Comments on: i was never any good at sports...

Question: i was never any good at sports...

dj_fraudulent — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 21:39:53 -0800

i need more sprawling post-modern novels NOW!

i've read all of pynchon, much of beckett's stuff, delillo's underworld, infinite jest, house of leaves, and i just started on murakami (already read norwegian wood (decidedly not-sprawling), wind up bird, and hardboiled wonderland). any other books that earn a "wow" from people in the know when you tell them you've read em? an equally important requirement is that they actually be readable... i still can't do joyce.

By: AwkwardPause

AwkwardPause — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 21:43:25 -0800

I'd go for almost everything by Italo Calvino (but specifically I'd recommend 'Invisible Cities').

By: dj_fraudulent

dj_fraudulent — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 21:44:45 -0800

ooh yeah, forgot about calvino. i've read If on a winter's night a traveller and it remains one of the best books I've ever read.

By: IshmaelGraves

IshmaelGraves — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 21:45:21 -0800

Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum.

By: Rothko

Rothko — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 21:46:27 -0800

DeLillo's White Noise and Mao II are as post-modern as they get. If you liked Underworld you might give those two a spin.

By: ikkyu2

ikkyu2 — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 21:53:40 -0800

Don't forget Samuel Delany's Dhalgren.

By: .kobayashi.

.kobayashi. — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 21:58:17 -0800

While we're on the topic of Delillo, my favorite is The Names.

Why not turn to postcolonial lit. If you haven't read Rushdie's Midnight's Children yet, you should.

wait... why are we bringing up Joyce in the context of postmodern literature?

By: drpynchon

drpynchon — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 21:59:37 -0800

Gaddis. Lowry. Barth.

By: Satapher

Satapher — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 22:01:18 -0800

Journey to the End of the Night, Death on the Installment Plan by Celine

best books youll ever read

By: painquale

painquale — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 22:05:08 -0800

Kazuo Ishiguro's The Unconsoled and John Barth's The Sot-Weed Factor are two of my favorite books. Both are very postmodern and very sprawling. I recommend them wholeheartedly. Also take a look at Robert Coover's The Public Burning and William Gass's The Tunnel.

By: dj_fraudulent

dj_fraudulent — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 22:08:11 -0800

wait... why are we bringing up Joyce in the context of postmodern literature?

i always seem to get him recommended to me when i ask this question. i was preemptively ruling it out, just in case people forgot the postmodern part of the question (for that matter, beckett shouldn't be on the list, either).

By: interrobang

interrobang — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 22:24:40 -0800

Seconding Foucault's Pendulum, and adding Stand on Zanzibar, wherein all of the characters' motives are revealed in the first couple of pages through a proto-internet/sentient Google-like system, written in 1968.

By: ori

ori — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 23:05:11 -0800

haven't read it myself, but david foster wallace's infinite jest sounds like it fits the bill.

By: bunglin jones

bunglin jones — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 23:12:41 -0800

George Perec's "Life: A User's Manual" - apparently Perec himself doesn't like being called a postmodernist, but I find it hard to look at this book as anything other than postmodern. And it's sprawling enough for the author to consider it not a novel, but "novels", even though it's just one, fat book.

By: sophist

sophist — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 23:38:28 -0800

Paul Auster, Nicholson Baker, maybe David Eggers. Perhaps not quite as dense as Gravity's Rainbow but I think each brings something you will like.

Borges, Woolf and yes... Joyce. These are the foundation upon which post-modern literature was built. Do not dismiss that too easily. You could also just go read some Derrida and get it over with.

By: bobo123

bobo123 — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 23:53:14 -0800

William Gaddis.

By: devilsbrigade

devilsbrigade — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 23:55:56 -0800

Joyce's 'The Dubliners' is relatively accessable, although not sprawling or post-modern. Still very, very good writing.

Not all Joyce is incomrehensible ;)

By: devilsbrigade

devilsbrigade — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 23:59:07 -0800

also, I'm not sure if this fits quite into this category, but Sometimes a Great Notion (Kesey) is one of the best books I have read in my life. It jumps around quite a bit, switches point of view & time without warning/signals, etc.

Chances are you won't understand it if you've never been west though. Its a bitch of a book, and if its not in your backyard, it loses its punch.

By: sic

sic — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 00:47:20 -0800

I second Gaddis; alternatively you may want to look at older stuff that was "postmodern" before postmodern existed: Jakob von Guten by Robert Walser (or The Robber); Tristam Shandy; or even the short stories of Borges, especially those in the Aleph.

By: sic

sic — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 00:48:00 -0800

Oh, and Nabakov's Pale Fire is quite pomo.

