I’ll start, so as a teen I stumbled across a book called," Someone comes to town, someone leaves town." The synopsis caught me as it’s about a man with a mountain as a fathera washing machine as a mother and one brother that is dead and trying to harm him. I’ll admit some of the technical terms were too much for my developing mind but it has stuck with me all these years.

What is the wackiest / craziest book you’ve read and did you enjoy the ride?

  • bsteckler@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Gravity’s Rainbow. It’s got everything from war to BDSM to explicit coprophilia.

    • Puru11@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      This is the one book I’ve picked up numerous times and continue to struggle through. I don’t have the mental focus for it lately an I really badly want to read it.

    • tikhonjelvis@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Gravity’s Rainbow has my absolutely favorite opening lines:

      A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now.

      There’s just something so evocative about it. It pulled me right in. Then I ended up putting the book aside about 30% of the way in just because it required way more focus to read than I had to spare at the time :P

      Definitely planning to get back to it at some point, maybe on a long vacation…

    • realhorrorsh0w@alien.top
      BEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      My friend in college always named this as the most difficult book he’s ever read. Every time I think about reading it, I look at the synopsis and conclude that I don’t have the mental energy right now.

    • tim_to_tourach@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Not to mention a talking dog, an octopus conditioned to murder someone, and a guy who deals in black market chocolate cream pies.

      • ksarlathotep@alien.topBEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        I’ve been working on it for more than 6 months. I read one chapter, read it again, then give up on the book for 3 weeks. Then I come back to it and read another chapter. It’s a hell of a difficult read.

        • KieselguhrKid13@alien.topBEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          It really is, but it’s completely worth the journey! Come on over to r/ThomasPynchon if you have any questions! The Weisenburger companion is a great help, as are the posts from the group read we did a while back on that sub. But don’t try too hard to understand it the first time - if you get 10% of it, you’re doing great.

          • ksarlathotep@alien.topBEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            I think I’m understanding a fair bit of it (certainly not everything!), since I usually read a chapter once, look through the various online resources (Pynchonwiki etc.), then read it again, or reread most of it. So it’s not that I can’t make head or tails of it, it’s just… it’s such a strenuous process. It’s intellectually stimulating for sure, but it’s hard to find what I would consider a typical sense of enjoyment in it. It’s more like slowly grinding away at a difficult and monumental task. But maybe I’ll get to a point where it “grips” me and I’ll start reading it purely for enjoyment.

            • Bloodysamflint@alien.topBEnglish
              1·
              1 year ago

              Getting to a point you’re reading it purely for enjoyment? That’s not going to happen. Being glad it’s finished, like digging out an ingrown toenail? Yes, you’ll get there.

      • TheeAntiCrust@alien.topBEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        I’ve read it 3 times total…about once a decade in adult life…and I have 4 editions/copies of the book and the audiobook.

    • Bloodysamflint@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      I feel like it’s a novel as described by Stefon from SNL. This novel has everything! V2 rockets, sexual conditioning of children, even an incestuous relationship where the father thinks it’s his daughter, but maybe not…

    • SierraDL123@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      My coworker is reading this book and ever since he’s brought it in, I’ve seen it mentioned at least 15 times in this sub! Its crazy how things like that time out

      • KieselguhrKid13@alien.topBEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        I told a coworker that GR was my favorite book so she immediately pulled up the wiki for it and was like “corporophillia? What’s that?” and then proceeded to look it up while I frantically tried to redirect the conversation. 😅

        • SierraDL123@alien.topBEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          Update: upon telling him about this phenomenon & how often the book pops up on this subreddit, it’s not our answer for everything. What are you having for dinner tonight? Gravity’s Rainbow. What book do you hate? Gravity’s Rainbow. Best book in the world? You guessed, Rainbow. Thing you want to be when you grow up? You get it

    • Passname357@alien.top
      BEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Things in Gravity’s Rainbow

      • A central character is an immortal light bulb
      • A pie fight between a hot air balloon and an airplane
      • The main character keeps a map of London with stars over the places he’s recently had sex. This map just so happens to perfectly match a map of where V2 rockets have dropped. The strange thing is that he has sex before the rockets fall. No one, including him, can figure out why this is happening
      • A mysterious rocket with serial number 00000, and the search for it (which is the central plot of the novel)
      • A history of the extinction of the Dodo bird by colonizers
      • The main character is shot out of a cannon while wearing a pig costume
      • Later, people are looking for the main character and plan on castrating him. Another character has stolen and is wearing the pig costume.