Cult fiction
Parent categories: cult - fiction - literature
Bibliography and connoisseurs: Anthology of Black Humor (1940) - André Breton * Classic Cult Fiction (1992) - Thomas Reed Whissen * Cult Fiction: Popular Reading and Pulp Theory (1998) - Clive Bloom * Cult Fiction: A Reader's Guide (1998) - Andrew Calcutt * The Rough Guide to Cult Fiction (2005) - various
Publishers of cult fiction: Grove Press - Olympia Press - more publishers
Genres of cult fiction: erotic ficion - genre fiction - grotesque literature - horror fiction - meta fiction - science fiction - transgressive fiction - underground literature
These are books that have survived and gone through quite tough times in order to survive. In some ways I would like to be strict and say a cult book needed to have been out of print at some point for at least 10 years, but I don't think that's possible. People now describe books as 'cult' on publication. --Toby Litt
The Rough Guide to Cult Fiction (2005) (Paperback) - Michaela Bushell, Helen Rodiss Paul Simpson [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
[Amazon.com]
Cult fiction has often been forbidden at the time of its publication.
Definition
Cult fiction is a term used to denote literature that has attracted a cult following.
A list of authors who have been described as belonging to that group would quickly become unwieldy but some literary genres tend to attract a cult following more readily than others. Most notably banned books, transgressive fiction, controversial books, erotic literature and genre fiction is prone to developing a cult following. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_fiction [Jan 2006]
Books that have attracted a cult following
- Anti-dipus (Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari)
- Atomised (Michel Houellebecq)
- The Atrocity Exhibition (J. G. Ballard)
- The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath)
- Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
- The Catcher in the Rye (J. D. Salinger)
- A Clockwork Orange (Anthony Burgess)
- The Dice Man (Luke Rhinehart)
- Dispatches (Michael Herr)
- The Doors of Perception (Aldous Huxley)
- Dune (Frank Herbert)
- The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (Tom Wolfe)
- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Hunter S. Thompson)
- The Female Eunuch (Germaine Greer)
- Food of the Gods (Terence McKenna)
- Function of the Orgasm (Wilhelm Reich)
- Gaia (James Lovelock)
- Gödel, Escher, Bach (Douglas Hofstadter)
- Le Grand Meaulnes (Alain Fournier)
- The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)
- The Illuminatus! Trilogy (Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea)
- Less Than Zero (Brett Easton Ellis)
- Journey to the End of the Night (Louis-Ferdinand Céline)
- The Naked Lunch (William S. Burroughs)
- Neuromancer (William Gibson)
- On the Road (Jack Kerouac)
- One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (Ken Kesey)
- The Outsider (Albert Camus)
- The Second Sex (Simone de Beauvoir)
- Slaughterhouse 5 (Kurt Vonnegut)
- The Storm of Steel (Ernst Jünger)
- The Story of the Eye (Georges Bataille)
- Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert Heinlein)
- The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge (Carlos Castaneda)
- Tropic of Cancer (Henry Miller)
- Trout Fishing in America (Richard Brautigan)
- The Wasp Factory (Iain Banks)
- White Noise (Don DeLillo)
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Robert Pirsig)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_following#Books
Cult fiction authors
Kathy Acker, J G Ballard , Iain Banks , John Barth , Poppy Z Brite, Charles Bukowski, Anthony Burgess , William S Burroughs , Albert Camus , Angela Carter , Nik Cohn , Colette , Dennis Cooper , Douglas Coupland , Don DeLillo , Philip K Dick , Fyodor Dostoevsky , Nick Earls , Bret Easton Ellis , James Ellroy , William Faulkner , John Fowles , William Gibson , Andre Gide , William Golding , Alasdair Gray , Radclyffe Hall , Knut Hamsun , Joseph Heller , Herman Hesse , Carl Hiaasen , S E Hinton , Nick Hornby , Aldous Huxley , John Irving , Erica Jong , James Joyce , Franz Kafka , Jack Kerouac , Ken Kesey , Stephen King , Milan Kundera , Hanif Kureishi , Harper Lee , Elmore Leonard , Doris Lessing , Mark Leyner , H P Lovecraft , Carson McCullers , Ian McEwan , Patrick McGrath , Jay McInerney , Colin MacInnes , Norman Mailer , Henry Miller , Yukio Mishima , Michael Moorcock, Walter Mosley , Vladimir Nabokov , Anais Nin , Jeff Noon , Joyce Carol Oates , Chuck Palahniuk , Mervyn Peake , Sylvia Plath , Richard Price , Thomas Pynchon , Ayn Rand , Luke Rhinehart , Anne Rice , Tom Robbins , Marquis de Sade , J D Salinger , Jean Paul Sartre , Hubert Selby , Will Self , Bruce Sterling , Robert Stone , D M Thomas , Hunter S Thompson , Jim Thompson , Gore Vidal , Kurt Vonnegut Jr , Irvine Welsh , Jeanette Winterson , Tom Wolfe --accessed on http://library.christchurch.org.nz/Guides/IfYouLike/cultfiction.asp, [Jan 2004], Wikipedia list at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jahsonic#Cult_fiction [Aug 2006]Cult Fiction Reading List
