PULP




Apuleius: Psyche et Cupido 

It is an ancient fairytale told by a drunk hag, full of sex and fury, apparently signifying something.  

  
Samuel Beckett: Stirrings Still  

A late and very good Beckett text. The voice that would not die.  

  
William Blake: The Illuminated Books  

One of the most beautiful sites on the web: The Illuminations of Father William Blake in facsimile.  

  
Jorge Luis Borges: The Library of Babel  

I have a modest proposal: Couldn´t some idealistic programmer someday write a program that would (hypothetically) generate all the books in the library of Babel? It should be easy…  
 

Samuel Butler: Erehwon 

A novel-as-thought-experiment a bit reminiscent of Borges: The narrator visits a strange country whose inhabitants hold views that are diametrically opposed to our own. Or aren't they?  
 

Lewis Carroll: The Alice Books  

The rules of polite society laid out for beginners, starring one of the most adorable females in world literature.   
 

Dante: The Divine Comedy  

No one gets out of these enormous rooms alive.   
 

Xavier Forneret: Un rêve  

A short dream text, written by a rich eccentric of the 19th century, linking French Romanticism and Surrealism. (I)  

  
James Joyce: Finnegans Wake  

A totally opaque and fascinating book, probably as close to the language of dreams as anyone ever came.  


Lautréamont: Les Chants du Maldoror 

A haunting celebration of isolation and the dubious pleasures it brings. Written 1871 in Paris, by a 23-year-old Montevidean.  


H. P. Lovecraft: The Shadow Out of Time 

This short story is one of the Lovecraftian texts not too spoiled by his pretentious style. It was among the inspirations for this site, so I thought I´d include it.  


Stéphane Mallarmé: Igitur 

The long, dark deterministic fallacy of the soul. (For some reason, in cyberspace the French original is nowhere to be found, only an English translation.)   


William Shakespeare: King Lear 

The withering of Natural Law.   


Arkady and Boris Strugatsky: Roadside Picnic 

"Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy." This novel inspired the movie "Stalker" by Tarkovsky. It´s somewhat long-winded, but worthwhile for some haunting imagery.   
 

Till Weiher: Traumtagebuch 

More dream texts. (I)  
 

Elinor Wylie: The Venetian Glass Nephew 

Wylie from New Jersey wrote many poems and some novels, influenced by Ronald Firbank. Her "Glass Nephew" is the most mannered and ornamental and beautiful allegorical Frankenstein tale you will ever read. (I learned that this text might not be in the public domain, so I put the publication on hold until further notice. I recommend the book, though.)  

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