* (in no order)
Maurice Blanchot DEATH SENTENCE
Agota Kristof THE BOOK OF LIES (‘The Notebook’, ‘The Proof’, ‘The Third Lie’)
Robert Pinget FABLE
Pierre Guyotat EDEN EDEN EDEN
Ivy Compton-Burnett THE PRESENT AND THE PAST
Kathy Acker GREAT EXPECTATIONS
Ishmael Reed MUMBO JUMBO
Anna Kavan ICE
The Marquis de Sade THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM
Renee Gladman THE RAVICKA SERIES (‘Event Factory’, ‘The Ravickians’, ‘Ana Pavlova Crosses a Bridge’, ‘Houses of Ravicka’)
Lynne Tillman NO LEASE ON LIFE
Paul Metcalf WATERS OF THE POTOWMACK
Alan Warner MORVERN CALLAR
Ronald Firbank VALMOUTH
Alain Robbe-Grillet RECOLLECTIONS OF THE GOLDEN TRIANGLE
Marguerite Duras MALADY OF DEATH
Claude Simon TRYPTICH
Ann Quin BERG
Joy Williams THE QUICK AND THE DEAD
Steven Millhauser EDWIN MULLHOUSE: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF AN AMERICAN WRITER
Natalie Sarraute THE GOLDEN FRUITS
Raymond Roussel LOCUS SOLUS
Derek McCormack CASTLE FAGGOT
Tony Duvert STRANGE LANDSCAPE
Rudolf Wurlitzer THE DROP EDGE OF YONDER
Thomas Bernhard CONCRETE
Jean Rhys GOOD MORNING, MIDNIGHT
William Burroughs THE WILD BOYS
Max Frisch MAN IN THE HOLOCENE
David Foster Wallace INFINITE JEST
Robert Gluck JACK THE MODERNIST
Dodie Bellamy THE LETTERS OF MINA HARKER
Kevin Killian SHY
Lyn Hejinian MY LIFE
Osamu Dazai NO LONGER HUMAN
JG Ballard THE ATROCITY EXHIBITION
Edouard Leve AUTOPORTRAIT
Laszlo Krasznahorkai THE MELANCHOLY OF EXISTENCE
Michel Butor MOBILE
Dambudzo Marechera BLACK SUNLIGHT
Ingeborg Bachmann MALINA
Christine Brooke-Rose LIFE, END OF
Georges Perec LIFE: A USERS MANUAL
Jean Genet FUNERAL RIGHTS
Raymond Queneau EXERCISES IN STYLE
Philippe Sollers EVENT
William Gaddis CARPENTER’S GOTHIC
John Barth GILES GOAT-BOY
Thomas Pynchon MASON & DIXON
Philip K. Dick UBIK
James McCourt TIME REMAINING
Denton Welch IN YOUTH IS PLEASURE
Andre Gide THE COUNTERFEITERS
Marie Redonnet THE HÔTEL SPLENDID TRILOGY (‘Hotel Splendid’, ‘Forever Valley’, ‘Rose Mellie Rose’)
Samuel Beckett HOW IT IS
Blake Butler 300,000,000
W.G. Sebald THE RINGS OF SATURN
Julio Cortazar 62: A MODEL KIT
Muriel Spark THE DRIVER’S SEAT
Jacques Roubaud THE GREAT FIRES OF LONDON: A CASEBOOK
Vladimir Nabokov PALE FIRE
*
p.s. Hey. So, I’m absolutely positive I’ve forgotten some novels I revere, but there’s a shot at listing my current all-time very favorites. Obviously, the biggest reason I’m sharing my faves is in hopes that you reading this might share some of your favorite novels in return. If you could spare the memory and brain power and typing habits re: that request over the weekend, that would be awesome. ** Misanthrope, Whatever happened to that band whose name was !!! ? I suppose they’re still around somewhere. One day a week isn’t bad, obvs. Your co-worker sounds more than a wee bit paranoid. Unless he has a compromised immune system or something. Your poor mom. I hope her spirits lift considerably and instantaneously. Fun: that festival, Um, dude, I not only know who those artists are, I have informed opinions about their stuff, I’ll have you know. Not shabby outside here today, warm but not too, bell clear. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Renaud Camus, that old thing? I haven’t heard him or his work discussed here in ages. He’s definitely frowned upon when the subject is raised. He used to be published by my publisher back in the ‘Tricks’ days, but they dumped him for the obvious reasons. Everyone, Mr. Ehrenstein needs your kind assistance: ‘My monetary needs are acute as they never have been before. Please contribute what you can here.’ Alternately, if you’re in LA: TEAC reel-to-real tape recorder A-33009X-2T. $200.00. David Ehrenstein. 1462 S. Shenandoah St. #7. Los Angeles, Ca. 90035. ** Bernard, Good question. I even liked Lon Jr. when he was a ruin. There’s just something so poignant about him. Your link to Donald’s and my immortalisation didn’t work. Larry was a real pip, that’s for sure. He was my first close friend to die of AIDS. If I’m not mistaken, that Terry Gross interview with Tim occurred when he and I were doing a reading together in Philadelphia. Not that that’s an interesting tidbit. Hit that motherfucking deadline, man. Think of the children. Happy to meet you whenever as soon and as wherever as you like! ** _Black_Acrylic, It’s true! Our next door neighbor was a very famous, now forgotten horse jockey named Johnny Longden. Wink Martindale, who was a very famous DJ in the US, lived down the street as did the actress Tippi Hedren. And Michael Anthony who grew up to be the bass player of Van Halen lived in my hood too. That title ‘The Boy Behind the Door’ is enough to get me to watch it, thanks, Ben! ** Dominik, Hi!!! It was fun, all right. Some parks, not many, have extremely themed hotels like that. It was cool, although that little room had shitty air conditioning. Ooh, I like the sound of that app. What a perfect way to hook up. Gracias. Love reading your mind and then writing your all-time favorite novel, G. ** Nick Toti, Hi. That is trippy. Awesome that you’re doing a project on Chaney Jr. He’s so forgotten and so ripe to be forefronted interestingly. What’s the project, if you can say> ** Bill, Hi. Really, you’re not a classic monster movie guy? He was inescapable in most of them. Ooh, 35mm ‘Eraserhead’. Are people voting on who they like better: Lynch or Cronenberg? I guess I’d go with Lynch, if so. ** Okay. Have a novelistic weekend. See you on Monday.
Now available in North America 
*
Hi Dennis !
Thank you for this list ! wow so many thing I’ve never heard of… pff wow,
Well, here is my little list, which is very very french, and you probably know all of it :
Jean Rhys, Good Morning Midnight
Agota Kristof, Le Grand Cahier
Robert Pinget, L’inquisitoire
Pierre Guyotat, Tombeau pour cinq cent mille soldats
Samuel Beckett, Molloy / Malone meurt / L’innommable
Tony Duvert, L’île atlantique
Marcel Proust, A la recherche du temps perdu
Dennis Cooper, Sluts
Antoine Volodine, Terminus Radieux
Nathalie Sarraute, Tropismes
Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Voyage au bout de la nuit
Steven Millhauser, La vie trop brève d’Edwin Mullhouse
Théo Casciani, Rétine
Edouard Levé, Autoportrait
Voilà… have a great week-end !
Hi Dennis,
What an impossible thing to do.
