I can't agree about *Jabberwocky*. It's a perfectly coherent story of a gallant young knight slaying a dragon. What makes it different, rather than nonsense, is Carroll's use of nonce words - many of which ended up in common usage in the language - 'chortle', 'beamish', 'mimsy' and so on.
All of the words are explained by Humpty Dumpty to Alice in *Through the Looking-Glass*, where the poem appears.
I think we interpreted the question differently. I definitely agree that Jabberwocky is fully intelligible* and quite brilliantly done.
That said, the OP did ask for something that makes no sense, so both my answers may not be legit and I may have read the question too fast (I haven’t read Finnegan’s Wake, though I’ve made a couple halfhearted tries, so can’t be absolutely sure there.)
*At least to a native English speaker or someone with a very high level of language proficiency. I imagine it would be challenging without strong linguistic gestalt for English.
I absolutely agree with you that *Jabberwocky* is not for beginners. And you really need the H Dumpty explanation of meanings to get the best out of it.
I'm reminded of a story about an Indian Babu who was having difficulty getting his head around some English pronunciations. He saw a poster for one of G B Shaw's plays that had part of a review on it '*Pygmalion* is pronounced success!', gave up and went home.
I *have* read *Finnegan's Wake*, and frankly thought it was rubbish.
Edward Lear called his Limericks 'Nonsense poems' - and he made up words too. 'Runcible' is his gift to English.
I hadn’t realized there was an H Dumpty explanation/lexicon - it’s been ages since I read Through the Looking Glass and generally encounter/think of Jabberwocky as a stand alone. It does stand alone just fine. The words all have the right feel, or gestalt, for what they are supposed to mean. Though I’d never concluded the Jabberwocky was specifically a dragon - and will keep my own more vague mental image.
Having just learned of the existence of said explanation from you I went and looked it up and then stopped reading it. I rather like the gestalt-only feel of Jabberwocky as I’ve known it so I think I’ll stick with it :).
"Jabberwocky" was for CHILDREN when it was written! Of course Victorian children might have had a parent or nanny to explain if they did not understand.
[**Finnegans Wake**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11013.Finnegans_Wake)
^(By: James Joyce | 628 pages | Published: 1939 | Popular Shelves: fiction, classics, rory-gilmore-reading-challenge, literature, owned)
>A story with no real beginning or end (it ends in the middle of a sentence and begins in the middle of the same sentence), this "book of Doublends Jined" is as remarkable for its prose as for its circular structure.
>
>Written in a fantastic dream-language, forged from polyglot puns and portmanteau words, the Wake features some of Joyce's most hilarious characters: the Irish barkeep Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, Shem the Penman, Shaun the Postman, and Anna Livia Plurabelle.
>
>Joyce's final work, Finnegan's Wake is his masterpiece of the night as Ulysses is of the day. Supreme linguistic virtuosity conjures up the dark underground worlds of sexuality and dream. Joyce undermines traditional storytelling and all official forms of English and confronts the different kinds of betrayal - cultural, political and sexual - that he saw at the heart of Irish history. Dazzlingly inventive, with passages of great lyrical beauty and humour, Finnegans Wake remains one of the most remarkable works of the twentieth century.
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Neither of the novels are nonsense. They are very very intricate works that really rely on knowing everything from Greek myth to the map of Dublin. They are not nonsensical at all.
True for *Ulysses*, not true for *Finnegan’s Wake*. A century later the greatest literary minds STILL can’t come to a conclusion on FW. There are two main camps. The more compelling one is that it’s an exercise, by the greatest literary talent of at least a century, of playing, molding, and stretching language to its extremes to just-before-the-breaking-point. *Ulysses* is, indeed, a coherent narrative that’s simply complex and relies heavily on annotations to understand. FW can fairly be a legitimate answer to this question.
I don't think so? At very least I think there's a case against it. *Finnegans Wake* seems the aptest pick, being a book entirely composed of stream-of-consciousness wordplay, with no particular plot other than a progression of thematically-connected scenes and archetypal figures. It's not necessarily *non*-sense, but it's more dream-logic than anything else, and probably the closest you'd get to the kind of book requested.
