Andrew Calcutt
Related: cult fiction
Cult Fiction: A Reader's Guide (1998) - Andrew Calcutt
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Biography
Andrew Calcutt is a ‘hackademic’ (journalist turned academic). --http://www.maglab.org/about_us/biography_andrew_calcutt.aspxCult Fiction: A Reader's Guide (1998) - Andrew Calcutt
"Cult Fiction: A Reader's Guide," by Andrew Calcutt and Richard Shephard, is basically a mini-encyclopedia devoted to "cult" fiction writers. The book's introductory essay notes that "cult fiction is literature from the margins and extremes [. . .] offering a different angle on social reality." But they also caution that "defining 'cult' is a risky business," and that ultimately "'cult' is what people think it is."Each entry briefly discusses the life and work of a "cult" author. Amusingly, every author is assigned a nickname. Examples: Kathy Acker, "the pirate punk princess"; Poppy Z. Brite, "Post-punk Poe"; Charles Bukowski, " the dirty old man of American letters"; Samuel R. Delany, "The man who made sci-fi hip"; Donald Goines, "Daddy Cool"; Yukio Mishima, "masochistic militarist"; Mary Shelley, "The woman who created a monster"; Kurt Vonnegut, "Where (Groucho) Marxist tendencies meet Kafka"; Jeanette Winterson, "The lioness of lesbianism." The group of authors is eclectic, international, and multicultural.
The book is illustrated throughout with author photos and reproductions of book covers. The main text is also interspersed with a series of interesting lists. Examples: "N is for Noir: 10 original pulp classics from the hard-boiled school"; "O is for oracle: 5 novelists whose predictions have come true." Although I'm sure readers will bemoan the absence of favorite cult authors from this gathering, "Cult Fiction" is still a richly entertaining and informative reference work. --Michael J. Mazza, amazon.com
Cult Fiction, a reader's guide, Andrew Calcutt and Richard Shephard
List of books:
Guillaume Apollinaire
Paul Auster
Brendan Behan
Jorge Luis Borges
Poppy Z. Brite
Charles Bukowski
William (Seward) Burroughs
Raymond Carver
Nick Cave
Don DeLillo
Marquis de Sade
Philip K. Dick
John Fante
Kinky Friedman
Jean Genet
Dashiell Hammett
Knut Hamsun
Richard Hell
Herbert Huncke
Jack Kerouac
Hanif Kureishi
Sheridan Le Fanu
H. P. Lovecraft
Malcolm Lowry
Horace McCoy
Gustav Meyrink
Henry Miller
Flann O'Brien
Georges Perec
Thomas de Quincey
Henry Rollins
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
J. D. Salinger
Delmore Schwartz
Hubert Selby Jr.
Iceberg Slim
Bram Stoker
Hunter S. Thompson
John Kennedy Toole
Alexander Trocchi
Kurt Vonnegut Jr
Nathanael West
Oscar Wilde
Cornell Woolrich
Rudolph Wurlitzer