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| Tigerlily |
Cult FictionCult FictionI've become interested in the idea of cult fiction after realising a lot of my favourite reads are cult classics. I'll post a list of cult classics for us to take a look at. I'm interested in what makes a book a cult classic. What are your thoughts? The following is a quote from: http://www.roughguides.com/websit...Press%20Releases/6cultfiction.pdf
In my opinion it's a book that stands out as having a unique voice and the balls to say something different or controversial. It's also a book I can't stop or often think about, almost to the point of obssession!! Books that fall into that category for me are: Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Vernon God Little, A Clockwork Orange, Lady Chatterley's Lover, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Valley of the Dolls, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Bell Jar, Trainspotting, The Outsider, To Kill a Mockingbird, I Capture a Castle... What books have you enjoyed that would fall into this 'category'? Or what cult classics have you disliked? I didn't like The Dice Man. Links: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/cultur...s/3672915/50-best-cult-books.html [/url] |
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| zanthewitch |
What a great question.
I would think of 'cult' fiction as the Star Trek of the written world. so my first offerings would be: Discworld - Terry Pratchett Dark Tower - Stephen King (sorry guys.....) Lord of the Rings - JRRT Hitch Hikers guide to the galaxy - Douglas Adams Catch 22 - Heller All the above have numerous groups/forums etc and have spawned Tea-Shirts....lol I have to agree with The catcher in the Rye, and the Lord of the flies - often these cult books change with their contemporarys don't you think? I'll keep thinking, there must be loads, depending on your own preferences and reading history. Zan |
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| heathera |
I've always thought of cult classics as being something controversial. A book that stands out because it's so different. So for me A Clockwork Orange is definitely a cult classic. It's a book that plays on your mind long after you've finished reading it, mostly because it's so horrifying.
Other books that have lingered long in my memory are A Thousand Splendid Suns and Wild Swans, although I haven't thought of either of those in the Cult Classics category. A book on a similar vain was The Book with No Name with an anonymous author. I don't know that it's reached a wide enough audience to be a cult classic, but it certainly fell into that "darker side" of reading for me. What about Phillip Pullman's Dark Materials Triology? I loved those. Perhaps more fantasy than cult classic on reflection? The author Iain Banks writes some "left of field" fiction, would The Wasp Factory be classed as a cult classic? For me it's about books that make me sit up and pay attention, not a comfortable read but compelling nonetheless. |
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| katey |
We Need to Talk about Kevin? | ||
| wonderlake |
To me 'cult' books are ones that you hear about off a friend, rather than Richard & Judy's Reading Group, LOL > ones that don't have a million dollar advertising budget, or are instantly optioned for a film...
Maybe they are the writer's one and only work - a masterpiece- which always leaves their readers wanting more. Always better if the writer themselves is a bit kooky too 
re Zan - Lord of the Flies this can't be cult anymore, it was a set -text in secondary school for me ! To Kill a Mockingbird was also a set text, and I hated it ! |
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| Tigerlily |
You're right The Wasp Factory is deemed a cult classic, and so is To Kill a Mockingbird. I don't think a book has to be horrific to fall into the category, but definitely has to stand out from the norm and really make you think. However having said that a lot of the classics are pretty harrowing. When I used to hear the term cult fiction, I always thought of books themed around drugs, but of course it's wider than that!! They seem to feature quirky, eccentric or unstable protagonists. Or characters who don't follow everyone else; stand up for their beliefs? | ||
| katey |
Has anyone read The Outsiders by SE Hinton? Her only novel, and often referred to as a cult read. I haven't read it yet, but is on my wishlist. | ||
| RonnieJacobs |
i have to agree katey, i also was thinking about the corrections by Jonathan Franzen |
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| wonderlake |
I think my current read- Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance would definetly fit the title 'cult classic' ;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/nov/19/fiction - the author is a recluse with a history of mental illness, who doesn't do interviews |
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| Tigerlily |
I'll post a list at some point for us all to look at. See which we've read. Gotta love a list! | ||
| Tigerlily |
Cult Classics - a list to be going on with:
The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster Cocaine Nights by J. G. Ballard Naked Lunch by William Burroughs Generation X by Douglas Coupland A Million Little Pieces by James Frey (originally published as non-fiction; the author was later revealed to have fabricated chunks of the text) On the Road by Jack Kerouac Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson Against Nature, Joris-Karl Huysmans Animal Farm, George Orwell Another Roadside Attraction, Tom Robbins Axel, Philippe Auguste Villiers De L'isle-Adam Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me, Richard Fariña The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath Brave New World, Aldous Huxley A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. JR. Miller The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger Catch-22, Joseph Heller A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess The Day of the Locust, Nathanael West Demian, Hermann Hesse Dune, Frank Herbert Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, Mary Shelley The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams The Killer Inside Me, Jim Thompson Lady Chatterley's Lover, D. H. Lawrence Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov Look Homeward, Angel, Thomas Wolfe Lord of the Flies, William Golding The Lord of the Rings, J. R.R. Tolkien Lost Horizon, James Hilton Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey On the Road, Jack Kerouac The Outsider, Colin Wilson The Outsiders, S. E. Hinton A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce René, François-René De Chateaubriand A Separate Peace, John Knowles Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse Slaughterhouse-Five or the Children's Crusade: A Duty-  with Death, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
The Sorrows of Young Werther, Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe The Stand, Stephen King Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse The Stranger, Albert Camus Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, Carlos Castaneda This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald Time and Again, Jack Finney Trout Fishing in America, Richard Brautigan 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur Clarke Walden Two, B. F. Skinner Warlock, Oakley Hall Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig |
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JD Salinger’s The Catcher in