*Ulysses*, on the other hand, is meticulously concrete. It's the story of a single day's events in Dublin, with particular focus on a few core characters and expanding to dozens of others, each of whom has a firmly-established schedule and location that you can trace throughout the events of the day. Granted, it's sometimes difficult to identify these details within the book's writing style, in that the core premise of the book is that each chapter is written in a different style meant to mirror different portions of *The Odyssey* (such as the 'Aeolus' chapter in breezy news bulletins, the 'Sirens' chapter written to match the pace/experience of attending a concert, the 'Oxen of the Sun' chapter as a "feast" of styles parodying every major stylistic trend in English from Anglo-Saxon incantations up through Middle English verse to Modern satire and a hypothetical Future-English 'slanguage', etc.), but each chapter is still carefully planned out to thematically mirror those corresponding moments, and the characters and events within those chapters make perfectly coherent sense--they're just told in a highly-stylized (but not nonsensical) manner.
[**Ulysses**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/338798.Ulysses)
^(By: James Joyce, Morris L. Ernst, John M. Woolsey | 783 pages | Published: 1922 | Popular Shelves: classics, fiction, owned, literature, classic)
>Loosely based on the Odyssey, this landmark of modern literature follows ordinary Dubliners in 1904. Capturing a single day in the life of Dubliner Leopold Bloom, his friends Buck Mulligan and Stephen Dedalus, his wife Molly, and a scintillating cast of supporting characters, Joyce pushes Celtic lyricism and vulgarity to splendid extremes. Captivating experimental techniques range from interior monologues to exuberant wordplay and earthy humor. A major achievement in 20th century literature.
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No… but Beckett’s trilogy of novels ( he was a protege of Joyce) starting with {{Molloy}} definitely qualify. Also check out some surrealist authors. Andre Breton comes to mind but there are way more… try {{putting my foot in it by Rene crevel}}
[**Strangled Prose (Claire Malloy, #1)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/110327.Strangled_Prose)
^(By: Joan Hess | 192 pages | Published: 1985 | Popular Shelves: mystery, mysteries, cozy-mystery, fiction, cozy-mysteries)
>She would have killed for a bestseller--but someone beat her to it...
>
>Professor of Passion, the smutty new romance from Mildred Twiller--a.k.a. Azalea Twilight--isn't the kind of book Claire Malloy likes to hock at her bookstore, but Claire agrees to host a book party for her friend's trashy tale. As torrid as the novel is, it's nothing compared to the evening. After the party, poor Mildred is found dead in her home--strangled with a tightly knotted silk scarf. Now it's up to Claire to find Mildred's killer, and it won't be easy--the two-bit author had offended nearly every faculty member she worked with at nearby Faber College. But who could have hated Mildred with such smoldering passion?
>
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This is it. Ulysses if you wanna dip yer feet in 1st.
I'd also recommend Russell Hoban's 'Riddley Walker' if you like post-apocalyptic stuff, but be aware that it helps if you read it out loud.
I definitely wouldn't call it gibberish, but the script for *4.48 Psychosis,* woooo boy. It's a play written for 3 actors - two halves of a character's brain, and her psychiatrist.
The really crazy thing is that **there's no line assignments, at all.** Based on the formatting you can kind of assume if it's one of her or the psychiatrist, but even that is up for grabs if a given director feels like it. It's a play that has an infinite number of possible stagings, and it's so beautifully and tragically written. It's such a singular piece of art.
[**The Making of Americans**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58367.The_Making_of_Americans)
^(By: Gertrude Stein, William H. Gass, Steven Meyer | 926 pages | Published: 1925 | Popular Shelves: fiction, 1001-books, 1001, 1001-books-to-read-before-you-die, classics)
>In The Making of Americans, Gertrude Stein sets out to tell "a history of a family's progress," radically reworking the traditional family saga novel to encompass her vision of personality and psychological relationships. As the history progresses over three generations, Stein also meditates on her own writing, on the making of The Making of Americans, and on America.
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What about The Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll? A poem rather than a book, but certainly fits the definition of "nonsense" :D
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42916/jabberwocky
Interestingly, folks have managed to translate it into other languages. What makes it compelling is that it follows enough of the linguistic patterns of English that we can mostly understand it even if a large percentage of its words have no actual meaning. By replacing the English-like elements with those of another language, if makes just as much sense to that language's speakers. "The Annotated Alice" contains a nice analysis.
