Cafe Society has seen many threads devoted to the shortcomings and flat-out failings of purported Western classics.
But which books–classic or popular–deserve acclaim for their sheer brilliance in insight or composition?
Great literature or no, I’m talking about books that left you utterly dazzled.
Ira Levin’s “A Kiss Before Dying” and “Rosemary’s Baby” and his script for “Deathtrap” are all incredibly well crafted works. When Levin does it right, it’ perfection.
Good Omens. I’ve read it a zillion times. I’m re-reading it right now. I never get enough of it. It’s perfect. It’s what ideas want to be when they grow up.
I’m going to agree with Priceguy and nominate Good Omens, along with David Mitchell’s Cloud Nine and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.
On the non fiction side, Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan is one I’ve re-read lately that I think is brilliant.
YMMV.
The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth
Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
**Dhalgren[b/] by Samuel R. Delany (the most brilliant person I’ve ever met). I made the mistake of reading it and Gravity’s Rainbow in succession and had to give up reading for awhile because there was nothing of a similar level.
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, though it took me my second time to realize it.
Absolutely love The World According to Garp and American Psycho (love most of B.E. Ellis’ work, actually). Small Gods (Pratchett, of course) was also a revelation and I’ll gladly jump on the Good Omens bandwagon. Laxness’ Independent People is stunning, as is Solon Islandus, but I doubt you fine people will ever get a chance to enjoy the latter.
Bound for Glory by Woody Guthrie. The first chapter knocked my socks off, the rest of the book was just as good.
Some days I do believe Davidson’s The Oxford Campanion to Food is the finest book ever written. Were I to be trapped on a desert island, this would be one of my books.
Thousands of entries on subjects from Penguin to Poland. Not a single recipe in the entire thing. Just the thing when you want to understand how the heck baking powder differs from baking soda, or if you have an idle hour to spend.
Anything that came out of Vladimir Nabokov’s pen, but particularly The Real Life of Sebastian Knight and Ada, or Ardor.
Also, on the science side, I think Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker are pretty awesome.
Slight nitpick - Mitchell has written books called Cloud Atlas and Number Nine Dream (amonhg others). I’m guessing you’re referring to Cloud Atlas and agree that it is a great book.
The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster, especially City of Glass
Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco
and a true classic of literature, Don Quixote by Cervantes
Hugo’s Les Miserables. I read it my freshman year of college and my roommate would make fun of me for randomly laughing, snorting, muttering, crying and at one point even gasping so loud she thought that I had hurt myself or something.
Tim Power’s The Stress of Her Regard is what I would consider brilliant.
Aw Crap…I did indeed, although Number Nine Dream is also good, Cloud Atlas is an amazing read from beginning to end.
Must have more coffee…
A Soldier of the Great War by Mark Helprin was brilliant, hypnotic, lyrical, brutal and funny. Time to read it again.
First and foremost, Joyce’s Ulysses. To my mind this is simply the greatest and most fascinating book ever written.
Modern/pop culture works: Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange; John Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar; Wilson & Shea’s Illuminatus! trilogy; Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series.
I’ve always liked The Crying of Lot 49 much better than Gravity’s Rainbow.
Thirding Good Omens and adding 1984 and Brave New World. They should be required reading for any political science student.
The Alienist, by Caleb Carr. I can’t even give my reasons. It’s just that good.
By far, the most “brilliant” book that I have ever read. I love that Eco assumes that the reader has at least a passing knowledge of Hebrew, Latin, 15th century Italian occultists, the effect of slavery on Brasilian religion, pinball, and a myriad of other far-ranging topics. A smart book for smart people.
Excellent choice.
Agree with both of these (haven’t read the new translation of Don Quixote or anything else by Auster, though). I’d also nominate Going Native by Stephen Wright (actually, all three of his books are great), Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe, and John Dos Passos’s America Trilogy.
For non-fiction, I’d say Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century by Greil Marcus and We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch.
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera
If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino
Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis
The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
God Knows by Joseph Heller
Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
For a shortlist of recent favorites, anyway . . .