Derek Jarman – Chroma
Edouard Leve – Suicide
Marquis de Sade – Justine
Pierre Guyotat – Coma
Samuel R. Delany – Dhalgren / Hogg
Urs Allemann – Babyfucker
Georges Bataille – Story of the Eye / Blue of Noon
Adolfo Bioy Casares – The Invention of Morel
New Juche – Mountainhead
+ some Celine, Michaux, Blanchot, Acker, Duras, Beckett, Genet, Dick, Le Guin, Mishima, Ballard, Camus & Vonnegut but can’t make up my mind right now
I will immediately stop thinking about this now, questions like these can drive my insane.
Marcel Proust “a la recherche du temps perdu”
Robert Musil “The Man Without Qualities”
Ronald Firbank “Concerning the Eccentricties of Cardinall Pirelli”
Henry James “The Wings of the Dove”
Herman Melville “The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade”
Mark Twain “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”
Jean Genet “Our Lady of the Flowers”
Jane Bowles “Two Serious Ladies”
PaulBowles “The Sheltering Sky”
Dennis Cooper “The Marble Swarm”
Denton Welch “A Voice Through a Cloud”
William S. Burroughs “Naked Lunch”
Patricia Highsmith “small g”
James Joyce “Ulysses”
Samuel R.Dlany “Dhalgren”
James McCourt “Time Remaining”
Thomas Man “Doctor Fautus”
Le Baphomet by Pierre Klossowski
Re Stanton portrait: well, shoot. trying this, as I should have realized: Tim, Dennis, Donald on the Larry Stanton website:
http://www.larrystanton.net/new-gallery/lvgocbuq5z5oswf1l50uhhh4eb4zp5
along with Dennis and Donald, Brad Gooch. Under “Figures” at the site: I remember “Boy with Horse” and “Boy with Apples” so well.
I’m having a very good time. I have a(nother) friend from the US who has not seen before this beautiful city, so from Wednesday I will probably take him around for a couple of days. If on Monday or Tuesday you have an hour for a coffee, or to see something — the weather looks iffy for both days, but the temps just as we like them — shoot me the text. Or if there is something to see.
Novels is hard, and I don’t have my bookshelves to look at. Not surprising that there are a lot of writers, esp French, that you mention whom I admire a lot but not so many I feel I must live with over and over, as I do these:
Our happy overlaps: Of Bernhard, for me Correction, Old Masters, Wittgenstein’s Nephew, Extinction all too amazing to choose among.
Perec–Life, A User’s Manual (again too many others to choose)
Queneau – Exercises in Style (funny, I never think of it as a novel but of course it reads beautifully as one)
Philip K Dick – UBIK (Yes!)
André Gide – The Counterfeiters
Samuel Beckett – How It Is (Perfection)
W. G. Sebald – The Rings of Saturn (cool we both have the same #1)
Muriel Spark – The Driver’s Seat (! I did not expect that one)
Nabokov – Pale Fire (genius)
And then. Of course I have a lot of oldies, with a bent toward unreliable or otherwise weird narrators:
James Hogg – The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
William Godwin – Caleb Williams
Mary Shelley – Frankenstein
Charles Dickens – Bleak House
Leo Tolstoy – Anna Karenina
J W von Goethe – Elective Affinities
Gustave Flaubert – Sentimental Education
Stendhal – The Red and the Black
Bram Stoker – Dracula
E F Benson – All the Lucia novels
Joseph Conrad: The Secret Agent
Ford Madox Ford: Parade’s End (4-novel sequence)
Virginia Woolf – Orlando, To the Lighthouse
Marcel Proust – Swann’s Way (only one I’ve read yet)
Robert Musil – Young Törless
Thomas Mann – The Holy Sinner
George Orwell – 1984
Flann O’Brien – The Third Policeman
Mikhail Bulgakov – The Master and Margarita
Dashiell Hammett – The Thin Man
James M Cain – The Postman Always Rings Twice
Jim Thompson – The Killer Inside Me
Patricia Highsmith – All the Ripley novels, esp Ripley’s Game
Thomas Pynchon – The Crying of Lot 49
Edmund White – Forgetting Elena
Italo Calvino – If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler
Shirley Jackson – The Haunting of Hill House
Russell Greenan – It Happened in Boston?
Thomas Berger – Killing Time
Harry Matthews – Cigarettes
John Ashbery and Janes Schuyler – A Nest of Ninnies
Dennis Cooper – The Sluts, God Jr, I Wished
I’m going to call these novellas novels because they are amazing:
Charles Dickens – A Christmas Carol
Gustave Flaubert – A Simple Heart, The Legend of St Julian Hospitaler
Mark Twain – The Mysterious Stranger
Henry James – The Turn of the Screw; What Maisie Knew; The Spoils of Poynton
Joseph Conrad – Heart of Darkness
James Joyce – The Dead
Ok that got to be a long list, all tip-top, though plus the 47 thousand I haven’t thought of
Dennis, God, I have no idea. !!! Hahaha. No idea at all.
Thanks. Yeah, my mom’s teeth have not improved. Or the infection hasn’t. We’ll be contacting the dentist today for a different antibiotic. If anything, it’s gotten worse, with swelling in her chin up through her jaw on the one side. Erp. We’ll get it sorted.
Yeah, my co-worker is really, really scared of the ‘ro. Barely leaves his house at all and refuses to go into any place where even one person isn’t masked. I feel bad for him, but I do think he’s overdoing it a bit. I talked to him the other night and tried to calm him down, but I think he’s set on quitting and finding a remote-only job.
Hahaha, I had a sneaking suspicion you might know those artists. 😉
Hmm, favorite novels of all time. Lists are fun. I’m not going to include any of yours because that’s…weird, I think, and you already know how I feel about your work. Any other place and yours would be included. I’ll list a few.
The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann
Ulysses, James Joyce
Gravity’s Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
Time’s Arrow, Martin Amis
The Discovery of Heaven, Harry Mulisch
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon
The Folding Star, Alan Hollinghurst
How the Dead Live, Will Self
The Sorrows of Young Werther, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
2666, Roberto Bolano
The New Sweet Style, Vasily Aksyonov
Dorian, Will Self
The Beautiful and Damned, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Just off the top of my head. And yes, there are two Selfs there. Sorry. Just love those novels.
(Try, My Loose Thread, God Jr, The Sluts, I Wished…hehehe)
Great list Dennis!
Oh boy, favourite novels, so many. So, so many.
I can say, this will be a list of my (current) favourites, that have stuck with me.
My all time favourites are in the past but also in the future. Maybe in the present.
It’s an ever shifting tide as you know.