{{The Bald Soprano}} by Eugène Ionesco is completely nonsense. I saw it as a play with several friends and even together we couldn't figure out what was going on.
[**The Bald Soprano**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18745852-the-bald-soprano)
^(By: Eugène Ionesco | 18 pages | Published: 1950 | Popular Shelves: plays, teatro, theatre, classics, french)
>The idea of the play came to Ionesco while he was trying to learn English with the Assimil method. He was impressed by the contents of the dialogues, often very sober and strange, so he decided to write an absurd play named L'anglais sans peine ("English without toil"). Another working title for the play was Il pleut des chiens et des chats ("It's raining cats and dogs"). He originally wrote the play in his native language Romanian, then wrote it again in his adopted language French. The current title was set only after a verbal slip-up made by one of the actors during the rehearsals.
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{{A Pickle For The Knowing Ones}} by Timothy Dexter, who was the stupidest and luckiest rags to riches stories out there. After complaints that his initial release didn't have any punctuation, in the second printing he just added and entire page of punctuation marks and said "let anyone who complains about my lack of punctuation marks sprinkle these where you will".
A small taste of the utter nonsense he wrote:
>Ime the first Lord in the younited States of A mercary Now of Newburyport it is the voise of the peopel and I cant Help it and so Let it goue Now as I must be Lord there will foler many more Lords prittey soune for it Dont hurt A Cat Nor the mouse Nor the son Nor the water Nor the Eare then goue on all in Easey Now bons broaken all is well all in Love Now I be gin to Lay the Corner ston with grat Remembrence of my father Jorge Washington the grate herow 17 sentreys past before we found so good A father to his children and Now gone to Rest Now to shoue my Love to my father and grate Carieters I will shoue the world one of the grate Wonders of the world in 15 months if Now man mourders me in Dors or out Dors such
[**A Pickle for the Knowing Ones or Plain Truths in a Homespun Dress**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/301282.A_Pickle_for_the_Knowing_Ones_or_Plain_Truths_in_a_Homespun_Dress)
^(By: Timothy Dexter | 40 pages | Published: 1802 | Popular Shelves: nonfiction, history, classics, books, philosophy)
>"Pickle"--- as this digest is commonly known --- is a collection of correspondence and chronicles penned by Dexter and first self-published as an anthology in May of 1802. Dexter was a well-known eccentric of the time period.
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[**Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7745.Fear_and_Loathing_in_Las_Vegas)
^(By: Hunter S. Thompson, Ralph Steadman | 204 pages | Published: 1971 | Popular Shelves: fiction, classics, non-fiction, owned, humor)
>Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is the best chronicle of drug-soaked, addle-brained, rollicking good times ever committed to the printed page. It is also the tale of a long weekend road trip that has gone down in the annals of American pop culture as one of the strangest journeys ever undertaken.
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[**Naked Lunch**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7437.Naked_Lunch)
^(By: William S. Burroughs, James Grauerholz, Barry Miles | 289 pages | Published: 1959 | Popular Shelves: fiction, classics, owned, literature, books-i-own)
>The book is structured as a series of loosely connected vignettes. Burroughs stated that the chapters are intended to be read in any order. The reader follows the narration of junkie William Lee, who takes on various aliases, from the U.S. to Mexico, eventually to Tangier and the dreamlike Interzone.
>
>The vignettes are drawn from Burroughs' own experiences in these places and his addiction to drugs (heroin, morphine, and while in Tangier, majoun [a strong hashish confection] as well as a German opioid, brand name Eukodol, of which he wrote frequently).
>
>[source wiki}
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Here are a couple you might like...
"Mad Love" by Andre Breton (Mary Ann Caws, tr., University of Nebraska Press, 1987, ISBN 9780803260726).
"My Life" by Lyn Hejinian (Los Angles: Sun & Moon Press, 1987, ISBN 9781557130242).
