I have been working with a brilliant group of MLitt creative writing students at the University of Glasgow, one of the world's leading universities. It became clear to me that their touchstones were not always mine - but sometimes, they very much were: some books are perennial, are loved, despite, or even because of, their canonical status. Setting aside a few gems like Brideshead Revisited, Fiesta, and The Great Gatsby, which are too well known, arguably too merely literary, to be just Cult classics, here are the 100 (or 101 since there are two Outsiders) books of the last 100 years that every budding writer will want to read before they turn 21 - and are likely to read anyway, whether we like it or not.
To have started earlier, with Against Nature, or Heart of Darkness, would be to miss the point that the cultural phenomenon of the Cult book basically starts with the emergence of the teenager in the 50s and 60s, which is why Catcher in the Rye remains the quintessential Cult book. My own favourite Camus is The Plague, but I felt it best to keep to one book per author (otherwise Camus, Hesse, Ballard, Brett Easton Eliis and Bukowski would have had multiples). Oscar Wilde, Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche are obviously 19th century precursors for such angst-ridden works.
I welcome your suggestions for what is missing. Note, there is sci-fi here, as well as horror and other genre fiction - and also graphic novels and memoirs. This list was compiled from speaking with my students, and also two key Irish writers and critics of our generation, Patrick Chapman and Bridget Hourican. I also added a few of my own choices. How many have you read? I have a score of only 30% I confess.
To have started earlier, with Against Nature, or Heart of Darkness, would be to miss the point that the cultural phenomenon of the Cult book basically starts with the emergence of the teenager in the 50s and 60s, which is why Catcher in the Rye remains the quintessential Cult book. My own favourite Camus is The Plague, but I felt it best to keep to one book per author (otherwise Camus, Hesse, Ballard, Brett Easton Eliis and Bukowski would have had multiples). Oscar Wilde, Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche are obviously 19th century precursors for such angst-ridden works.
I welcome your suggestions for what is missing. Note, there is sci-fi here, as well as horror and other genre fiction - and also graphic novels and memoirs. This list was compiled from speaking with my students, and also two key Irish writers and critics of our generation, Patrick Chapman and Bridget Hourican. I also added a few of my own choices. How many have you read? I have a score of only 30% I confess.
A
Clockwork Orange
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Confederacy of Dunces
A
Scanner Darkly
A
Separate Peace
Aberration
of Starlight
American
Psycho
An
Angel at My Table
Ask the
Dust
At
Swim-Two-Birds
Atomised
Beautiful
Losers
Bonjour
Tristesse
Brave New
World
Breakfast
at Tiffany's
Bright Lights,
Big City
Brighton
Rock
By
Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept
Catch-22
Catcher
in the Rye
Cold
Comfort Farm
Down In the
Zero
Dune
Exquisite Corpse
Factotum
Fahrenheit
451
Fear and
Loathing in Las Vegas
Fight
Club
Geek Love
Generation
X
Girl,
Interrupted
Gravity’s
Rainbow
How Late
It Was How Late
I Am the
Cheese
Infinite
Jest
Interview
with the Vampire
Lanark
Last
Exit to Brooklyn
Leaving
Las Vegas
Lolita
London
Orbital
Lucky Jim
Maus
Money
Mysterious Skin
Naked
Lunch
Nausea
Neuromancer
Never
Let Me Go
Nightwood
Nineteen
Eighty-Four
No One
Belongs Here More Than You
Norwegian
Wood
On The
Road
One Flew
Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
Our Lady
of the Flowers
Persepolis
Portnoy's
Complaint
Sexus
Slaughterhouse
Five
Sombrero
Fallout: A Japanese Novel
Story
of the Eye
Swing
Hammer Swing
The
Alexandria Quartet
The
Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz
The
Atrocity Exhibition
The Beach
The
Bell Jar
The
Bloody Chamber
The Day
of the Locust
The End
of Alice
The
Fountainhead
The
Glass Bead Game
The Gormenghast
trilogy
The
Handmaid's Tale
The Heart
Is a Lonely Hunter
The
History of Luminous Motion
The Lord
of the Flies
The Man with
the Golden Arm
The
Master and Margarita
The
Moviegoer
The
Outsider (Camus and Wilson)
The Painted Bird
The Perks
of Being a Wallflower
The
Postman Always Rings Twice
The
Razor’s Edge
The
Secret History
The Sheltering
Sky
The Story
of O
The
Trial
The
Virgin Suicides
The
Wasp Factory
To Kill a
Mockingbird
Trainspotting
Under The
Volcano
Watchmen
Water
Music
We Need
To Talk About Kevin
Wetlands
White
Noise
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