Here we go:
H(A)PPY by Nicola Barker
I am Sovereign by Nicola Barker
Wide Open by Nicola Barker
Reversed Forecast by Nicola Barker
Clear: a transparent novel by Nicola Barker
Glamorama by Bret Easton Ellis
White by Bret Easton Ellis
Friedrichstrasse 19 by Emma Harding
I Who Have Known Men by Jaqueline Harpman
The New Church Ladies by (faux-shock face) Jim Goad
The Head-Ache Factory by Jim Goad
William S. Burroughs- A Life by Barry Miles
All The Living & The Dead by Hayley Campbell
No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy by Mark Hodkinson
The Marbled Swarm by Dennis Cooper
Cock & Bull by Will Self
The Quantity Theory of Insanity by Will Self
Grey Area by Will Self
The Sweet Smell of Psychosis: a novella by Will Self
Lanky by Max Porter
Filth by Irvine Welsh
A Clockword Orange by Anthony Burgess
Nation by Terry Pratchett
Adjustment Day Chuck Palahniuk
Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk
Identity Crisis by Ben Elton
This Other Eden by Ben Elton
Blast From The Past by Ben Elton
Popcorn by Ben Elton
Stark by Ben Elton
GOD JR. by Dennis Cooper
Heck Texas by Tex Gresham
Box-Hill by Adam Mars-Jones
Takeaway by Tommy Hazard
Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff by Sean Penn
Three Women by Lisa Taddeo
Queer by William S. Burroughs
Naked Lunch by Williams S. Burroughs
The Field by Robert Seethaler
Shock Value by John Waters
Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild & True Story of Mad Max Fury Road by Kyle Buchanen
Virus by Linda Stupart
Vantablack by Lee Rourke
In the Desert of Mute Squares by M. Kitchell
Experimental Men by M. Kitchell
The Wolf Hour by M. Kitchell
Prelude to Transgression (also) by M. Kitchell
Barrage Tapes by N. Casio Poe (of which I was supremely lucky he publish)
Indelicacy by Amina Cain
The Well-Dressed Wound by Derek McCormack
Thatcher’s Tomb by Stephen Barber
Notes On Suicide by Simon Critchley
Thick Skin by N/A Oparah
Wow! Your list is pretty great. It’s funny as I sit here, I can list my favorite authors, but my favorite novel?? For instance, I love Osamu Dazai, but then when I think about which novel I think is incredible, it’s very difficult for me. Because I love Dazai’s overall voice in all of his writings, it’s hard for me to separate his works. If there was an author who I don’t normally like, and all of sudden they wrote a novel among their drek, then that stands out. Burroughs to me has three sections. His early narratives like Junkie, then there’s “Naked Lunch, “Soft Machine, Wild Boys, and then his later novels. You listed “Wild Boys” as your favorite, but what about “Soft Machine?” The authors I love such as P.G. Wodehouse, or even the crime (heist) novels by Richard Stark – to me, all of their novels are great. Enrique Vila-Matas and Jean-Patrick Manchette are current faves, but it will be hard for me to pull one of their novels as their masterpiece. I love them all! Today is Saturday, and for sure, I’m going to be thinking about my list of favorite all-time novels. But again, your list is pretty hot!
Hey Dennis – Always enjoy these list days. Nice to see everyone else’s picks too.
I am totally unfamiliar with Dambudzo Marechera’s BLACK SUNLIGHT. Have you ever done a post on him or that novel?
I don’t know that Christine Brooke-Rose novel either. I’ve been meaning to check out her work. Any particular way you’d describe that book?
There’s a lot of overlap on our lists – at least on authors – so I’m not including anything by fave writers Nabokov, Cortazar, Kristof, Reed, Robbe-Grillet, Warner, Duras, Williams, Bernhard, Rhys, Frisch, Acker, Ballard, Perec, Beckett, Sebald.
Here’s the rest:
AT SWIM TWO BIRDS – Flann O’Brien
AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
BLEAK HOUSE – Charles Dickens
CAIN’S BOOK – Alexander Trocchi
CORREGIDORA – Gayl Jones
DEMOCRACY – Joan Didion
DOG SOLDIERS – Robert Stone
END OF THE STORY – Lydia Davis
EPITAPH OF A SMALL WINNER – Machado de Assis
FRANNY AND ZOOEY – J.D. Salinger
INVISIBLE CITIES – Italo Calvino
INVISIBLE MAN – Ralph Ellison
IT THEN – Danielle Collobert
LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN – Hubert Selby Jr.
MY LOOSE THREAD – Dennis Cooper
OUTER DARK – Cormac McCarthy
PORNOGRAFIA – Witold Gombrowicz
SENTIMENTAL EDUCATION – Flaubert
SLEEPLESS NIGHTS – Elizabeth Hardwick
SNOW COUNTRY – Yasunari Kawabata
THE GOOD SOLDIER – Ford Maddox Ford
THE OPPOSING SHORE – Julien Gracq
THE SKIN – Curzio Malaparte
THE UNFORTUNATES – BS Johnson
TIME OF THE DOVES – Merce Rodereda
TOMB FOR BORIS DAVIDOVICH – Danilo Kis
TWO SERIOUS LADIES – Jane Bowles
UNDER THE VOLCANO – Malcolm Lowery
WITTGENSTEIN’S MISTRESS – David Markson
2666 – Roberto Bolano
How’re things coming with the film prep? And theater script?
I’ve been reeling from having to put our beloved cat Simone to sleep a few weeks ago. Very unexpected and brutal. Finally, slowly, getting back to my novel.
Hey Dennis,
Thanks always for the favorites list, I’m eager to try everything I’m not familiar with yet. I made a sad slog into the opening pages of *Eden Eden Eden* earlier this year before I returned it to the library, reckon I’ll try those swollen sentences again at a faster tempo if I can help it.
*Autoportrait* is awesome, it seems to me it’s been building some momentum of influence… Chelsea Hodson did a take on the format, and looks like Jesse Ball has an *Autoportrait* of his own coming out soon. I could get down with a whole genre of the Autoportrait.
A few of my favorites:
Samuel Beckett THE UNNAMABLE
Dennis Cooper TRY
Helen DeWitt THE LAST SAMURAI
Bret Easton Ellis THE RULES OF ATTRACTION
Brian Evenson ALTMANN’S TONGUE
J.-K. Huysmans A REBOURS
Franz Kafka THE METAMORPHOSIS
Flannery O’Connor WISE BLOOD
Paul Preciado TESTO JUNKIE
Oh wow, I was curious as to when you would update your Top 50 list, but this is even more than that, like 61! I actually think I’ve read 25 or so of these. One question though. When we last discussed this way back when, you mentioned how if you ever did such a list again you would replace MASON & DIXON with AGAINST THE DAY… yet I see MASON & DIXON is still here. Did you change your mind again, or…?
My own Top Ten (in no order):
La-bas (J.-K. Huysmans)
Guide (Dennis Cooper) well, duh!
American Psycho (Bret Eason Ellis)
Sea of Fertility (Yukio Mishima) kind of cheating this but whatever
This Day All Gods Die (Stephen R. Donaldson)
Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland/Through the Looking-Glass (Lewis Carroll)
The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter (Carson McCullers)
The Place of Dead Roads (William S. Burroughs)
Dhalgren (Samuel R. Delany)
Other candidates: Forbidden Colors (Mishima), Against The Day (Pynchon), Against Nature (Huysmans), Glamorama (Ellis), Angels/Tree of Smoke (Denis Johnson), The Overnight (Ramsey Campbell), The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand), Les Miserables (Victor Hugo), Red Dragon (Thomas Harris), The Recognitions (Gaddis), The Magic Mountain (Mann), Moby Dick (Melville), The Monk (Matthew Lewis), Unlimited Dream Company (Ballard), Other Voices, Other Rooms (Capote), Edwin Mullhouse (Milhauser), Valis (Philip K. Dick), Neuromancer (Gibson), The White Plague (Frank Herbert), Frankenstein (Shelley), Dracula (Stoker), Maldoror (Lautreamont), Star Maker (Olaf Stapledon), Play It As It Lays (Didion), The Waves (Woolf), The Name of the Rose (Eco), The Man Who Fought Alone (Stephen R. Donaldson), etc.
And that’s not even counting books written by my friends (well, with the exception of you, but I make an exception there as I was a fan first!)
Speaking of Ellis, did you see how THE SHARDS will be coming out in book form in January of next year? I was very excited about that… and 608 pages! I never thought he would do such a long book again…
Hi!!