By: sic

sic — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 00:51:19 -0800

Oh, and I just glanced at my bookshelf: if you want sprawling, try William T. Vollman's You Bright and Risen Angels (his first book, a flawed masterpiece) or The Royal Family. Also his 7 dreams series (of which there are 4) The Ice Shirt, The Rifles, The Crows, Argall...

By: Marquis

Marquis — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 01:50:24 -0800

Rushdie! Rushdie! Rushdie! If you like music, start with Ground Beneath Her Feet. If you like history, start with Midnight's Children. Both are huge and freakin' fantastic.

By: handee

handee — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 03:02:34 -0800

Luther Blissett's "Q" is a great book. Written by 4 anonymous italians naming themselves after a bloke who used to play for Watford, to boot.

By: Pericles

Pericles — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 04:24:15 -0800

Rushdie! The Moor's Last Sigh.

By: gleuschk

gleuschk — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 04:29:25 -0800

Barth Barth Barth! Giles Goat-Boy, The Sot-weed Factor, and LETTERS

By: josh

josh — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 04:47:09 -0800

Yeah, I was going to say Nabokov: not, strictly speaking, a 'postmodernist,' but definitely somewhat in the zone you're describing, and a big genius. Try 'Ada, or Ardor' and 'Pale Fire.'

As for Joyce--he is definitely a high modernist, but he's one of those high modernists who shows how blurry the distinction between modernism and postmodernism can be. Buy 'The Bloomsday Book' and give 'Ulysses' another shot if ou want something really sprawling.

By: Gortuk

Gortuk — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 04:51:35 -0800

Mark Helprin (A Winter's Tale is beautiful but flawed, Memoir from Antproof Case is more cohesive, but both are worth reading). For "post-modern before it was cool", check out Flann O'Brien, especially The Third Policeman.

By: n9

n9 — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 04:58:59 -0800

I second Delilo's The Names, I've read it about 10 times.

William Gaddis's The Recognitions is unreal fantastic but you have got to be on top of your game to do it.

By: rainbaby

rainbaby — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 05:01:52 -0800

Michael Houellebecq (example "The Elementary Particles") and Jeannette Winterson (example "Written on The Body"). These French cats have a sprawing thing goin' on.

By: ZakDaddy

ZakDaddy — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 05:16:22 -0800

Second (ooh! ooh!) Mark Helprin - thanks, Gortuk. Memoir from Antproof Case is quite good, but I was literally brought to tears (happy and sad) by A Soldier of the Great War. And this is my first post, if anybody cares. :) What an amazing site!

-Zak-

By: handee

handee — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 05:23:05 -0800

I've had long arguments about Houellebecq with friends in pubs, and have come to the conclusion that whilst I think his books are misogynistic oversimplistic slightly racist shite, other people whose opinions I respect quite like them.

I'm certain he's not in the same category as Pynchon, David Foster Wallace or DeLillo.

Jeanette winterson's not French, either.

By: Chrischris

Chrischris — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 05:47:43 -0800

The Death of Virgil By Hermann Broch. The densest, potentially most frustrating, great stream-of-consciousness novel you'll ever read.

JR by William Gaddis. A work of genius.

Hopeful Monsters by Nicholas Moseley. The very definition of a sprawling, intellectual novel. Personally, I've not been enamoured with Mosely's other work, but this one has always stayed with me...

By: OmieWise

OmieWise — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 06:03:00 -0800

Gadddis for sure, Tristram Shandy is crucial, Don Quixote is pretty important as a referent.

It's nice to see Moseley on the list, too many people forget him.

Perec is good to read (but dead, so should be referred to in the past tense), try Harry Mathews or other OuLiPo writers. Mathews is my favorite.

By: OmieWise

OmieWise — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 06:03:26 -0800

*Gaddis* (And I meant to say to start with The Recognitions.

By: zadcat

zadcat — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 06:16:49 -0800

Neal Stephenson - Cryptonomicon, and the more recent trilogy, practically define sprawl.

By: adamvasco

adamvasco — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 06:24:31 -0800

Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon

By: By The Grace of God

By The Grace of God — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 06:36:47 -0800

Alasdair Gray's Lanark.

and props to ikkyu2 for the delany mention!

By: dirtmonster

dirtmonster — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 06:42:36 -0800

I see lots of DeLillo recs, but none for 'Running Dogs' which was actually my favorite of his. His work parallels Pynchon a bit too closely for my tastes ('Underworld' and 'Gravity's Rainbow' in particular, with their running scatological ruminations), so 'Running Dogs' would be DeLillo's 'Vineland' (sometimes my favorite Pynchon). My wife read 'Argall' and liked it pretty well. A short, not-so-sprawling, but definitely po-mo pirate tale is 'Fishboy' by Mark Richards.

