Current Events > Is there any good surrealist literature?

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I realised recently, I've probably never read any surrealist literature. I've seen some (arguably) surrealist films, and viewed surrealist paintings. Are there some good surrealist books, and if so, what are they?
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Not sure if these are officially surrealist but the following stories come to mind:

The Dream of a Ridiculous Man by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman by Angela Carter
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How are Ken Kesey's book and TTM surrealist? Wtf?
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A Scanner Darkly by Philip K Dick

Really any books by Dick
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This isn't really what I had in mind.

I mean, really strange shit. Very abstract. Possibly without any real meaning, just surrealism for the sake of surrealism. If you want some reasonably good examples of this, think Eraserhead, or Lost Highway, or The Treachery of Images.

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House of Leaves?
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Ooh

John Dies at the End
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Hey. This is more like it. But stranger still. You know, you might read the book, and have no idea wtf the "point" was, if any. Or there might be 3 or 4 ways to interpret the main plot of the book.
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DavidWong posted...

Ooh

John Dies at the End

You know, when I saw your username, I thought of that author. I assume you're named after him, rather than you're actually call David Wong IRL?

I thought about reading that for quite a while, but it seemed low-brow and, you know...mainstream.

I'm not even sure if there are any proper surrealist books. I'm also really surprised that nobody has mentioned Kafka's works yet.

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works that use photographs as found objects can be considered surrealist in the sense that they blur the line between fiction and reality

try Sebald's "The Emigrants"
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Sunhawk posted...

DavidWong posted...

Ooh

John Dies at the End

You know, when I saw your username, I thought of that author. I assume you're named after him, rather than you're actually call David Wong IRL?

I thought about reading that for quite a while, but it seemed low-brow and, you know...mainstream.

I'm not even sure if there are any proper surrealist books. I'm also really surprised that nobody has mentioned Kafka's works yet.

Yeah I took his name.

It is pretty low brow, but also a fucking awesome book. Give it a try.
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DavidWong posted...

Sunhawk posted...

DavidWong posted...

Ooh

John Dies at the End

You know, when I saw your username, I thought of that author. I assume you're named after him, rather than you're actually call David Wong IRL?

I thought about reading that for quite a while, but it seemed low-brow and, you know...mainstream.

I'm not even sure if there are any proper surrealist books. I'm also really surprised that nobody has mentioned Kafka's works yet.

Yeah I took his name.

It is pretty low brow, but also a fucking awesome book. Give it a try.

Do you remember when the serious reading communities wouldn't shut the fuck up about House of Leaves? Basically, for all of the 2000s, they just talked and talked about it. Crazy. I admit, though, it's a very good book, and NOBODY could say that it's just another cookie cutter release.

MZD is one of those writers that self-destructed, which is both sad and hilarious. He wrote that fucking dreadful Only Revolutions, one of the worst books I have EVER read cover to cover...and then there was his super-epic The Familiar, which sounds like garbage, and got cancelled after 5 of the 28 volumes were releases. I wonder what his next career move will be. A book about the president's children getting kidnapped, written in a fictional language of his own creation and without a glossary at the end?

Shame. House of Leaves was one of those special works.

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Yeah it was all the rage online in the early 2000s lol. It's good, but it wasn't gods gift to literature
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