What an excellent weekend! Superb choices on your end – I’ll be feasting on your list for a long time. Thank you! While I was compiling my own list, I had to realize that even though I read lots of novels, the majority of my all-time favorite books are non-fiction. Anyway, here goes:
Dennis Cooper – My Loose Thread & The Sluts
Poppy Z. Brite – Exquisite Corpse
Édouard Louis – History of Violence
Blake Butler – 300,000,000 (a happy overlap!)
Bret Easton Ellis – The Rules of Attraction
Irvine Welsh – Trainspotting & Marabou Stork Nightmares
Chuck Palahniuk – Fight Club
You know, it’s such a cheesy thing to say, but your love is already reality. You DO write my favorite novels, haha. So, thank you! Love chopping off the end of A Little Life so that it can make my list too, Od.
Hi Dennis, been reading the blog for a long time, but this is my first time commenting (so let me quick say thank you for your writing and for the blog both of which have been hugely and consistently sources of inspiration and pleasure).
Re your list, many books I love and many that I’ve not yet read (and many novels I haven’t read by authors whose other books I love…needless to say I’m jotting many down to pick up asap). As for my list, I’m away from home at the moment (away from from my bookshelves) which is good, because it will keep me from overthinking it:
To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
The Castle, Franz Kafka
Beetle Leg, John Hawkes
Miss Lonelyhearts, Nathanael West
2666, Roberto Bolaño
The Hour of the Star, Clarice Lispector
Berg, Ann Quin
Last Days, Brian Evenson
Fabe, Robert Pinget
Pedro Paramo, Juan Rulfo
Mao II, Don Delillo
Almayer’s Folly, Joseph Conrad
The Vivisector, Patrick White
Ray, Barry Hannah
The Joke, Milan Kundera
The Weight of Things, Marianne Fritz
Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry
Love Hotel, Jane Unrue
Carpenter’s Gothic, William Gaddis
Man in the Holocene, Max Frisch
hi dc!! i hope you’re well, and apologies for my absence. it’s really super exciting following the news of movie funding and everything to do with that coming together, btw. congratulations!
haha another day on which i realise i haven’t read anything like enough. here are my meagre pickings. i don’t wanna repeat anything that’s already on your/other commenters’ lists (you’ll have to take it for granted that reading you, Acker, Burroughs & Joyce at 14yrs old had a profound impact and ruined any chance i might have had at making money yada yada yada) so there are already a bunch of gigantic holes here… and i’m sure i’ve forgotten most of the books i’ve read, so this isn’t fully representative… are these my favourites? are there such things?
in no particular order:
Gertrude Stein — THE MAKING OF AMERICANS and BLOOD ON THE DINING ROOM FLOOR (there is a serious lack of love for Stein on this page rn)
Truman Capote — ANSWERED PRAYERS
Yukio Mishima — THE SAILOR WHO FELL FROM GRACE WITH THE SEA
Haruki Murakami — KAFKA ON THE SHORE (for the times when i’m trying to be sensitive in a cafe)
Ryu Murakami — ALMOST TRANSPARENT BLUE (for the other times)
Alan Burns — EUROPE AFTER THE RAIN
June Gibbons — PEPSI COLA ADDICT
Thomas Nashe — THE UNFORTUNATE TRAVELLER
Daniel Defoe — A JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR
Bruno Schulz — THE STREET OF CROCODILES (does this count as a novel?)
Leslie Feinberg — STONE BUTCH BLUES
Junji Ito — UZUMAKI
Wilson Harris — JONESTOWN
Shirley Jackson — THE SUNDIAL
Italo Calvino — THE BARON IN THE TREES
Naoki Urasawa — MONSTER
George Eliot — MIDDLEMARCH
Andy Warhol — A: A NOVEL
Richard Adams — WATERSHIP DOWN
Barbara Comyns — WHO WAS CHANGED AND WHO WAS DEAD
William Faulkner — AS I LAY DYING
Raymond Briggs — WHEN THE WIND BLOWS
Thomas Mann — DR FAUSTUS (okay, i allowed myself one repetition)
Kim Stanley Robinson — RED MARS
Raymond Queneau — ZAZIE IN THE METRO
Mark Z. Danielewski — HOUSE OF LEAVES
Donna Tartt — THE SECRET HISTORY
Joseph Heller — CATCH-22
Marlo Mogensen — SPIKES
Eileen Myles — CHELSEA GIRLS
László Krasznahorkai — SÁTÁNTANGÓ
Henry Darger — THE STORY OF THE VIVIAN GIRLS (what little i’ve managed to track down of it anyway)
Joseph Roth — THE RADETZKY MARCH
César Aira — AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF A LANDSCAPE PAINTER
Shusaku Endo — THE SEA AND POISON
Mary Butts — ARMED WITH MADNESS
Yuz Aleshkovsky — CAMOUFLAGE
Henry James — THE AMBASSADORS
Fernanda Melchor — HURRICANE SEASON
Lore Segal — LUCINELLA
(if i can stretch the definition of “novel” just a little, then
Charles Schulz — PEANUTS
Alison Bechdel — DYKES TO WATCH OUT FOR
Gary Trudeau — DOONESBURY
should be here too)
so many millions of books i need to read! and i’m still looking for those perfect novels: one should read like Galaxie 500 sounds, one like Eric Dolphy sounds, and one like several massive gothic cathedrals all devouring each other. if you’ve read any of these pls let me know
Hi Dennis! I have been reading your blog for the past few months, and I really enjoy every installment. It certainly made my train commute much more worthwhile.
Some of my favorite novels, in no particular order, are:
-“Journey to the End of the Night” and
Death on the Installment Plan” by Louis-Ferdinand Céline
-“Confessions of a Mask” by Yukio Mishima
-“Invisible Cities” by Italo Calvino
-“Misery” by Stephen King
-“Spaniels” by Jukka Siikala
-And, for good measure, I will just add Franz Kafka, even though I prefer his fragments to his novels.
Eager to dig into your list.
Here’s mine:
MOTORMAN by David Ohle
ROADSIDE PICNIC by Arkadiy & Boris Strugatsky
WE by Yevgeniy Zamyatin
ICE by Anna Kavan
LOGAN’’S RUN by William F. Nolan & George Clayton Johnson
TOO LOUD A SOLITUDE by Bohumil Hrabal
THE DESERT OF MUTE SQUARES by M. Kitchell
THE PLAYERS OF NULL-A by A.E. Van Vogt
THE WILLOWS by Algernon Blackwood
AGUÀ VIVA by Clarice Lispector
AUSTERLITZ by W.G. Sebald
THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES by Roberto Bolaño
TIME OUT OF JOINT by PKD
RAY by Barry Hannah
HUNGER by Knut Hamsun
DAD SAYS HE SAW YOU AT THE MALL by Ken Sparling
THE HUMAN WAR by Noah Cicero
GRAVITY’S RAINBOW & CRYING LOT 49 by Pynchon
MOLLOY, MALONE DIES, & THE UNNAMABLE by Beckett
SEVERIN’S JOURNEY INTO THE NIGHT by Paul Leppin
A GOTHIC SOUL Jiří Karásek ze Lvovic
SOLARIS by Lem
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY by A. C. Clarke
Of course Joyce, Kafka, Melville, Poe, & other Superstars
THE LOST LANGUAGE OF CRANES-David Leavitt
THE CORRECTIONS-Jonathan Franzen
TALES OF THE CITY-Armistead Maupin
Just kidding…
DHALGREN-Samuel Delany
FOXFIRE-Joyce Carol Oates
SHADOWLAND-Peter Straub
KINDRED-Octavia Butler
WE THINK THE WORLD OF YOU-J.R. Ackerley
MOTION SICKNESS-Lynne Tillman
CHILDHOOD’S END-Arthur C. Clarke
THE COLLECTOR-John Fowles
PALE FIRE-Vladimir Nabokov
BLUE OF NOON-Georges Bataille
MUMBO JUMBO-Ishmael Reed
LONDON FIELDS-Martin Amis
OUR LADY OF THE FLOWERS-Jean Genet
BLOOD AND GUTS IN HIGH SCHOOL-Kathy Acker
THE THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH-Philip K. Dick
THE BLUEST EYE-Toni Morrison
RUNNING WILD-J.G. Ballard
NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND-Fyodor Dostoevsky
THE MASTER AND THE MARGARITA-Mikhail Bulgakov
INVISIBLE CITIES-Italo Calvino
THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES-Roberto Bolaño
At this point in my life, I’m much less interested in fiction and tend to read books about film and music instead. I am not sure why, except that the year in which my vision declined till I got cataract surgery had a permanent affect on my desire to read.
