Classic cult fiction : a companion to popular cult literature

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Classic cult fiction : a companion to popular cult literature

Thomas Reed Whissen

Greenwod Press, 1992

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注記

Includes bibliographical references (p. [309]-316) and index

内容説明・目次

内容説明

Question: What does Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye (1951) have in common with Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774)? Answer: Actually a great deal. They are classics of cult fiction and share many attributes. Cult fiction is a reader-created genre. A cult book can appear within any type of literary genre--for instance, romance, mystery, science fiction--but will achieve cult status only on the basis of reader response. It has qualities that speak to a reader, who may feel that it has been written for him or her alone; yet this very personal appeal is widespread, and such a book may grow in popularity almost as an underground movement, inspiring a generation of readers and sometimes enduring as a mainstream classic. Though amazingly diverse, such books also have astonishing commonalities pervasive enough to qualify them as comprising a genre. Classic Cult Fiction is a history, analysis, and reference guide to books that have become bibles to generations of Europeans and Americans over the past two hundred years. Though canon formation is an awesome prospect, sure to lead to challenges by scholars and readers alike, author Thomas Whissen fearlessly identifies the top fifty classic cult books, first presenting an informed and witty interpretation of the phenomenon and its characteristics with examples from different cultures and periods. Cult fiction is shown to be a product of the Romantic movement and a reflection of the persistent romantic temperament in Western civilization. The work offers insights into the mentality of the Golden Age of Cult Fiction, the 1960s, by analyzing the cult books that both influenced the age and were influenced by it. The fifty individual works are each discussed relative to time and place, impact, and audience psychology and analyzed in terms of common cult attributes. A chronological listing of cult fiction adds a number of titles not chosen for the top fifty. An original approach to criticism, this literary companion argues the case for cult fiction as a distinct genre and offers fifty fresh and thought provoking essays to back up the contention.

目次

Preface Introduction Cult Classics Against Nature, Joris-Karl Huysmans Animal Farm, George Orwell Another Roadside Attraction, Tom Robbins Axel, Philippe Auguste Villiers de Lísle-Adam Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me, Richard Farina The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath Brave New World, Aldous Huxley A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr. The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger Catch-22, Joseph Heller A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess The Day of the Locust, Nathanael West Demian, Hermann Hesse Dune, Frank Herbert Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand Frankenstein, or the Modern Promethus, Mary Shelley The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams The Killer Inside Me, Jim Thompson Lady Chatterley's Lover, D.H. Lawrence Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov Look Homeward, Angel, Thomas Wolfe Lord of the Flies, William Golding Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien Lost Horizon, James Hilton Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey On the Road, Jack Kerouac The Outsider, Colin Wilson The Outsiders, S.E. Hinton Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce RenEÉ, Francois-RenEÉ de Chateaubriand A Separate Peace, John Knowles Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse Slaughterhouse-Five or the Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death, Kurt Vonnegut The Sorrows of Young Werther, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe The Stand, Stephen King Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse The Stranger, Albert Camus Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, Carlos Castaneda This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald Time and Again, Jack Finney Trout Fishing in America, Richard Brautigan 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke Walden II, B. F. Skinner Warlock, Oakley Hall Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig Chronological Listing of Cult Fiction Works Cited Bibliography of Primary Works: First and Current Editions Books for Further Reading Index

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