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 06:43:11 -0800

Donald Barthelme. Read through a few stories on this page [self link] and if you like them, go out and get 40 Stories, 60 Stories, or Amateurs which are all great, readable, and truly postmodern. He won't get too much "wow" effect but if you pass on his stories to people, they usually appreciate them. A few other names: Robert Coover, Kathy Acker, Mark Leyner and a big yes yes yes to Borges.

By: dirtmonster

dirtmonster — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 06:43:44 -0800

Oops! I'm logged in as my wife. Holy Identity-Crisis, Batman! (Slothrop)

By: Chrischris

Chrischris — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 06:45:38 -0800

Sorry, here is corrected Death Of Virgil link.

By: sic

sic — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 06:52:17 -0800

I've had long arguments about Houellebecq with friends in pubs, and have come to the conclusion that whilst I think his books are misogynistic oversimplistic slightly racist shite, other people whose opinions I respect quite like them.

I just finished reading The Elementary Particles and found it to be one of the worst books I've ever read by a smart writer. French rationalism showing its worst face; that is, when taken to its extreme a fairly brilliant idea becomes horribly repugnant. He is a very smart writer though and it helps to stomach his misanthropy (even more so than misogyny) if you see everything as an ironic reverse criticism. If that makes any sense. Then again, maybe just genetically eliminating of all sexual and racial differences and plurality among human beings really is the answer to happiness...

Or not ;)

By: rtimmel

rtimmel — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 07:55:24 -0800

Someone mentioned some of his other stuff, but Vollmann's The Rainbow Stories is brilliant. Also, while far from sprawling, O'Brien's The Things They Carried is quite pomo and one of the best things I have ever read.

By: sol

sol — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 08:02:51 -0800

Any Richard Powers fans out there?

I've read The Gold Bug Variations, Galetea 2.2, and In The Time of Our Singing. I'm not good with categories, i.e. Don'Kno PoMo from FroYo, but his stuff is sprawling and quite good.

By: Zed_Lopez

Zed_Lopez — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 08:30:42 -0800

John Crowley's Aegypt/Love & Sleep/Daemonomania.

By: rainbaby

rainbaby — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 09:12:21 -0800

Fair enough, but Houellebecq is sprawling, readable, and may get you a wow.

By: klangklangston

klangklangston — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 10:00:42 -0800

You should have already read Slaughterhouse 5 and Catch-22.
You may not have read Hopscotch, by Julio Cortazar.
Bartholme also wrote City Stories, which is another collection of short stories that interlock. I recommend it over 40 Stories, mostly because most of the best stories in 40 Stories come from City Stories.
The Amatuers is also good.

By: johnny novak

johnny novak — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 11:09:26 -0800

Robert Musil - A Man Without Qualities

Big, sprawling, provocative. Not exactly postmodern though.

By: luriete

luriete — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 12:11:08 -0800

Science fiction and fantasty are not my favorite genres but China Mieville's Perdido Street Station and its sequels might be in the general region of what you're looking for.

By: jack_mo

jack_mo — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 12:20:47 -0800

If you like Beckett's novels, you'll probably like anything and everything by B.S. Johnson.

I'm midway through The Unfortunates at the moment, and the writing is absolutely stunning. Also, it comes in a box with 27 unbound sections that readers are asked to shuffle before they begin reading, which is, you know, quite cool.

And I'll second the mention of Lanark - most Alisdair Grey is well worth reading, though not all fits your sprawling requirement so well.

By: cobra libre

cobra libre — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 13:32:24 -0800

Let's list some more precursors.

Gargantua and Pantagruel, by François Rabelais, is a sprawling, smutty, hilarious, marvelous mess of a novel from the late middle ages/early renaissance. The edition I read was translated by Burton Raffel, and it's exquisite. I've read passages from it out loud to my girlfriend, and she's convinced that it's a book for puerile 12-year old boys, but don't let that dissuade you.

If you like frame tales (stories in stories in stories...), then you owe it to yourself to read The 1,001 Nights (or The Arabian Nights or The Thousand Nights and a Night) if you haven't already, and you might also like Jan Potocki's Manuscript Found in Saragossa.

Moving into the first half of the 20th century, there's Flann O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds and The Third Policeman and Felipe Alfau's Locos, three early masterpieces of metafiction. (Actually, I'm not sure if I buy the argument of The Third Policeman as metafiction, but worth reading regardless.) All three are funny and superbly written; the Alfau book is actually moving at times.

None of those three books are "sprawling," however; I don't think any of them are longer than 200 pages. Besides the books already mentioned in this thread, there's Guillermo Cabrera Infante's Three Trapped Tigers, which I haven't read, but it looks like it might fill your need for a giant slab of difficult prose. Then there's Gilbert Sorrentino's Mulligan Stew, which I have read -- it seems to follow directly from Rabelais, Flann O'Brien, and god knows what else. I think it goes on for at least a hundred pages past its welcome, but it's one of the funniest books I've ever read nonetheless.