Hello Dennis!!
Thank you for this! So many books to read…
Mine (in no order):
– ‘Melmoth the Wanderer’ — Charles Maturin
– ‘Lunar Caustic’ — Malcolm Lowry
– ‘The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket’ — Edgar Allan Poe
– ‘The Sea of Fertility’ — Yukio Mishima
– ‘Short Stories’ — H. P. Lovecraft
– ‘On the Road’ — Jack Kerouac
– ‘The Stranger’ — Albert Camus
– ‘The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter’ — Carson McCullers
– ‘The House on the Borderland’ — William Hope Hodgson
– ‘Les Chants de Maldoror’ — Comte de Lautréamont
– ‘Moby Dick’ — Herman Melville
– ‘Guignol’s Band’ — Louis-Ferdinand Céline
– ‘Giovanni’s Room’ — James Baldwin
– ‘The Sundial’ — Shirley Jackson
– ‘Wuthering Heights’ — Emily Brontë
– ‘The Quest’ — Pío Baroja
– ‘Domme ou l’Essai d’occupation’ — François Augiéras
– ‘The Basketball Diaries’ — Jim Carroll
– ‘Frankenstein’ — Mary Shelley
– ‘Incarnate’ — Ramsey Campbell
– ‘The Unlimited Dream Company’ — J. G. Ballard
– ‘One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ — Ken Kesey
– ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’ — Jean Rhys
– ’62: A Model Kit’ — Julio Cortázar
– ‘Alraune’ — Hanns Heinz Ewers
– ‘The Book of Lies’ — Agota Kristof
– ‘American Psycho’ — Bret Easton Ellis
– ‘A Fragment of Life’ — Arthur Machen
– ‘Tender is the Night’ — Scott Fitzgerald
– ‘Pale Fire’ — Vladimir Nabokov
– ‘Martian Time-Slip’ — Philip K. Dick
– ‘The Confessions of a Justified Sinner’ — James Hogg
– ‘Vathek’ — William Beckford
– ‘A Confederacy of Dunces’ — John Kennedy Toole
– ‘Goodbye to Berlin’ — Christopher Isherwood
– ‘Los planos de la demolición’ — El Ángel
– ‘The Long Goodbye’ — Raymond Chandler
– ‘Falconer’ — John Cheever
– ‘Treasure Island’ — Robert Louis Stevenson
– ‘The Devil’s Elixirs’ — E. T. A. Hoffmann
– ‘All the Pretty Horses’ — Cormac McCarthy
– ‘Steppenwolf’ — Hermann Hesse
– ‘The Dream Police’ — Dennis Cooper
– ‘Ferdyduke’ — Witold Gombrowicz
– ‘The Black Dalia’ — James Ellroy
– ‘Death in Venice’ — Thomas Mann
– ‘Leviathan’ — Paul Auster
– ‘The Purple Cloud’ — M. P. Shiel
– ‘Manuscript Found in Saragossa’ — Jan Potocki
– ‘Titus Groan’ — Mervyn Peake
– ‘The Counterfeiters’ — Andre Gide
– ‘White Noise’ — Don DeLillo
– ‘The Postman Always Rings Twice’ — James M. Cain
– ‘White Nights’ — Fyodor Dostoevsky
– ‘L’Automne à Pékin’ — Boris Vian
– ‘The Foolish Children’ — Ana María Matute
Hi Dennis,
I can’t spill the beans too much about the Chaney project just yet, but I can tease it a little. My wife and I have spent the past two years laying the groundwork to start a small press that will publish books on horror movies (sort of in the 33 1/3 or Boss Fight Books model). We’re planning on announcing the first five titles pretty soon, one of which may or may not be about our furry friend, Mr. Chaney.
Another weird synchronicity: I was just discussing with someone yesterday how I’ve become constitutionally unable to compile a list of favorite novels. For some reason, my mind goes blank when I try to think of only fiction. I think it’s a side effect of making documentaries that blend fiction in with fact, or something…
Hi Dennis – saw this and couldn’t resist – let me have a crack at it:
Paul Auster – Timbuktu, Mr. Vertigo
Ayn Rand – The Fountainhead
Somerset Maugham – The Moon and Sixpence, The Razor’s Edge
Hermann Hesse – Demian, Steppenwolf, Journey to the East
Haruki Murakami – Kafka on the Shore, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
Aleister Crowley – Moonchild
Chaim Potok – The Chosen, My Name is Asher Lev
Jeff J mentioned Last Exit to Brooklyn (never read it, but I’m in the film!)
Could Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra be considered a novel? If so, add that.
Hi Dennis,
Excited to see so much French writing here. I’m a prof at the American University of Paris, and I wonder if I could drop you an email about a possible thing. Nothing urgent, but when you get a moment?
Russell
Hi Dennis. I love your new post. Many of your favorite books I have already read, others unfortunately have not yet been translated into Spanish. I remember a similar list from many years ago and they don’t differ much. There are some novelties that right now I don’t remember very well, but in essence they are the same. Anna Kavan, Renee Gladman, Lynne Tillman, Paul Metcalf, Alan Warner… are the novelties among others. Some sound absences Brett Easton Ellis, Louis Celine among others, some surprising additions like Cortázar, Sebald or Duras and the absence of other books that I don’t remember very well what they are. It’s a sunny day in Spain and I don’t know if I feel sad, although your posts always make my life a little brighter. Waiting for the summer that is inexorably upon us and waiting impatiently for the publication of Michel Houellebecq’s new novel. I read Andre Gide’s diaries with enthusiasm and I haven’t gotten to read most of it yet. I try to stay busy as much as I can, I send some emails to family and friends who are far away and I try not to think about certain things. A year ago I published my first book, a text of more or less long stories that an interested publisher did me the favor of publishing entitled Para No Molestar a la Marmota, which has not sold very well and I try and now I try to get another published book but things are not easy because I sent my manuscript a long time ago and they haven’t answered me yet. Nobody seems to want a book of stories so I try to write novels that slip through my hands and I don’t get to redirect my characters and I forget the plot and I have to go back over and over again. I think I’m better at stories and there are many story contests but ultimately what they want from these platforms is to promote a product, a city, etc.
