of the Triffids,The Kraken Wakes,The Trouble with Lichen

Stephen Donaldson - 'The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant,Unbeliever'.

Frank Herbert & Bill Ransom - The Jesus Incident

Iain Banks - Walking on Glass

Michael Moorcock - Behold the Man

Joseph Heller - Catch-22

Arthur C Clarke - Childhoods End

Martin Amis - Money

Clive Barker - WeaveWorld,The Great and Secret Show

Robert Heinlein - Stranger in a Strange Land

Ray Bradbury - the Silver Locusts,the Illustrated Man

[brownzeroed]

Glass Bead Game, Damien, Steppenwolf -- Herman Hesse
100 Years of Solitude -- Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Finnegan's Wake -- James Joyce
So the Wind Won't Blow it All Away, Williard and His Bowling Trophies, The Hawkline Monster -- Richard Brautigan
Still Life With Woodpecker -- Tom Robbins
Nightside -- Joyce Carol Oates
The Plague -- Albert Camus
God Bless You Mr. Rosewater, Mother Night, Blue Beard -- Kurt Vonnegut
Ghost Town -- Robert Coover
Cool for You -- Eileen Myles
Thinking in Pictures -- John Sayles
Masters of Light -- Dennis Shaefer, Larry Salvato
Montage Eisenstein -- Jacques Aumont
The Logic of Images -- Wim Wenders

[kristinerosemary]

phil dick's novella 'do androids dream of electric sheep,'
turned into movie 'bladerunner'

'the parallax view' by loren singer

'the manchurian candidate' by richard condon

'the autobiography of my mother' by jamaica kincaid

'delirious new york: a retroactive manifesto for manhattan'
by rem koolhaus (oxford u press, ny 1978)

'the swift runner: racing speed through the ages'
by lady anne wentworth (allen and unwin, london 1957)

'the I Ching or book of changes,' wilhelm/baynes translation

tom pynchon has a fat new novel, 'against the day,' but i liked
'the crying of lot 49' best, even though the author has basically
disowned it.

[Et in Arcadia ego]

The Chronicles of Amber - Zelazny

Stalking the Nightmare - Harlan Ellison