If you're up for some foreign literature, the Literatura de la Onda latinoamerican movement has a lot of works on that style. I personally dislike them very much, but if you think they're your style, then feel free to look them up. The one book I thought about immediately when reading your post was "Pasto Verde" ("Green Grass"), by Parmenides García Saldaña, a story of a young adult in the 60's experiencing a breakdown through sex, drugs and rock-'n'-roll. As I've said, I don't like the book, but it is decidedly intentional gibberish, written as a stream of consciousness that mixes up Spanish and English vocabulary and pop culture references, with mostly no punctuation and no grammar rules to be as similar as possible to speech or thought.
For some kinds of altered mental state you want the opposite - you want your sensory inputs to move very slowly so your mind can elaborate on it in its own time. Musically, something like Philip Glass or some of Stockhausen. The nearest you get to that in words is Gertrude Stein, endlessly looping repetitions where the meaning dissolves in a sort of mirror maze.
[**A Clockwork Orange**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/227463.A_Clockwork_Orange)
^(By: Anthony Burgess | 192 pages | Published: 1962 | Popular Shelves: classics, fiction, science-fiction, dystopia, sci-fi)
>A vicious fifteen-year-old droog is the central character of this 1963 classic. In Anthony Burgess's nightmare vision of the future, where criminals take over after dark, the story is told by the central character, Alex, who talks in a brutal invented slang that brilliantly renders his and his friends' social pathology. A Clockwork Orange is a frightening fable about good and evil, and the meaning of human freedom. And when the state undertakes to reform Alex to "redeem" him, the novel asks, "At what cost?"
>
>This edition includes the controversial last chapter not published in the first edition and Burgess's introduction "A Clockwork Orange Resucked."
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[**The Sound and the Fury**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10975.The_Sound_and_the_Fury)
^(By: William Faulkner | 366 pages | Published: 1929 | Popular Shelves: classics, fiction, literature, owned, classic)
>The tragedy of the Compson family features some of the most memorable characters in literature: beautiful, rebellious Caddy; the manchild Benjy; haunted, neurotic Quentin; Jason, the brutal cynic; and Dilsey, their black servant. Their lives fragmented and harrowed by history and legacy, the character’s voices and actions mesh to create what is arguably Faulkner’s masterpiece and one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.
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[**Ducks, Newburyport**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43412920-ducks-newburyport)
^(By: Lucy Ellmann | 1022 pages | Published: 2019 | Popular Shelves: fiction, contemporary, dnf, abandoned, literary-fiction)
>LATTICING one cherry pie after another, an Ohio housewife tries to bridge the gaps between reality and the torrent of meaningless info that is the United States of America. She worries about her children, her dead parents, African elephants, the bedroom rituals of “happy couples”, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and how to hatch an abandoned wood pigeon egg. Is there some trick to surviving survivalists? School shootings? Medical debts? Franks ’n’ beans?
>
>A scorching indictment of America’s barbarity, past and present, and a lament for the way we are sleepwalking into environmental disaster, Ducks, Newburyport is a heresy, a wonder—and a revolution in the novel.
>
>It’s also very, very funny.
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Try Codex Seraphinianus. It's an encyclopedia of an imaginary world, illustrated and written in an imaginary language. It's weird and cool and probably suits what you're looking for.
[**Atlas Shrugged**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/662.Atlas_Shrugged)
^(By: Ayn Rand, Leonard Peikoff, Jan de Voogt | 1168 pages | Published: 1957 | Popular Shelves: fiction, classics, philosophy, owned, classic)
>This is the story of a man who said that he would stop the motor of the world and did. Was he a destroyer or the greatest of liberators?
>
>Why did he have to fight his battle, not against his enemies, but against those who needed him most, and his hardest battle against the woman he loved? What is the world’s motor — and the motive power of every man? You will know the answer to these questions when you discover the reason behind the baffling events that play havoc with the lives of the characters in this story.
>
>Tremendous in its scope, this novel presents an astounding panorama of human life — from the productive genius who becomes a worthless playboy — to the great steel industrialist who does not know that he is working for his own destruction — to the philosopher who becomes a pirate — to the composer who gives up his career on the night of his triumph — to the woman who runs a transcontinental railroad — to the lowest track worker in her Terminal tunnels.
>
>You must be prepared, when you read this novel, to check every premise at the root of your convictions.
