You Won’t Believe These Are Real Books

The Bibliofilles

Hosts Chaya and Sophie explore the spectrum of 'weird' literature, ranging from experimental typographic forms to surreal and bizarre plotlin

Key takeaways

• A book club in Venice, California, famously took 28 years to finish deciphering James Joyce's Finnegans Wake.
• Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close utilizes non-traditional forms like random images of doorknobs and numerical sequences.

Main topics

• Experimental literary forms
• Surrealism and bizarre plots

Notable quotes

Is the woman sexually attracted to the cat? And you said, not really. Well, then she is a bit, and if she is a bit, it's a bit weird.

Conclusion

The episode concludes that while the 'shock factor' may be increasing,

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Is the woman sexually attracted to the cat? And you said, not really. Well, then she is a bit, and if she is a bit, it's a bit weird. There's an enormous black cat called Behemoth who drinks vodka and carries guns. The widow of Speaker 2 (0:12) the hand donor wants to spend quality time with her late husband's hand, which is now obviously attached to the man who lost his hand because it was eaten. by a lion, live on TV. Yeah, Speaker 1 (0:30) that's unhinged, love. It's unhinged. I'm building you up to morning glory milking fun. Hello Speaker 2 (0:45) and welcome back to the Biblia Feels. I'm Sophie. And I'm Chaya. And before we go any further, I just wanted to take a moment on behalf of both of us to say thank you for making the time to be with us today, wherever you are, whatever you're doing. I mean, within reason. We're very grateful that you're here with us. So thank you for Speaker 1 (1:02) being here. Imagine the scene. A woman falls in love with a plane. Another woman has a relationship with a bear. One crawls inside a cactus. A man wakes up as an enormous insect. There's a romance novel in which, and I actually need to be genuinely clear, this is a published book. The hero is a door. So we are looking at books that are going to have your jaws on the proverbial floor for the weirdness that they exude in every capacity. think the point is we Speaker 2 (1:40) have to ask ourselves and this is what I've been wondering is fiction just getting weirder I mean there must be an appetite for this book these kinds of books because there seem to be so many Speaker 1 (1:52) more of them I I absolutely agree they're they're just everywhere and it feels like everyone's pushing boundaries and when we were researching the weirdest books for this episodes, what's interesting is that there is that golden thread through literature of the most unhinged weird books. And we are going to be excavating whether it's getting weirder or whether it's just always been unhinged. I think Speaker 2 (2:19) it's also the point that weird is now a bit of a kind of status signal culturally. I think that we all want to be a little bit weird because it means we're a little bit different. And I think Speaker 1 (2:34) when Speaker 2 (2:35) you own that, it kind of means that you're somebody who's not just sort of subject to whatever is thrown at them algorithmically. It means that you've got your own mind, you're doing your own thing a bit, you're just a little bit weird and isn't a little bit weird, a little bit cooler. Like that in my mind, that... that kind of lives behind the trend of being weird. But I feel that a lot of these books take Speaker 1 (3:02) weird to the real ends of the earth weird. Speaker 2 (3:06) And I think weird as well, there are different kinds of weird books and that's something we're going to be delving into as well. But some of Speaker 1 (3:12) them... You're so eloquent. Speaker 2 (3:14) You really Speaker 1 (3:15) are. Speaker 2 (3:15) Just one point though, aside from my eloquence, is that I always felt that... weird books is such a you thing. Before we started talking, I was like, oh gosh, you're gonna, this podcast is you, like weird, weird, weird. You love a weird book. But actually, there are a lot of books that I like that are weird, but just not maybe in the same sense. So it's a fascinating Speaker 1 (3:35) thing. Well, what do we mean? So we've got a demarcated sections from form and language to the surreal to the body modification. Speaker 1 (3:45) to romance. And we're not talking about horror because I think there are lots of books that are provocative and that are there to provoke. But Sophie, you said when we were discussing this in our pre-show chat. We Speaker 2 (3:56) do have some rehearsals, don't Speaker 1 (3:57) we? These are the books that you are almost reticent to explain what you're reading. When someone says, what do you read? Oh, you're reading a book. What's it about? And you're like, um, because if you answer, the person is forever more going to consider you. entirely bizarre. And I'm going to start off with a classic. And this classic is Finnegan's Wake by James Boyce, which I have not read. And I'm not going to recommend to anyone on here. And I'll tell you why in a wonderful anecdote. A book club in Venice, California, started reading this book in 1995. Sophie, when do you think they finished? I mean, you would hope they finished in 1995. They finished. 28 years later. That is insane. It took them 28 years to decipher it. James Joy spent 17 years creating this book. He abandoned, how can I put it, conventional English to create a dream language of portmanteaus, puns, invented words, references. It's circular. And there are individual passages that are entirely incomprehensible. And it's almost become this... paradigm of intellectualism, but it's also just so bizarre that no one can get to the bottom of it. I also haven't read, I Speaker 2 (5:15) haven't read this and I haven't read any James Joyce, but I just find it so fascinating that a book could take that long to decipher. Like that's just to me bizarre. I mean, I'd love to read reviews on this. Like, do people just say, this is a really weird book, stay away? Or I wonder if people are like, this is actually a really great book and it's worth the 20 Speaker 1 (5:37) -odd years of reading it. Well, Sophie, it's interesting that you say that because its initial reception, it was actually published in installments, because obviously I've done a bit of research now. It was published in 1939. Speaker 1 (5:51) Honestly, the reception was bafflement. People felt that it was entirely pointless. No literary conventions were at all followed. It's experimental and it has a