Chuck Kinder, Lunas de Miel
Bret Eaton Ellis, American Psycho
Agota Kristof, Claus y Lucas
Denton Welch, Primer Viaje
Jacques Yonnet, Calle de los Maleficios
Joan Didion, Una Liturgia Común
Katherine Dunn, Amor de Monstruo
Dennis Cooper, Guía
Alexandre Trocchi, El Libro de Caín
Roberto Bolaño, Los Detectives Salvajes
Hermann Hesse, Bajo las Ruedas
Louis Ferdinand Celine, Muerte a Crédito
Jean Genet, Diario del Ladrón
Ann Beattie, Postales de Invierno
J D Salinger, El guardián entre el Centeno
Jonathan Lethem, La Fortaleza de la Soledad
David Foster Wallace, La Broma Infinita
Albert Camus, La Peste
Knut Hansum, Hambre
David Mitchel, Escritos Fantasma
Kathy Acker, El imperio de los Sinsentidos
Conde De Lautreamount, Los Cantos de Maldoror
Samuel Becket, El Innombrable
Thomas Mann, Muerte en Venecia
André Gide, El Inmoralista
AM Homes, El Fin de Alice
Marqués de Sade, Las 120 Jornadas de Sodoma
Hervé Guibert, El Protocolo Compasivo
William Faulkner, Santuario
Gordon Burn, Felices Como Asesinos
Martin Amis, Niños Muertos
Michel Houellebecq, Ampliación del Campo de Batalla
WG Sebald, Austerlitz
Donna Tartt, El Secreto
Michael Chabon, Chicos Prodigiosos
DBC Pierre, Vernon Dios Little
Tom Spanbauer, La Ciudad de los Cazadores Tímidos
George Perec, La Vida Instrucciones de Uso
Jean Rhys, Una Vida Sin Ti
…
Hey Dennis!
I sent you an email about this but just in case I wanted to share it here. There’s an attempt being made to create a film about P. Lewis, and they’re about half-funded on Kickstarter. I love Lewis’ work a whole lot and thus donated and am hoping this thing comes together. I emailed about maybe even putting a post together for it, but I figured I’d at least comment if nothing else: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/berlinasylum/berlin-asylum?ref=project_build
Best,
Grant Maierhofer
Umm, off the top of my head…
Mary Shelley – Frankenstein
JD Salinger – The Catcher in the Rye
Kathy Acker – Blood and Guts in High School
As far as it goes for Leeds United, it all went down to the final game of the season. We won and are staying in the Premier League by the skin of our teeth, so I am massively relieved about it!
There is a lot of overlap with yours so in the spirit of adding more titles I’ll avoid them (especially that Kristofferson & Malady of Death. Mason & Dixon is my fave Pynchon as well. )
Duras – Blue Eyes, Black Hair
Quinn – Berg
Gaddis – Recognitions
Jönke – Geometric Regional Novel
Bernhard- Old Masters
Mackey – What Said Serif
Smollet- Humphrey Clinker
Stein – Tender Buttons
Zürn – The Man of Jade
Toussaint- Camera
Rulfo – Pedro Parmor
Andrews – I Don’t Have Any Paper So Shut Up: Or, Social Romanticism
Notley- Disobedience
James – Negrophobia
Delany – Hogg
Levy – Beautiful Mutants
Mosley – Hopeful Monsters
Fuentes – Terra Nostra
Forster – Howard’s End
Calvino – Invisible Cities
Dennis, I’m beyond honoured to be on this list. You’re in my top ten—you’re in my top one!
Love, Derek
PS Thanks to you, too, Zak!
Loved your book
Yessssssss, the post we’ve been awaiting is finally here, and it’s a generous treasure! Sad to admit I haven’t read many from your list… I’ve been meaning to read Blanchot and Bernhard for a while, but didn’t know where to start – your faves are obviously the best place to start. I had an epiphany when I first read your novels in 2020; my novel ‘journey’ hasn’t been the same since, and I’m not sure if this is a good thing or a sad thing, but after I read The Sluts in March 2020, my idea and expectation from novels totally changed to the point that now I find it hard to obtain pleasure from reading novels, whereas prior to discovering your work, reading novels was one of my main sources of pleasure and nourishment. Perhaps, I had a basic, standard taste… I was obsessed with many novels, but my faves were Anna Karenina, Nabokov’s Laughter in the Dark, The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek, Mishima’s Thirst for Love, Iris Murdoch’s The Black Prince and A Fairly Honourable Defeat, Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty, Sadegh Hedayat’s Blind Owl, The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes, The Picture of Dorian Gray, A Spy in the House of Love by Anaïs Nin, Notes on a Scandal by Zoë Heller, and Tampa by Alisa Nutting. I still love these novels and think about them fondly and often, but after I read The Sluts followed by your Cycle (particularly the first three ones), I now expect extreme scenarios and sensations and situations and explosions from novels, but sadly, that is not common at all. I am now struggling to enjoy good, old school, linear novels like I used to. I am not blaming you lol. Perhaps my pre-DC fave novels can co-exist with my post-DC fave novels (basically your novels), and that would be my list.
p.s. Hope you had a Phantastic time in Phantasialand xoxo
The Floating Opera – John Barth
The Laughing Monsters – Denis Johnson
Fictions – Jorge Luis Borges
Gerald Murnane – The Plains
The Marbled Swarm, God Jr. – Dennis Cooper
To Remain Nameless – Brad Fox (which I have you to thank for as well)
Claire-Louise Bennett – Pond
Maggie Nelson – The Red Parts (does it qualify as a novel? Doubt so)
Michel Houellebecq – The Possibility of an Island (hated with a passion pretty much all of his other books)
Pierre Drieu La Rochelle – The Fire Within
(Yes, I have some catch-up to do)
Part two
Burroughs – Nova Express
Joyce – Ulysses
Woolf – The Waves
Bowles – Three Curious Ladies
Gener – Our Lady of the Flowers
Acker – My Mother Demonology
A – Louis Zukofsky
Mayer – Midwinter’s Day
Hejinian – Writing as an aide to memory
Ellroy – American Tabloid
Piñera – Rene’s Flesh
Dumas – The Count of Monte Cristo
Juster- Phantom Tollbooth
Gide – Pastoral Symphony
Ballard – Crash
Spahr – Response
Celan – Breathturn
Williams – Spring and All
Abe – Woman in the Dunes
Marcus – The Age of Wire and String
Hawkes – The Lime Twig
Johnson – Radi Os
Mackey – Whatsaid Serif
Bataille – Story of the Eye
Barbusse – Hell
Coover – Gerlad’s Party
Palmer – Sun
Schulz – Street of Crocodiles
Ovid (Golding) – Metamorphosis
This one brought out so many people. Bookmarking it to come back for tips. Slightly embarrassed to see the ones I have but haven’t read. I love In Youth Is Pleasure but reading and hating Maiden Voyage, weirdly.
Adding only what I’ve not seen:
Most of Purdy/Dawn Powell
Billy Budd
Satyricon
Earthly Powers/Enderby
Hadrian vii
Brideshead revisited
For Two Thousand Years
Hope you’re doing well. England broiling. Trying to get hold of permanent green light on dvd or whatever but I think it’s a region thing.
Xxx
Many of my favorites are on your list. Save for the ones you wrote! And I’m excited to read the ones I haven’t yet. I think about Castle Faggot all the time – I’ve actually wondered how you see your afterward interacting with the novel itself. I remember feeling like it fit into the space of the book strangely.. or in a cool way; different than other afterwards to other books. I wish I could say I’ve been alive at the same time as Kathy Acker though she died before I was even born. I really do love everything she wrote that I’ve gotten my hands on. .. words .. One of the books that’s always haunted me or that’s always felt super important is Coraline by Neil Gaiman. It’s for children I guess but I still read it every year and its pretty amazing. All the exciting reading energy on here always makes my day. Hope your’s is great!
