Recommend me some "mindfuck" fiction

[Malthus]

I really liked Zod Wallop. A complete mindfuck, and well-written and engaging, too.

Zod Wallop: Spencer, William: 9781565048706: Amazon.com: Books

[Meurglys]

Maybe something by William Browning Spencer. Irrational Fears or Zod Wallop or perhaps?

[Malthus]

@Meurglys

Maybe something by William Browning Spencer. Irrational Fears or Zod Wallop or perhaps?

Heh, five minutes ahead of you.

[Meurglys]

Bah!
I spent too long browsing Amazon deciding which titles to suggest!

[Mahna_Mahna]

Another interesting mindfuck that I especially liked because it completely sneaks up on you is Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith.

Best. Opening. Chapter. EVER.

[well_he_s_back]

I think the novel The Carpet Makers by Andreas Eschbach fits the bill. Creative, WTF - Sci Fi.

The books of Jerzy Kosinski might fit also, tho I really didn’t like his books, some people do.

[beowulff]

Amnesia Moon by Jonathan Lethem.

[Thudlow_Boink]

G. K Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday, perhaps?

@The New Yorker Magazine

This year is the hundredth anniversary of G. K. Chesterton’s “The Man Who Was Thursday,” one of the hidden hinges in twentieth-century writing, the place where the nonsense-fantastical tradition of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear pivots and becomes the nightmare-fantastical tradition of Kafka and Borges.

[Hunter_Hawk]

Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones.

[Beadalin]

The Life of Pi doesn’t seem like a mindfuck until the last chapter (or so) which makes you reconsider the entire thing.

[Goblin_Queen]

I love this topic! I’m going to writing down all the suggestions in this thread.

My contributions:

Book:

“Outrageous Fortune” by Tim Scott. It’s set in a futuristic America where everyone lives in zones defined by music genres, and opens when the main character has his house stolen. It’s very funny and strange, and definitely didn’t end how I expected it would.

Movie:

“The Fountain” 2006, with Hugh Jackman. Such a visually beautiful film, I loved the music in it, and I’m still not sure what exactly happened. I love that movie.

[Argent_Towers]

@Enderw24

Right now I’m reading Crash by J.G Ballard. It’s a real mindfuck on a multitude of levels. The story itself has no real cohesive plot, but involves a few people who have had car accidents in the past and now find that the only way to get off is to involve the car in some way in their sexual exploits. The car crashes themselves become sexually gratifying and they’ll cause them for sexual fulfillment. But it’s even creepier when you realize the protagonist is the author himself and he’s using the book to explore his relationship between sexuality and technology.

I came in just to recommend that specific book. (The movie’s not bad but the book is where it’s at.)

It’s on a totally different level than anything else in this thread. And it stands a good change of thoroughly disgusting you, as well, with the extremely (lovingly?) detailed descriptions of car damage, body damage, and sexual fluids.

If you’ve seen Empire of the Sun and can recall the young Ballard’s fascination with the destroyed cockpit and smashed instrument panels of the crashed fighter plane, it’s not much of a stretch to see how he got to Crash. The book lavishes a lot of detail in particular on the instrument panels of the cars (or as it says in the book, “instrument binnacles.”) There’s also a bizarre fascination with airplanes in the book, and the airport, and the airport’s parking garage.

It’s all very, very bizarre. Really a mindfuck of the highest order.

[Sapo]

@Hunter_Hawk

Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones.

Borges, anything, really. You cannot really go wrong here.

And while we are at Latin American authors,

Ernesto Sabato, On Heroes and Tombs (seriously seriously messed up)

Julio Cortazar, anything, also. But Hopscotch is not only physically complicated to read (you had to be there) but it has some scary moments. And “Final del Juego” is a book that comes with three levels of difficulty (!). The very first story, “La Continuidad de los Parques” (easy level) is a great mindquicky.

[Gangster_Octopus]

I don’t know if it wualifies as a mindfuck, but it is certainly a mindfunk, as it is one of the funkiest, weird, cool books I have ever read: Gojiro:A Novel

This remarkable first novel combines the manic energy of monster movies and comic books with a serious and sad look at the post-nuclear world. At center stage are two friends. One is Gojiro, a 500-foot-tall lizard who has swollen to his extraordinary size–and acquired the shrewd brain of higher life forms–as a result of an atomic test. Then there’s his comrade Komodo, a human victim of Hiroshima. A mystical and telepathic bond unites them; they make a home for themselves and other radiation victims on a volcanic island in the middle of a “roiling petrochemical sea.” But Gojiro becomes a movie star, setting out with Komodo for Hollywood at the strange request of a film producer (whose father was involved with the Manhattan Project tests that produced Gojiro). They soon uncover a plot to test new atomic weapons that, in the best comic book tradition, threatens the world. The plot is fast-moving and fun, but the bulk of the book consists of long, philosophical dialogues between the austere youth and the wisecracking monster–whose hipster jargon is a perfect imitation of the late rock critic Lester Bangs. The novel’s beauty lies in the way these often hilarious conversations strike a poignant note while the “mutants” try to come to grips with the horrors of their lives.

[Taber]

I’m surprised that I’m the first to mention Being John Malkovich, a movie about a business set up on the 7th and a half floor of an office building where you can buy time being John Malkovich, literally seeing what he sees, and controlling his actions.

Also, there’s Memento, a movie about a guy who is unable to form short term memories. Since the protagonist doesn’t know what just happened, you don’t either - the scenes are out of chronilogical order.

[Reno_Nevada]

I don’t know that I would describe them as mindfuckery, particularly, but they are surreal and a lot of fun–the Thursday Next novels, starting with The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde.

[TheMerchandise]

@beowulff

Amnesia Moon by Jonathan Lethem.

I was going to suggest this too. I’ve read it three times now and enjoyed it in different ways each time. And I’m SURE I’ll understand it someday.

[Jragon]

@Sapo

ETA: Should I worry that I didn’t find Lain particularly mindfucky?

Nah, it’s just somewhat confusing. Seriously, they call the episodes “layers” and Wikipedia refuses to have a plot summary. Maybe it’s not overly insane, but it doesn’t exactly make perfect sense.

@KnitWit

Try anything by Chuck Palahniuk and read Mark Danielewski’s “House of Leaves” and “Only Revolutions.” The latter will mess with you while you’re trying to figure out what PAGE you’re on…the book is written with a first page on both covers, one “upside down.” The text crosses in the middle so you read the upside down text through to both ends. Err…that doesn’t sound like it make sense, but trust me, it does.

House of leaves is definitely on my “to do.” If for no reason than to make sense of this.

Anyway some good suggestions, I’ve seen/read a few of these, but I have a lot I may need to check out.

[well_he_s_back]

Each of these are m-fs in their own ways, & I forgot to mention them when I posted before: Land of Laughs by Jonathan Carroll; Little, Big by John Crowley; and seriously, One Hundred Years of Solitudeby Gabriel Garcia Marquez

[Illuminatiprimus]

@Beadalin

The Life of Pi doesn’t seem like a mindfuck until the last chapter (or so) which makes you reconsider the entire thing.

True, but it’s not that great a book in my view (a whole lot of nothing happens in it until the last fifty pages or so).