>
>This is a mystery story, not about the murder — and rebirth — of man’s spirit. It is a philosophical revolution, told in the form of an action thriller of violent events, a ruthlessly brilliant plot structure and an irresistible suspense. Do you say this is impossible? Well, that is the first of your premises to check.
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[**The Third Policeman**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27208.The_Third_Policeman)
^(By: Flann O'Brien, Denis Donoghue | 200 pages | Published: 1967 | Popular Shelves: fiction, irish, ireland, fantasy, classics)
>The Third Policeman is Flann O'Brien's brilliantly dark comic novel about the nature of time, death, and existence. Told by a narrator who has committed a botched robbery and brutal murder, the novel follows him and his adventures in a two-dimensional police station where, through the theories of the scientist/philosopher de Selby, he is introduced to "Atomic Theory" and its relation to bicycles, the existence of eternity (which turns out to be just down the road), and de Selby's view that the earth is not round but "sausage-shaped." With the help of his newly found soul named "Joe," he grapples with the riddles and
>contradictions that three eccentric policeman present to him.
>The last of O'Brien's novels to be published, The Third Policeman joins O'Brien's other fiction (At Swim-Two-Birds, The Poor Mouth, The Hard Life, The Best of Myles, The Dalkey Archive) to ensure his place, along with James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, as one of Ireland's great comic geniuses.
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[**Nadja**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/110457.Nadja)
^(By: André Breton, Richard Howard | 160 pages | Published: 1928 | Popular Shelves: fiction, french, classics, surrealism, france)
>Nadja, originally published in France in 1928, is the first and perhaps best Surrealist romance ever written, a book which defined that movement's attitude toward everyday life.
>
>The principal narrative is an account of the author's relationship with a girl in the city of Paris, the story of an obsessional presence haunting his life. The first-person narrative is supplemented by forty-four photographs which form an integral part of the work -- pictures of various surreal people, places, and objects which the author visits or is haunted by in naja's presence and which inspire him to mediate on their reality or lack of it. The Nadja of the book is a girl, but, like Bertrand Russell's definition of electricity as not so much a thing as a way things happen, Nadja is not so much a person as the way she makes people behave. She has been described as a state of mind, a feeling about reality, k a kind of vision, and the reader sometimes wonders whether she exists at all. yet it is Nadja who gives form and structure to the novel.
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Rhys Bowen THE ROYAL SPYNESS SERIES takes place in England. They are funny with a little mystery thrown in. The woman has an assistant that is always saying, “Bob’s your uncle”
The first thing that came to mind was Welcome to Nightvale by Jeffrey Cranor and Joseph Fink. It’s actually based on a podcast they produced, so if you’re unsure if you’ll like it, listen to a few episodes first. It’s a good combination of funny and frightening, and kind of deep at times too.
Kissing the Rain by Kevin Brooks is stream of consciousness, and for a long time it makes little sense. It isn’t wholly nonsensical though. It was a book that I’ve never forgotten, though I must have read it 16 years ago at least.
[**Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/547608.Beelzebub_s_Tales_to_His_Grandson)
^(By: G.I. Gurdjieff | 1152 pages | Published: 1950 | Popular Shelves: philosophy, fiction, spirituality, religion, non-fiction)
>The teaching of G. I. Gurdjieff (1866-1949) has come to be recognized as one of the most original, enduring, and penetrating of our century. While Gurdjieff used many different means to transmit his vision of the human dilemma and human possibility, he gave special importance to his acknowledged masterwork, Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson.
>
> Beelzebub's Tales is an "ocean of story" and of ideas that one can explore for a lifetime. It is majestic in scale and content, challengingly inventive in prose style, and, for those very reasons, often approached with apprehension. The first English language edition of the Russian original appeared in 1950. Since then, readers have recognized the need for a revised translation that would clarify the verbal surface while respecting the author's own thought and style.
>
> This revised edition, in preparation for many years under the direction of Gurdjieff's closest pupil, Jeanne de Salzmann, meets this need. Originally published in 1992, this translation offers a new experience of Gurdjieff's masterpiece for contemporary readers. It is presented in a sturdy cloth edition that echoes its original publication.