So cool to see this updated list, Dennis. Will definitely be taking some tips from the updates/changes that you’ve made. And I agree with a ton that’s in your list, no surprise – also, so many books I’ve ended reading and being completely changed on your recommendation. Thanks!
How’s everything going?
Love
Thomas xoxo
Hey Dennis!
Hadn’t thought about this for a while so figured this would be as fun of a time as any to reconsider… no order, just me wander around and looking at my bookshelves, so also possible I’m overlooking some things.
Murder – Danielle Collobert
Bataille’s Wound – Michael Greene
The Ship – Hans Henny Jahnn
Madame Edwarda – Georges Bataille
L’Homme Atlantique, The Man Sitting in the Corridor – Marguerite Duras
Topology of a Phantom City, Recollections of the Golden Triangle, A Sentimental Novel – Alain Robbe-Grillet
Womens Rites – Catherine Robbe-Grillet as Jeanne de Berg
Fable, Passacaglia – Robert Pinget
Period – Dennis Cooper
boneyard – Stephen Beachy
The Atrocity Exhibition – JG Ballard
Rien ne va Plus – Margarita Karapanou
Candy Story – Marie Redonnet
The Plight House – Jason Hrivnak
Teatro Grottesco – Thomas Ligotti
The Spider’s House – New Juche
Journey of the Dead – Francois Augieras
The Acephalic Imperial – Damian Murphy
The Castle of Communion – Bernard Noel
The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie – Agota Kristof
Mercury – Anna Kavan
Hospice – Gregory Howard
Holy Terror – Steve Abbott
Story of O – Pauline Reage
& some short story collections, b/c I feel like the genre gets overlooked wrt any sort of longevity:
Fur & Pallaksch, Pallaksch – Liliane Giraudon
Animal Rights & Pornography – J. Eric Miller
The Eyes – Jesus Ignacio Aldapuerta
love a lot of those novels on the list, may have some overlap. thanks for sharing.
here are mine:
10:04 – ben lerner
nausea – jean-paul sartre
less than zero – bret easton ellis
hopscotch – julio cortázar
un homme qui dort – george perec
the driver’s seat – muriel spark
state of grace – joy williams
bonjour tristesse – françoise sagan
the day of the locust – nathanael west
after dark – haruki murakami
and the hippoes were boiled in their tanks – jack kerouac & william burroughs
ulysses – james joyce
play it as it lays – joan didion
i’d go with lynch too. speaking of films, i recently made this 16mm short film if you’re interested: https://vimeo.com/712246904
xx
ade
Sorry to Disrupt the Peace, Patrick Cottrell
Bad Marie, Marcy Dermansky
Death in Venice, Thomas Mann
Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy
Prisoner of Love, Jean Genet
Xenogenesis series, Octavia Butler
Pretend I’m Dead, Jen Beagin
You Are Having a Good Time, Amie Barrodale
Splendid. And nice to see what has changed and been added the last time I saw one of your lists! For me, at last check:
The Book of Monelle (Marcel Schwob, 1894)
The Dragon (Yevgeny Zamyatin, 1913-1931, trans/pub.1966)
Street of Crocodiles (Bruno Schulz, 1937)
The Third Policeman (Flann O’Brian, 1940 / pub.1967)
Pierrot Mon Ami (Raymond Queneau, 1942)
Ficciones (Jorge Luis Borges, 1944)
Watt (Samuel Beckett, 1945)
The Stone Door (Leonora Carrington, 1940s, pub.1977)
Heartsnatcher (Boris Vian, 1953)
The Goose of Hermogenes (Ithell Colquhoun, 1961/written early-50s?)
The Night of Lead (Hans Henny Jahnn, 1956)
The Vet’s Daughter (Barbara Comyns, 1959)
A Dreambook for Our Time (Tadeusz Konwicki, 1963)
V (Thomas Pynchon, 1963)
The Ice Palace (Tarjei Vesaas, 1963)
Compact (Maurice Roche, 1966)
Ice (Anna Kavan, 1967)
Between (Christine Brooke-Rose, 1968)
*Steps (Jerzy Kosinski, 1968)
62: A Model Kit (Julio Cortazar, 1968)
Joko’s Anniversary (Roland Topor, 1969)
Ubik (Phillip K Dick, 1969)
The Atrocity Exhibition (J.G. Ballard, 1970)
Play It As It Lays (Joan Didion, 1970)
The Lathe of Heaven (Ursula K. LeGuin, 1971)
Invisible Cities (Italo Calvino, 1972)
Tripticks (Ann Quin, 1972)
Dhalgren (Samuel R. Delany, 1974)
Death, Sleep, and the Traveler (John Hawkes, 1974)
La Belle Captive (Alain Robbe-Grillet, 1975)
Holy Smoke (Fanny Howe, 1979)
Night (Bilgé Karasu, 1976 / pub. 1985)
Island People (Coleman Dowell, 1976)
Fatale (Jean-Patrick Manchette, 1977)
Secret Rendezvous (Kobo Abe, 1977)
The Passion of New Eve (Angela Carter, 1977)
The Changeling (Joy Williams, 1978)
Bartholomew Fair (Eric Basso, 1982)
The Stain (Rikki Ducornet, 1984)
Beloved (Toni Morrison, 1987)
Mauve Desert (Nicole Brossard, 1987)
The Hungry Girls (Patricia Eakins, 1988)
The Notebook, The Proof, and The Third Lie (Agota Kristof, 1986-1993)
Nevermore (Marie Redonnet, 1994)
Defiance (Carole Maso, 1998)
George Miles Cycle (Dennis Cooper, 1989-2000)
Aliens & Anorexia (Chris Kraus, 2000)
Zuntig (Tom LaFarge, 2001)
Fever Dream (Samanta Schweblin, 2014)
Destroy All Monsters (Jeff Jackson, 2018)
This is a great list. So many that I have never read or heard of.
My favourite novels in no order are:
Camus – The Plague
Dostoyevsky – Brothers Karamazov
Woolf- The Waves
Maxwell – So Long, See you Tomorrow
Steinbeck – East of Eden
Denis Johnson – Train Dreams
Wolfe- Of Time and the River
Baldwin- Giovanni’s Room
Bulgakov- The Master and the Margarita
Ellison- invisible Man
Kerouac- Visions of Gerard/ Doctor Sax
Proust- in Search of Lost Time 1
Hemingway – The Sun Also Rises
Rodoreda – Death of Spring/ Diamond Square
Gabriel Garcia Marquez – 100 Years
Juan Rulfo – Pedro Paramo
Nella Larsen – Quicksand
Jean Rhys – Good Morning Midnight and Wide Saragossa Sea.
Obvs there are a lot more but these spring to mind.
