“Pioneer, Go Home!” by Richard Powell. I know it’s out of print and I don’t know if he’s written anything else.
It’s about an incredibly backwards redneck-ish family that run into a mishap on vacation and end up homesteading by a brand-new highway. Public officials do everything they can to evict them, but The Kwimpers are so stupid they’re smart. The lead character, Toby, is completely honest and simple, traits which end up being incredibly effective in dealing with people who are trying to trick them and manipulate them. It’s great satire and I’ve enjoyed it all the (multiple) times I’ve read it.
I don’t know if this counts but my favorite odd little book is Photomontages, a book of avant-garde posters from the early 20th century. It just has a bunch of pictures and an introduction that I can’t read because it’s in French.
Well, I nominated The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon as the book that had the biggest impact on my life in another thread, and since it’s definitely odd and at 152 pages in the paperback edition should qualify as small, I suppose I’ll mention it again.
We used to talk about that one a lot when I was in grad school. Not because of its merits, necessarily, but because we really enjoyed saying “Huysmans” with a particularly whistly sound on the first “s”.
I’d say Katherine Dunn’s “Geek Love”, a novel about a family of carnival sideshow freaks. Also, “M31: A Family Romance” by Stephen Wright, about a UFO-cult family. Both very strange.
I just re-read that - The SantaLand Diaries is my favorite story. It’s so vividly written that I feel like I’ve seen it as a TV show, when I know I really haven’t.
(sic) by Sean Landers. It’s kind of like a journal, but not so. It’s all hand-written (that is, not typeset, so misspellings, ink smears and scribbled out words abound.) He says he wanted to write a book “naked of plot,” because in all other fiction the author is obviously writing about himself and trying to disguise it with fake names and lazily concieved, half-fictionalized events, whereas he, Landers says, is writing about his own life and his own thoughts exactly as the occur in real life. It’s fascinating, in a sick, voyeristic kind of way. He writes about daily events, his childhood, art, religion, life & death, falling in love and falling out of love, and fucking with the reader’s head about how much of what he’s writing is really fact and how much is made up because the “facts” were getting boring. About half the book is him complaining about what a horrile writer he thinks himself to be, and wondering why is ever started writing in the first place. In one of my favourite lines in the book, he is chastising himself for writing bullshit: “Sean! You’re talking out of your ass! Yes, this whole book has been spoken through my ass.”
Some of my faves have already been mentioned: Flatland, Compass Rose, Strunk & White Those are all books I’ve reread several times. For Flatland fans, I highly recommened Sphereland, a sequel written by a 20th century physicist, wherein A. Square & friends discover that Flatland is actually on the surface of a sphere. It’s the gentelest introduction to general relativity I’ve found. Also, my copy of Flatland/Sphereland is one of those double-books, where you read the first novel which comprises half the volume, and they you flip it over to read the second. . . I’ve decided I’m going to start collecting those, because they’re funny.
Anyway, my favorite odd little book would have to be Thirteen Clocks by James Thurber, an off-beat fairy tale full wicked turns of phrase. I have it by my bedside and reread it frequently.
Oooh, Thirteen Clocks! I first read that book at the age of about nine. I lost my copy, bought a new one, lost it again, and haven’t read it in three years, but I remember loving it. I should get another copy somewhere.
I remember being very vaguely frightened by something in that book, but I dont’ remember exactly what.
Perhaps the Duke whose voice was like a iron dropped on velvet, who lost his eye while plundering the nests of nightingales? Or the Todal, who makes a noise like screaming rabbits? Or was it the Golux’s indescribable hat?
It’s about an anti-social orphaned girl who is sent to live with her aunts. She discovers two dolls who live in the attic which are animated by the ghosts of the first people who owned the house. The dolls teach her to love and trust again. It’s an odd story for a children’s book, but for some reason, I’ve always found it very compelling.
The Wreck of the Dumuru *
True story about a ship being torpedoed during WWI. The survivors crowd onto on life raft, and are left stranded in the ocean for ages, finally resorting to canibalism.
Holy good Lord, I think I read that story (I used to read a lot of my sister’s books as a youth because I’d run out of my own). Wasn’t there some bit about the rose garden which was actually the pattern on the wallpaper? And the male doll’s head gets cracked when the aunt finds them and she throws him or some such thing? And I thinks the girl’s name was Maggie (felt like eating peanuts or some such thing).
Actually, I hope it’s the same story – otherwise there’s an odd amount of children’s books involving animated dolls out there.
I suppose if I’m going to hijack, I need to add my own quirky little book. Might I suggest A Child’s Machiavelli: a primer on power which teaches us such things as “If people’re scared of you at first, you can boss 'em around easier later. But if you’re nice at first, they’ll try to get away with stuff and you’re gonna have to punish 'em all the time. Then bad feelings about you will stay in the air.” All set to old children’s book illustrations and bound in a nice pink and blue cover.
