# Recommend me some long and cluttered fiction **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 18, 2009, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-long-and-cluttered-fiction/500143 "2009-06-18T04:09:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Alka\_Seltzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c89c15/32.png) [@Alka\_Seltzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alka_Seltzer)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2009, 9:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-long-and-cluttered-fiction/500143/21 "2009-06-18T09:48:13Z")
Bit of a left-field recommendation, but how about _The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher_ by Kate Summerscale? It’s a factual account of a victorian murder, but it touches on the development of the murder mystery genre, early policing and victorian social history. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2009, 10:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-long-and-cluttered-fiction/500143/22 "2009-06-18T10:21:33Z")
If you want something Olde School, try _The Count of Monte Cristo_ (which bears little resemblance to any of the films due to its length and complexity). There are plot arcs so long that they go into Low Earth Orbit. Every time you think something’s going to be resolved, another new character (and character arc) is introduced. That everything ties up neatly in the end is a testament to Dumas’ skill, but it’s blatantly apparent that the man was getting paid by the installment. ---
**Author:** ![Small\_Clanger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9fc348/32.png) [@Small\_Clanger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Small_Clanger)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2009, 10:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-long-and-cluttered-fiction/500143/23 "2009-06-18T10:24:51Z")
Since the author who immediately came to mind on reading the title is mentioned in the OP (Neal Stephenson) and Discworld is recommended in the first reply I’ll offer something slightly different: [Godel,\_Escher,\_Bach](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach) It’s not fiction but it’s certainly long and fascinatingly rambley. ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2009, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-long-and-cluttered-fiction/500143/24 "2009-06-18T11:16:28Z")
There is David Foster Wallace and if you like fantasy, R.R. Martin ([http://www.georgerrmartin.com/](http://www.georgerrmartin.com/)) has written a series of novles that read like the world’s longest prologue. ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2009, 11:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-long-and-cluttered-fiction/500143/25 "2009-06-18T11:22:26Z")
Mark Danielewski’s _House of Leaves_ may be up your alley. It’s a long and rambling book with layers of “editors” making comments, big footnotes, and interesting digressions everywhere. The base story is about a family living in a house that starts showing extra-dimensional spaces, and the book itself essentially begins to do that as well, as more and more text/information/layers of meaning getting crammed in from every direction. By the end of the book you’re not sure if **any** of it is “true” from the perspective of people in the story, even though you’ve just been told this story from many different viewpoints. ---
**Author:** ![singular1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ba9def/32.png) [@singular1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/singular1)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2009, 11:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-long-and-cluttered-fiction/500143/26 "2009-06-18T11:27:35Z")
Anything by [Barbara Kingsolver](http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw_1_7?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=kingsolver+barbara&sprefix=kingsol), especially Poisonwood Bible or Prodigal Summer. She describes her world with breathtaking beauty. Come to think of it, until I get the books I just ordered from this thread, I think I’m going to reread PS myself. It’s been a long time - I’d like to visit her again now that I have my own garden. ---
**Author:** ![YoudNeverGuess](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/a587f6/32.png) [@YoudNeverGuess](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YoudNeverGuess)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2009, 11:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-long-and-cluttered-fiction/500143/27 "2009-06-18T11:39:27Z")
You could try [The Gormenghast Trilogy](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gormenghast-Trilogy-Mervyn-Peake/dp/0099288893). It’s kind of a crazy book. I also second _The Wind-up Bird Chronicle_, _House of Leaves_ and _Cloud Atlas_ (though that one’s not that long) And there’s always Tolstoy too - _Anna Karenina_ and _War and Peace_ Tom Wolfe _A Man in Full_ - not cluttered or crazy but long and a good read _Moby Dick_? I know it gets a divided response but I liked it ---
**Author:** ![YoudNeverGuess](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/a587f6/32.png) [@YoudNeverGuess](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YoudNeverGuess)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2009, 11:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-long-and-cluttered-fiction/500143/28 "2009-06-18T11:40:52Z")
Oh and the longest of all (7 volumes) is Proust’s _In Search of Lost Time_ ---
**Author:** ![The\_Stafford\_Cripps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_stafford_cripps/32/7167_2.png) [@The\_Stafford\_Cripps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Stafford_Cripps)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2009, 11:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-long-and-cluttered-fiction/500143/29 "2009-06-18T11:41:48Z")
> [@wunderkammer](#): > > I have always loved the kinds of fiction that tends to make people impatient. > [@](#): > > Basically, I want to read something written by an extremely interesting person who loves to expound upon anything and everything, and can barely control him- or herself. I want to be dumped into the odds-and-ends drawer of some fascinating story, world, or situation … Plot (or lack thereof) is no object. I swear. I just need something cluttered, textured, meandering, and fascinating. I just want to third Tristram Shandy by Lawrence Sterne - you’ve basically described it already. Sterne anticipates post-modernism 200 years ahead of its time. The “story” is intentionally absurd, with endless digressions and digressions within digressions. He even messes around sometimes with the visual appearance of the text, especially when a character called Yorick dies. ---
**Author:** ![wunderkammer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ed8c4c/32.png) [@wunderkammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wunderkammer)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2009, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-long-and-cluttered-fiction/500143/30 "2009-06-18T13:11:57Z")
Excellent thread, everyone! You’ve touched on some things that I’ve read and loved (Gormenghast, Barbara Kingsolver, _Catch-22_, _House of Leaves_), so I guess my OP was pretty accurate and I do, in fact, know what I like. This thread’s getting bookmarked. Now carry on… ---