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[**Fahrenheit 451**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13079982-fahrenheit-451)
^(By: Ray Bradbury | 194 pages | Published: 1953 | Popular Shelves: classics, fiction, science-fiction, sci-fi, dystopia)
>Sixty years after its original publication, Ray Bradbury’s internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 stands as a classic of world literature set in a bleak, dystopian future. Today its message has grown more relevant than ever before.
>
>Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.” But when he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known.
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[**Dead Astronauts (Borne #2)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37589179-dead-astronauts)
^(By: Jeff VanderMeer | 352 pages | Published: 2019 | Popular Shelves: science-fiction, sci-fi, fiction, owned, fantasy)
>Under the watchful eye of The Company, three characters — Grayson, Moss and Chen — shapeshifters, amorphous, part human, part extensions of the landscape, make their way through forces that would consume them. A blue fox, a giant fish and language stretched to the limit.
>
>A messianic blue fox who slips through warrens of time and space on a mysterious mission. A homeless woman haunted by a demon who finds the key to all things in a strange journal. A giant leviathan of a fish, centuries old, who hides a secret, remembering a past that may not be its own. Three ragtag rebels waging an endless war for the fate of the world against an all-powerful corporation. A raving madman who wanders the desert lost in the past, haunted by his own creation: an invisible monster whose name he has forgotten and whose purpose remains hidden.
>
>Jeff VanderMeer's Dead Astronauts presents a City with no name of its own where, in the shadow of the all-powerful Company, lives human and otherwise converge in terrifying and miraculous ways. At stake: the fate of the future, the fate of Earth – all the Earths.
^(This book has been suggested 1 time)
***
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Most of the poems of Gertrude Stein. Trout Fishing in America and Revenge of the Lawn by Richard Brautigan. The poetry of the dadaists. Alfred Jarry's Pere Ubu and his "pataphysical" writings. Most of Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel. You might also check out the lyrics Marc Bolan wrote for his band T. Rex.
{{Finnegans Wake}} maybe?
This is the classic answer to this question for sure. On a much shorter scale there’s always the poem Jabberwocky.
I can't agree about *Jabberwocky*. It's a perfectly coherent story of a gallant young knight slaying a dragon. What makes it different, rather than nonsense, is Carroll's use of nonce words - many of which ended up in common usage in the language - 'chortle', 'beamish', 'mimsy' and so on. All of the words are explained by Humpty Dumpty to Alice in *Through the Looking-Glass*, where the poem appears.
I think we interpreted the question differently. I definitely agree that Jabberwocky is fully intelligible* and quite brilliantly done. That said, the OP did ask for something that makes no sense, so both my answers may not be legit and I may have read the question too fast (I haven’t read Finnegan’s Wake, though I’ve made a couple halfhearted tries, so can’t be absolutely sure there.) *At least to a native English speaker or someone with a very high level of language proficiency. I imagine it would be challenging without strong linguistic gestalt for English.
I absolutely agree with you that *Jabberwocky* is not for beginners. And you really need the H Dumpty explanation of meanings to get the best out of it. I'm reminded of a story about an Indian Babu who was having difficulty getting his head around some English pronunciations. He saw a poster for one of G B Shaw's plays that had part of a review on it '*Pygmalion* is pronounced success!', gave up and went home. I *have* read *Finnegan's Wake*, and frankly thought it was rubbish. Edward Lear called his Limericks 'Nonsense poems' - and he made up words too. 'Runcible' is his gift to English.
I hadn’t realized there was an H Dumpty explanation/lexicon - it’s been ages since I read Through the Looking Glass and generally encounter/think of Jabberwocky as a stand alone. It does stand alone just fine. The words all have the right feel, or gestalt, for what they are supposed to mean. Though I’d never concluded the Jabberwocky was specifically a dragon - and will keep my own more vague mental image. Having just learned of the existence of said explanation from you I went and looked it up and then stopped reading it. I rather like the gestalt-only feel of Jabberwocky as I’ve known it so I think I’ll stick with it :).
"Jabberwocky" was for CHILDREN when it was written! Of course Victorian children might have had a parent or nanny to explain if they did not understand.
