I've always thought "The People of Paper" by Salvador Plascencia was inventive in form, but that inventiveness reveals itself the more you read and isn't apparent at the onset. Highly recommended.
Really pleased to find this - all new to me but I am a big fan of The Mobe. Also recomended - House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski - part novel, part memoir, part narrartion, and packed with addends and foot notes which go in all directions on the page. Also the only scary book I ever read. Waterland by Graham Swift is a fine novel intertwined with a natural history of the English fens and particularly the freshwater eel. Thirdly Life A Users Manual by the extraordinary George Perec - all his books would fit this list. This one is about a big apartment building and is divided into many chapters each one concerning one room. The chapters can be read in any order but still make for a read full of surprises. Just astonishing
Great column, as usual, Lincoln. A few more examples that come to mind are Calvino's "If On a Winter's Night a Traveler" (each of whose chapters is the beginning of a different novel), Padgett Powell's "The Interrogative Mood" (a novel in which every sentence is a question), David Markson's "The Last Novel" (consisting entirely of short anecdotes about other writers), and George Perec's "A Void" (a novel written without the letter e).
Fantastic list! So glad to have read this. And many great comments, too, in particular Danielewski's House of Leaves (what a trip). Not as high-brow as most of the titles mentioned, but S by JJ Abrams is a fun, somewhat experimental novel, perhaps more in the Bram Stoker tradition. :)
The first book I though of is "House of Leaves". It's a challenging work at times, but I loved how weird it was. I love how I had to turn the pages sideways or decipher a coded message or wade through footnotes that had no meaning.
I really enjoyed this list - wanna read the Zambra and Danish spaceship book soon. Recently I really enjoyed the character development in I, the Divine - Rabih Alameddine's "novel in first chapters", where the protagonist begins her own memoir over and over again
Not a novel, but a story, Ursula K. LeGuin's "The Author of the Acacia Seeds, and Other Extracts From the Journal of the Association of Therolinguistics," is one of my favourite examples of this kind of writing.
I’m also a big fan of Hav! I read that at the same time as The Glory of the Empire, another NYRB book about a fake place (in this case a fake Roman-type empire)
Speaking of Melville, I love Genoa by Paul Metcalf (Melville's great-grandson), which is told primarily through quotes from Melville, Columbus and medical texts.
I absolutely agree and I absolutely think none of the above have a place online, serialized. Be serious for a moment about Moby Dick's chances plodding along one chapter at a time on Substack. Melville would have pulled the trigger at the sight of the stats, which is why stats are poison. But you weren't arguing for these sorts of work to be on Substack, I know. I added that.
I'm not terribly bullshish about online serialization, yeah. I love substack for essays and blogging but don't know how well it works for fiction much less experimental stuff.
Marvellous lists that will keep me busy for many months. I was surprised to see no mention of B S Johnson's The Unfortunates. This is published as a paperback-sized box and the first chapter is attached to the cover, with the final chapter attached to the bottom of the box. In between there is a series of pamphlet-sized chapters (some are very short, few more than ten pages or so). These can be read in any order, they are stream-of-consciousness memories that occur to the narrator as he travels by train to a football match. Johnson also wrote a book with parts of the text cut out which I think was mentioned in one of the comments. I haven't read it but the title is Albert Angelo.
I've always thought "The People of Paper" by Salvador Plascencia was inventive in form, but that inventiveness reveals itself the more you read and isn't apparent at the onset. Highly recommended.
Yes! A great one.
Really pleased to find this - all new to me but I am a big fan of The Mobe. Also recomended - House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski - part novel, part memoir, part narrartion, and packed with addends and foot notes which go in all directions on the page. Also the only scary book I ever read. Waterland by Graham Swift is a fine novel intertwined with a natural history of the English fens and particularly the freshwater eel. Thirdly Life A Users Manual by the extraordinary George Perec - all his books would fit this list. This one is about a big apartment building and is divided into many chapters each one concerning one room. The chapters can be read in any order but still make for a read full of surprises. Just astonishing
Was going to drop the same comment about MZD. Worth mentioning his The Familiar books, too.