-Abbey, Edward. The Monkey Wrench Gang(1975). -Adams, Douglas. The Hitchhiker's Guideseries (begun 1979). -Auel, Jean M. The Clan of the Cave Bear(1980). -Ballard, J.G. Crash(1973). -Brautigan, Richard. Trout Fishing in America(1967). -Brust, Stephen. To Reign in Hell -Bukowski, Charles. Post Office(1971), Ham on Rye(1982). -Burgess, Anthony. A Clockwork Orange(1962). -Burroughs, William S. Junky(1958), Naked Lunch(1959). -Camus, Albert. The Stranger(1946). -Coupland, Douglas. Shampoo Planet(1992),Girlfriend in a Coma(1998). -Dick, Philip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?(1968). -Dunn, Carola. Geek Love(1989). -Eddings, David. The Belgariadseries (begun 1982). -Ellison, Harlan. Deathbird Stories(1983). -Gibson, William. Neuromancer.(1984). -Goines, Donald. Daddy Cool(1974), Eldorado Red(1973). -Heinlein, Robert. Stranger in a Strange Land.(1961). -Heller, Joseph. Catch-22.1961) -Hemingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises(1926). -Herbert, Frank. Dune(1969). -Hesse, Hermann. Siddhartha(1951), Steppenwolf(1946). -Highsmith, Patricia. The Talented Mr. Ripley.(1956). -Hubbard, L. Ron Battlefield Earth(1982). -Iceberg Slim. Trick Baby(1971). -Jong, Erica. Fear of Flying(1973). -Kafka, Franz. The Trial(1924). -Kerouac, Jack. On the Road(1957). -Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest(1962). -King, Stephen. The Gunslingerseries (begun 1982). -LaHaye, Tim & Jenkins, Jerry. The Left Behindseries (begun 1995). -Lovecraft, H.P. At the Mountains of Madness(c. 1928). -Matheson, Richard. What Dreams May Come(1978), I am Legend -Miller, Henry. Tropic of Cancer(1934). -Moorcock, Michael. The Elricseries (begun 1972). -Nabokov, Vladimir. Lolita(1955). -Nin, Anais. Delta of Venus, Little Birds.1979 -O'Connor, Flannery. The Complete Stories(1960) -Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar(1961). -Pynchon, Thomas. The Crying of Lot 49(1966). -Rand, Ayn. Atlas Shrugged(1957). -Rice, Anne. Interview with the Vampire(1976). -Robbins, Tom. Another Roadside Attraction(1971). -Rowling, J.K. The Harry Potterseries (begun 1997). -Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye(1951). -Sartre, Jean Paul. The Age of Reason(1945). -Sedaris, David. Barrel Fever and Other Stories(1994). -Selby, Hubert. Requiem for a Dream. -Stephenson, Neal. Snow Crash(1992). -Thompson, Jim. The Killer Inside Me. -Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings(1954). -Vonnegut, Kurt. Breakfast of Champions(1973). -Wells, Rebecca. Divine Secrets of the YaYa Sisterhood(1996). -Welsh, Irvine. Trainspotting(1993). --http://www.monroe.lib.in.us/fiction/cultbooks.html [Jun 2004]Toby Litt
Described by the Guardian as 'one of the foremost young lions of British hip-lit', Toby Litt author of Corpsing, and Deadkidsongs introduces a monthly section on cult literature; books which have achieved a legendary status.
What exactly is a 'cult classic'? Why do some books capture the imagination and achieve an often slavish devotion denied to others? We asked Toby Litt, a regular contributor to www.penguin.co.uk, to help us pull apart the mystery.
Can you define a cult classic?
I started thinking about this when I was asked to write about them. I tried to write something general about what I thought a cult book was, but it ended up sounding quite offensive because cult books are books that are overrated. In some ways they're books that take over peoples lives; in the most extreme cases they invest so much in them that there's a feed back loop going on and they start to see that book in their own lives. It's not a straightforward relationship in which you read a book and you put it away. Obviously this is enviable in some ways, but if someone's reading is reduced to just one or two books, then that's obviously quite distorted. I think there is a stricter way you can look at it. These are books that have survived and gone through quite tough times in order to survive. In some ways I would like to be strict and say a cult book needed to have been out of print at some point for at least 10 years, but I don't think that's possible. People now describe books as 'cult' on publication.
Are you saying that cult books are dangerous?
Definitely. There's a scene in Seven where they check all the public libraries and bookshops in New York to see whose been reading The Catcher in the Rye. There is a sense in which that comes from real life, as in Mark Chapman's obsession with The Catcher in the Rye when he shot John Lennon. --http://www.penguin.co.uk/static/packages/uk/readers/aug01/cult.html