Thanks, dear Dennis, so glad to be on your list of faves. Your lists are the only ones I’m ever on…and your opinions mean a lot to me. Hoping your keeping OK, here it’s a madhouse, the inmates are more sound then the keepers, but that’s not saying much, lovexx, Lynne
Death in Spring, Mercè Rodoreda (https://www.openletterbooks.org/products/death-in-spring)
René’s Flesh, Virgilio Piñera (https://neglectedbooks.com/?p=7625)
The Sea, Blai Bonet (https://dalkeyarchive.store/products/the-sea?_pos=1&_sid=d978b8da8&_ss=r)
OUR SHARE OF NIGHT, Mariana Enríquez
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/538697/our-share-of-night-by-mariana-enriquez/
Okay, here’s mine…
Angela Carter, The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr Hoffmann
Philip K. Dick, Man in the High Castle
Gustave Flaubert, Salammbo
Gustave Flaubert, The Temptation of Saint Anthony
Jean Cocteau, Orphee
Daniel-Paul Schreber, Memoirs of My Nervous Illness
Aeschylus, The Oresteia Trilogy
Kay Dick, They
Davy Davies, X
William S. Burroughs, Wild Boys
Samuel R. Delany, Neveryon Quartet
Russell Hoban, Riddley Walker
Mordecai Roshwald, Level 7
Poppy Z. Brite, Lost Souls
Poppy Z. Brite, Drawing Blood
J.G. Ballard, Crash
Joris Huysmans, La-Bas/Down There
Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
Thomas Pynchon, Crying of Lot 49
George Orwell, 1984
Margaret Atwood, Handmaid’s Tale
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
Aldous Huxley, Ape and Essence
George Orwell, Animal Farm
Kobo Abe, Woman in the Dunes
Jean Genet, Querelle of Brest
Vladimir Nabokov, Ada
my small contribution to the many interesting selections:
yambo ouologuem – bound to violence
bohumil hrabal – harlequin’s millions
camara laye – the radiance of the king
flann o brien – at swim two birds
henry james – the ambassadors
bruno schulz – the street of crocodiles
thomas lovell beddoes – death’s jest book
samuel beckett – molloy
georges simenon – dirty snow
venedikt erofeev – moscow to the end of the line
curzio malaparte – kaputt
ilf & petrov – the twelve chairs
gustav meyrink – the golem
heinrich von kleist – the marquise of o etc
michel tournier – friday
and everything by kafka
thanks all !
A La Recrche du Temps Perdu (bien sur)
and
T
“TwoSerious Ladies”
Hey Dennis (though you’re probably not seeing cause it’s an old blog post now lol), I’m reading Closer and really enjoying it, which I snatched a copy of at my local independent bookshop. I discovered you through my favourite band Xiu Xiu and had you on my reading list for a while.
As a young, bicurious 21 year old much of the content of the novel feels very relatable despite my lack of sexual irl encounters and having not done any substances, but I love the immediacy and energy of your writing style and how well it captures the tumultuous feelings of adolescence
My favourites are:
Georges Bataille – Story of the Eye
Charles Baudelaire – The Flowers of Evil
Thomas Bernhard – The Loser
Fyodor Dostoyevsky – Crime & Punishment
T. S. Eliot’s poetry
Franz Kafka – The Castle
H. P. Lovecraft stories
Laszlo Krasznahorkai – Sátántángó
Thomas Mann – Death in Venice
Cormac McCarthy – Blood Meridian
Gustav Meyrink – The Golem
Robert Musil – The Confusions of Young Törless
Anais Nin – Little Birds
George Orwell – Homage to Catalonia
Wilfred Owen’s poetry
Georges Perec – Life: A User’s Manual
Fernando Pessoa – The Book of Disquiet
Arthur Rimbaud – A Season in Hell
Bruno Schulz – Street of Crocodiles
William Shakespeare – Macbeth
Georg Trakl’s poetry
My all-time faves (in alpha by author):
_The Wasp Factory_ *Iain Banks*
_Blue of Noon_ *Georges Bataille*
_Nouvelles et Textes pour rien_ *Samuel Beckett*
_The Marriage of Heaven and Hell_ *William Blake*
_Let It Come Down_ *Paul Bowles*
_I Remember_ *Joe Brainard*
_Ham on Rye_ *Charles Bukowski*
_The Wild Boys_ *William S. Burroughs*
_If on a winter’s night a traveler_ *Italo Calvino*
_Le Livre blanc_ *Jean Cocteau*
_Try_ *Dennis Cooper*
_Naked in Garden Hills_ *Harry Crews*
_The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch_ *Philip K. Dick*
_Play It As It Lays_ *Joan Didion*
_Rebecca_ *Daphne du Maurier*
_Under the Skin_ *Michel Faber*
_As I Lay Dying_ *William Faulkner*
_The Thief’s Journal_ *Jean Genet*
_Neuromancer_ *William Gibson*
_Pornographia_ *Witold Gombrowicz*
_Hunger_ *Knut Hamsun*
_Demian_ *Hermann Hesse*
_The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner_ *James Hogg*
_The Elementary Particles_ *Michel Houellebecq*
_Against Nature_ *JK Huysmans*
_The Cone Gatherers_ *Robin Jenkins*
_Ulysses_ *James Joyce*
_How Late It Was, How Late_ *James Kelman*
_Visions of Gerard_ *Jack Kerouac*
_Les Chants de Maldoror_ *Comte de Lautrémont*
_The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things_ *JT LeRoy*
_The Iron Heal_ *Jack London*
_A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing_ *Eimear McBride*
_Child of God_ *Cormac McCarthy*
_The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter_ *Carson McCullers*
_Here_ *Richard McGuire*
_Sebastien Roch_ *Octave Mirbeau*
_Pale Fire_ *Vladimir Nabokov*
_At Swim-Two-Birds_ *Flann O’Brien*
_A Humument_ *Tom Phillips*
_Narrow Rooms_ *James Purdy*
_Last Exit to Brooklyn_ *Hubert Selby Jr*
_The Red and the Black_ *Stendhal*
_The Color Purple_ *Alice Walker*
_Morvern Callar_ *Alan Warner*
_Marabou Stork Nightmares_ *Irvine Welsh*
_The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone_ *Tennessee Williams*
_You Can’t Go Home Again_ *Thomas Wolfe*
_We_ *Yevgeny Zamyatin*
_Dark Spring_ *Unica Zürn*
Hello Dennis and all,
I’m so late to the party but I can’t sleep and it’s given me a thrill to see some of my favourites mentioned by others. These are the books I could read again and again.
The George Miles Cycle is the fiction I come back to most often and which most inspires my own writing. Thank you for this special blog.
The Ginger Man, JP Donleavy
Death in Venice, Mann
Lolita, Nabokov
Bonjour Tristesse, F Sagan
Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky
Giovanni’s Room, Baldwin
Less than Zero, Ellis
Dancer from the dance, Holleran
Apologies I’m lagging behind, and for the inevitable repetition of certain titles. Here are some entries that I never tire of returning to (some slight cheats too):
Marguerite Duras ~ Blues, Black Hair
J.G. Ballard ~ Crash
Maurice Blanchot ~ Death Sentence
Clarice Lispector ~ Água Viva
Anna Kavan ~ Ice
Julien Gracq ~ The Opposing Shore
Pierre Guyotat ~ Eden, Eden, Eden
Isidore Lucien Ducasse ~ Les Chants de Maldoror
Pierre Klossowski ~ The Baphomet
Hideo Nakata ~ Ring
Efriede Jelinek ~The Children of the Dead
Raymond Roussel ~Locus Solus
Michel Leiris ~ Manhood: A Journey from Childhood into the Fierce Order of Virility
Robert Musil ~ The Man Without Qualities
Dante Alhegri ~ La Divina Commedia: Inferno
Gustave Flaubert ~ The Temptation of Saint Anthony
Alain Robbe-Grillet ~ Jealousy
Louis-René des Forêts ~ The Children’s Room
But my absolute favourite book is Bresson’s Notes for the Cinematograph. It’s almost like a religious text for me. Bresson lead me to your work too, so I thank him for that.