Great column, as usual, Lincoln. A few more examples that come to mind are Calvino's "If On a Winter's Night a Traveler" (each of whose chapters is the beginning of a different novel), Padgett Powell's "The Interrogative Mood" (a novel in which every sentence is a question), David Markson's "The Last Novel" (consisting entirely of short anecdotes about other writers), and George Perec's "A Void" (a novel written without the letter e).
Thank you, the Calvino is a favorite and I meant to include the Powell! Great books all around.
I'm going to have to check out The Employees. I would add Edwin Mullhouse, the mock-biography of a child writer by Steven Millhauser.
I think you'd enjoy it!
Love the list. Lots I don't know of here. Thanks for putting this together. Need to somehow prioritise what I'd like to get to first.
Happened to watch "American Fiction" the other night and caught at the end that it was an adaptation of Erasure.
Love that movie. The book is even better.
Fantastic list! So glad to have read this. And many great comments, too, in particular Danielewski's House of Leaves (what a trip). Not as high-brow as most of the titles mentioned, but S by JJ Abrams is a fun, somewhat experimental novel, perhaps more in the Bram Stoker tradition. :)
The first book I though of is "House of Leaves". It's a challenging work at times, but I loved how weird it was. I love how I had to turn the pages sideways or decipher a coded message or wade through footnotes that had no meaning.
Always happy to see Zambra on any list!
Also, Stephen Graham Jones has a few screenplays as novels.
I really enjoyed this list - wanna read the Zambra and Danish spaceship book soon. Recently I really enjoyed the character development in I, the Divine - Rabih Alameddine's "novel in first chapters", where the protagonist begins her own memoir over and over again
Not a novel, but a story, Ursula K. LeGuin's "The Author of the Acacia Seeds, and Other Extracts From the Journal of the Association of Therolinguistics," is one of my favourite examples of this kind of writing.
Also Jan Morris's Hav, which I've written a lot about (https://bookclub.markslutsky.com/archive/barely-a-book-club-1-hav-by-jan-morris/), which, along with Christopher Priest's The Islanders, fits as imaginary travel writing.
I’m also a big fan of Hav! I read that at the same time as The Glory of the Empire, another NYRB book about a fake place (in this case a fake Roman-type empire)
That's on my list! One other book we covered was Kalpa Imperial, yet another fake place book.
Speaking of Melville, I love Genoa by Paul Metcalf (Melville's great-grandson), which is told primarily through quotes from Melville, Columbus and medical texts.
Amazing timing; I've been putting together a summer reading list for myself of books in this exact vein! Night Film and House of Leaves are old favorites of mine. Also found this list of ~300 or so while poking around online just last night: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/7176.Books_with_Innovative_Book_Design_Structure
I absolutely agree and I absolutely think none of the above have a place online, serialized. Be serious for a moment about Moby Dick's chances plodding along one chapter at a time on Substack. Melville would have pulled the trigger at the sight of the stats, which is why stats are poison. But you weren't arguing for these sorts of work to be on Substack, I know. I added that.
I'm not terribly bullshish about online serialization, yeah. I love substack for essays and blogging but don't know how well it works for fiction much less experimental stuff.
Just ordered THE EMPLOYEES. Thanks for the rec!
Marvellous lists that will keep me busy for many months. I was surprised to see no mention of B S Johnson's The Unfortunates. This is published as a paperback-sized box and the first chapter is attached to the cover, with the final chapter attached to the bottom of the box. In between there is a series of pamphlet-sized chapters (some are very short, few more than ten pages or so). These can be read in any order, they are stream-of-consciousness memories that occur to the narrator as he travels by train to a football match. Johnson also wrote a book with parts of the text cut out which I think was mentioned in one of the comments. I haven't read it but the title is Albert Angelo.
Wow, am so excited to read these, just stumbled in here, thank you, Lincoln.