By: bendybendy

bendybendy — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 14:20:25 -0800

The Dalkey Archive Press catalog will keep you in post-modern sprawl for a while; they've published or reprinted some of the authors already mentioned.

I'd suggest these for starters;

Mr. Dynamite by Meredith Brosnan. Aging Irish boho in NYC sends ihis life down the tubes, sort of a punk rock version of the Third Policeman.

Cigarettes by Harry Matthews. The perversions of an extended circle of New Yorkers.

For Paul Auster, go for Leviathan. And how about Martin Amis' London Fields?

By: rleamon

rleamon — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 17:04:58 -0800

I don't go for the DeLillos posted here so far so much; haven't read The Names yet. But I'd at least chime in that certainly Ratner's Star, Libra, Mao II, and for dessert, White Noise, are a good bit of sprawl.

Especially taken together.

By: rleamon

rleamon — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 17:05:43 -0800

On post -- The Tin Drum works too. Tap tap tap...

By: dj_fraudulent

dj_fraudulent — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 21:24:35 -0800

wow... thank you all!

i am going to powells in portland this weekend and am printing this thread out before i go.

By: sic

sic — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 02:30:04 -0800

If you decide to get some Auster read The New York Trilogy, it is considered his most important work. After that, read In the Country of Last Things, The Music of Chance and the Invention of Solitude. If you still want more, read his great book of essays called The Art of Hunger. The rest of his work is kind of average, in my opinion.

By: wackybrit

wackybrit — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 09:00:16 -0800

What about The Atrocity Exhibition by J.G.Ballard? Or, heck.. anything by J.G. Ballard.. he does it all from 4 page mini stories up to sprawling dystopian landscapes.

By: ronv

ronv — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 09:15:28 -0800

i'll admit i don't know much about PoMo as a movement, but let me say that nabokov's pale fire is a wonderful piece of literature-- especially in a technical sense.

By: boombot

boombot — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 09:17:47 -0800

Evan Dara's 'The Lost Scrapbook' is well worth your time. It's challenging, but readable.

By: muddylemon

muddylemon — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 09:32:09 -0800

McEllroy - don't forget him. He's like the ur-D.F.Wallace. His women and men is quite sprawling. It scares me everytime i walk by it on my shelf. For a book that's actually enjoyable by him, try "The Letter Left To Me" - real good

By: bripod

bripod — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 12:02:46 -0800

I'll not try to say whether these are postmodern or not, 'cause I'm shite at that stuff, but I think they fit in with what you're looking for:
Knut Hamsun, Hunger
Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!
Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano

And I second too many previously mentioned titles to explicity name them all, but especially Calvino's If On A Winter's Night A Traveller and Auster's New York Trilogy.

By: pwally

pwally — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 13:01:33 -0800

I would check out Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs. It was my introduction to postmodernism and quite frankly it blew me away. Here is a link to a syllabus used for a college course on postmodern literature. Pynchon, Kelman, and Burroughs are the authors that are concentrated on in the course.

By: CrunchyGods

CrunchyGods — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 13:29:50 -0800

David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas still has me reeling.

By: ed

ed — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 16:06:10 -0800

Lots of good names have been mentioned, but might I suggest William T. Vollmann? (In fact, you might want to check this little project out.

I'd also suggest The Tale of Genji, Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy and Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook if you're into sprawling reads.

By: ed

ed — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 16:07:07 -0800

And big-time props and admiration for both Gaddis and Powers.

By: kooop

kooop — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 16:31:25 -0800

i'll second anything neal stephenson. cryptonomicon, the baroque cycle, snow crash... good stuff.

By: holgate

holgate — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 01:08:06 -0800

Tristram Shandy. Borges. Beckett's trilogy.

Ben Marcus's The Age of Wire and String, possibly. James Flint's Habitus, possibly. Martin Amis's London Fields, possibly. David Mitchell's Number9Dream, possibly, esp. in the context of Murakami.

Flann O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds, definitely. Italo Svevo's Zeno's Conscience (aka The Confessions of Zeno), definitely.

By: quasistoic

quasistoic — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 14:38:01 -0800

Not pomo in the least, but if you enjoyed Murakami, give Neal Gaiman a try. Start with American Gods.

By: Heminator

Heminator — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 15:41:16 -0800

I second Neal Stephenson, DeLillo and Vollman -- I also recommend Lord of the Barnyard by Tristan Egolf. Hilarious and highly readable.

By: BigBrownBear

BigBrownBear — Sat, 17 Jun 2006 09:51:45 -0800

Surprised that it hasn't been mentioned, but Cormac McCarthy is excellent, excellent stuff. I read alot of PoMo dribble and he is one of the few authors I found really very talented. Also, check out Hopscotch.