**Author:** ![Khadaji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2009, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-long-and-cluttered-fiction/500143/31 "2009-06-18T13:42:21Z")
I came to recommend _Drood._ I didn’t like it myself, but it seems to match your request. ---
**Author:** ![eleanorigby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ee7513/32.png) [@eleanorigby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eleanorigby)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2009, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-long-and-cluttered-fiction/500143/32 "2009-06-18T13:47:45Z")
_Middlemarch_ by George Eliot. It’s cluttered and long. Not cyber-punk, although if looked at a certain way… _Vanity Fair_ by Thackeray is also long and cluttered. Can’t help you on the topical digressions, but Victorian authors are pretty much the definition of digression. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Paintcharge](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/paintcharge/32/7946_2.png) [@Paintcharge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paintcharge)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2009, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-long-and-cluttered-fiction/500143/33 "2009-06-18T14:08:50Z")
I see someone mentioned David Foster Wallace already. For SF I’d add Vernor Vinge. Non SF, try Wilton Barnhad’s Gospel. Huge book about a search for a lost gospel. ---
**Author:** ![Plynck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Plynck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Plynck)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2009, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-long-and-cluttered-fiction/500143/34 "2009-06-18T14:13:14Z")
> [@wunderkammer](#): > > Similarly, I love _Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell_, not least for its hundreds of juicy footnotes, … > [@madmonk28](#): > > There is David Foster Wallace … Dear God, yes. If you like footnotes, then Wallace’s footnotes take up a measurable thickness of his books and almost need their _own_ footnotes. ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2009, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-long-and-cluttered-fiction/500143/35 "2009-06-18T14:16:51Z")
Like **Dijon Warlock** said, _Foucault’s Pendulum_, by Umberto Eco. Also, _The Name of the Rose_, and _The Island of the Day Before_. Eco has diverse interests, and loves to tell you about all of them. Tolstoy’s _War and Peace_ is a very entertaining soap opera, interrupted from time to time by a bunch of sermons on the Meaning of Life. Try the musketeer novels of Dumas. 1. _The Three Musketeers_. 2. _Twenty Years After_. 3. _The Viscount de Bragellone_. _The Viscount de Bragellone_ is so long and convoluted, that most English-language publishers break it up into three installments: 3a. _The Viscount de Bragellone_. 3b. _Louise de la Valiere_. 3c. _The Man in the Iron Mask_. I would recommend the Oxford paperback editions. They are heavily annotated, so when Dumas starts name-dropping, you can look up the celebrity he was talking about. ---
**Author:** ![Finagle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b19c9b/32.png) [@Finagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Finagle)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2009, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-long-and-cluttered-fiction/500143/36 "2009-06-18T14:25:03Z")
> [@AuntiePam](#): > > Oooh – Mark Helprin expounds mightily in _Memoir from Antproof Case_ and _A Soldier of the Great War_. I’d recommend “A Winter’s Tale” by Helprin – it’s probably one of the classic urban fantasies and it’s massively convoluted. Also, you might want to check out [Infinite Summer](http://infinitesummer.org/), a mass reading of Wallace’s Infinite Jest. Here’s a quote from that web page: > [@](#): > > ``` > Trust the author: Around page 50, you’re going to feel a sinking sense of dread, as it dawns on you how much stuff you’ll be asked to keep track of: lots of characters coming and going, subplots upon subplots, page long sentences, and more. You have to believe that what seems at first like a bunch of disconnected vignettes (like The Wardine Section) will in fact come together; that the connections among what seem like radically disparate plot lines really do make themselves apparent in time. But at first, it requires something of a focus on the local plot lines, and a leap of faith in the fact that the global picture will eventually resolve. > > ``` Sound cluttered enough? ---
**Author:** ![wunderkammer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ed8c4c/32.png) [@wunderkammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wunderkammer)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2009, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-long-and-cluttered-fiction/500143/37 "2009-06-18T15:08:26Z")
Oooooh…if I ordered the book right away, I could even start the mass reading on time. Usually I discover these things a year and a day after they’ve finished. ---
**Author:** ![filling\_pages](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b9bd4f/32.png) [@filling\_pages](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/filling_pages)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2009, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-long-and-cluttered-fiction/500143/38 "2009-06-18T15:54:05Z")
Second **Perdido Street Station** or anything else by China Mieville. His writing is, well, rich in detail. Some of the details includes the most horrible things I have ever thought about, but there you go. I love his work. ---
**Author:** ![cher3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/da6949/32.png) [@cher3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cher3)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2009, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-long-and-cluttered-fiction/500143/39 "2009-06-18T17:52:20Z")
Dickens is the master of that sort of thing. _Bleak House_ is probably the best example. ---
**Author:** ![Panurge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/fbc32d/32.png) [@Panurge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Panurge)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2009, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-long-and-cluttered-fiction/500143/40 "2009-06-18T19:42:44Z")
Rabelais’ _Gargantua & Pantagruel_, Sterne’s _The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman_, Cervantes’ _Don Quixote_. They are all rambling, crazy, humorous and somewhat surreal - especially _Gargantua & Pantagruel_. Great book! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-long-and-cluttered-fiction/500143.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recommend-me-some-long-and-cluttered-fiction/500143.md?page=3)