reputation as being one of the most difficult works of literature of all time. Basically, it's bloody weird. It is super weird. It's super weird. I think it's weird because it's not something that has any linear... You have to sit and really... analyze it because at times it took like this book club took hours just to understand one page so it's 628 pages of things that look like typographic errors as one review and I think that's the point that he's experimenting with language and form but it's experiment experimentation to the nth degree so this is an interesting point because actually though Speaker 2 (6:44) I felt weird books may not be my bag. I actually really enjoy a lot of books that play with form, Speaker 1 (6:52) where Speaker 2 (6:52) they actually look weird when you open the pages. And there are a couple that I wanted to touch upon. One is one we both read together, which is The Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies, which we will talk a bit about again later. But that book very much plays with form. But two other ones that I think are fascinating. So there's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. I mean, I was screen grabbing pages to you. But firstly, if you look at this, I'm not sure if you can zoom in. It's marked up with a red pen already. These are not my annotations. There are also random pictures of doorknobs. I mean, pretty much... That don't link to anything. they link to something. There's a relevance for them, but often you don't know why they're there or you need to like, so to be honest, it may just be my own ignorance. There's one page that I particularly like. I mean, this is quite harrowing. I mean, there's a picture of 9-11, someone jumping out of the Twin Towers. I mean, there, and that is, that is relevant to the story, but it's, it's the way that this book intersperses imagery and text. And also look here. Speaker 2 (8:01) All these numbers. I mean, it's fascinating. And he really does play with form. He plays with form in a lot of his books. And I think this is probably the one where he does it the most. I find it really interesting to read books that look like this. It just grabs my attention. And, you know, you might try and figure out the puzzle. Look at this. Just one page. Do you know what time it is? Speaker 2 (8:23) Another one, and it's quite related to a book that kept coming up when we were talking about weird books. It's called Lanny by Max Porter. And Lanny is, I mean, another one that just totally and utterly plays with form the whole way through. Sorry, let me find it. So Lanny is, as I said, by Max Porter, who wrote a book called Grief is a Thing with Feathers, which was really celebrated. I believe this was his second book. And it's about an ancient village. But it's, I mean, look, I just want to show you, look at the writing here. Speaker 1 (9:01) Yeah. And Speaker 2 (9:01) the characters are these kind of ancient, there's this ancient. mythical folklore aspect to the story, but it's even conveyed in how it's written. High look, like what's that? Speaker 1 (9:14) Oh, okay. So for anyone that's just listening, there's pages with random plus signs. Random Speaker 2 (9:20) plus signs. Just that's it. With one text. Where the writing sort of looks like it's falling off a cliff. It's just, to me, this stuff is definitely weird, but it's also... it also makes for a really interesting read for me personally. So Speaker 1 (9:36) playing with form, I mean, I actually don't find that to be weird. I love playing with form. When I think of weird as playing with form, so Tristan Shandy by Laurence Stern, I mean... So that was 1759. We're now playing games with a physical book. There's an entirely black page. There's a marbled page. You're being asked to really engage with the text. And then we get to House of Leaves. Now, House of Leaves, if you type in to Google the weirdest book of fiction of all time, inevitably House of Leaves will be one of the first books. Speaker 1 (10:12) It's two centuries later, a family move into a house and discover that the inside is physically larger than the outside, but the book becomes the house. So it's not that just text starts moving around the page. There's massive footnotes. Footnotes have footnotes. There's ergodic. literature which requires non-trivial effort to traverse the text that's i mean a gothic literature you Speaker 2 (10:31) have Speaker 1 (10:31) to rotate the book it's like a maze do what do we need to get this should i have this in my house is it as big as a house i'm Speaker 2 (10:37) not Speaker 1 (10:37) good at puzzles are you good at puzzles i'm dreadful at puzzles because i don't have the patience yeah yeah it's it doesn't really no one people are trying to make sense of it the whole time that i can see online and then we come to codex seraphinius by luigi seraphini it's it's and then you say that again no It's an encyclopedia of a civilization that doesn't exist. And the entire thing is written in an invented script that he's provided no translation of. So Speaker 2 (11:02) how does Speaker 1 (11:02) one actually read that? You Speaker 2 (11:03) don't? Are you making up? See, it's fine. I don't know. With language. Speaker 2 (11:08) I mean, that is arguably weird that it's written entirely in a language that no one can understand. But didn't too your dear friend Tolkien, he also invented a language. But when you think of Lord of the Rings, that does seem much less weird because I guess it's set within a fantastical world, within the realms of fantasy. It's acceptable. Whereas... For me, I guess with, I don't even know if I can say Codex Saurafen, I can't even say it. But with that, is it not in that sort of fantasy realm? I Speaker 1 (11:47) think it Speaker 2 (11:47) traverses both. Whereas, I mean, Lord of the Rings, it just doesn't. Like we know this is an entirely crafted, set in fantasy. So you can kind of accept that there is a language that's been crafted. That's not weird. It's kind of fine for that. Well, Speaker 1 (12:05) I think this brings us beautifully to, are these books weird even for fantasy? Because the fact is, is that storytelling, I think, is rooted in mythology and fantasy in a way. I think humanity is always using its imagination to create worlds and tales. It's Speaker 2 (12:24) creation, isn't it, really? That it's always rooted in... taking what's real but also making things up and it's the extent to which you do that and the extent to which you Speaker 1 (12:34) world build I guess Speaker 2 (12:36) well I Speaker 1