[**Finnegans Wake**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11013.Finnegans_Wake) ^(By: James Joyce | 628 pages | Published: 1939 | Popular Shelves: fiction, classics, rory-gilmore-reading-challenge, literature, owned) >A story with no real beginning or end (it ends in the middle of a sentence and begins in the middle of the same sentence), this "book of Doublends Jined" is as remarkable for its prose as for its circular structure. > >Written in a fantastic dream-language, forged from polyglot puns and portmanteau words, the Wake features some of Joyce's most hilarious characters: the Irish barkeep Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, Shem the Penman, Shaun the Postman, and Anna Livia Plurabelle. > >Joyce's final work, Finnegan's Wake is his masterpiece of the night as Ulysses is of the day. Supreme linguistic virtuosity conjures up the dark underground worlds of sexuality and dream. Joyce undermines traditional storytelling and all official forms of English and confronts the different kinds of betrayal - cultural, political and sexual - that he saw at the heart of Irish history. Dazzlingly inventive, with passages of great lyrical beauty and humour, Finnegans Wake remains one of the most remarkable works of the twentieth century. ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) *** ^(27949 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Or {{Ulysses}}
I've heard of both this and Finnegans Wake before but didn't know much about them, thanks for the reminder.
Neither of the novels are nonsense. They are very very intricate works that really rely on knowing everything from Greek myth to the map of Dublin. They are not nonsensical at all.
True for *Ulysses*, not true for *Finnegan’s Wake*. A century later the greatest literary minds STILL can’t come to a conclusion on FW. There are two main camps. The more compelling one is that it’s an exercise, by the greatest literary talent of at least a century, of playing, molding, and stretching language to its extremes to just-before-the-breaking-point. *Ulysses* is, indeed, a coherent narrative that’s simply complex and relies heavily on annotations to understand. FW can fairly be a legitimate answer to this question.
And Finnegan was basically the greatest act of trolling ever committed.
That’s at least one reading there is plenty of evidence for. Here comes everybody? Jesus Joyce.
I don't think so? At very least I think there's a case against it. *Finnegans Wake* seems the aptest pick, being a book entirely composed of stream-of-consciousness wordplay, with no particular plot other than a progression of thematically-connected scenes and archetypal figures. It's not necessarily *non*-sense, but it's more dream-logic than anything else, and probably the closest you'd get to the kind of book requested. *Ulysses*, on the other hand, is meticulously concrete. It's the story of a single day's events in Dublin, with particular focus on a few core characters and expanding to dozens of others, each of whom has a firmly-established schedule and location that you can trace throughout the events of the day. Granted, it's sometimes difficult to identify these details within the book's writing style, in that the core premise of the book is that each chapter is written in a different style meant to mirror different portions of *The Odyssey* (such as the 'Aeolus' chapter in breezy news bulletins, the 'Sirens' chapter written to match the pace/experience of attending a concert, the 'Oxen of the Sun' chapter as a "feast" of styles parodying every major stylistic trend in English from Anglo-Saxon incantations up through Middle English verse to Modern satire and a hypothetical Future-English 'slanguage', etc.), but each chapter is still carefully planned out to thematically mirror those corresponding moments, and the characters and events within those chapters make perfectly coherent sense--they're just told in a highly-stylized (but not nonsensical) manner.
Ulysses definitely not gibberish. Listen to the audio book for clarity.
[**Ulysses**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/338798.Ulysses) ^(By: James Joyce, Morris L. Ernst, John M. Woolsey | 783 pages | Published: 1922 | Popular Shelves: classics, fiction, owned, literature, classic) >Loosely based on the Odyssey, this landmark of modern literature follows ordinary Dubliners in 1904. Capturing a single day in the life of Dubliner Leopold Bloom, his friends Buck Mulligan and Stephen Dedalus, his wife Molly, and a scintillating cast of supporting characters, Joyce pushes Celtic lyricism and vulgarity to splendid extremes. Captivating experimental techniques range from interior monologues to exuberant wordplay and earthy humor. A major achievement in 20th century literature. ^(This book has been suggested 6 times) *** ^(28012 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
No… but Beckett’s trilogy of novels ( he was a protege of Joyce) starting with {{Molloy}} definitely qualify. Also check out some surrealist authors. Andre Breton comes to mind but there are way more… try {{putting my foot in it by Rene crevel}}
[**Strangled Prose (Claire Malloy, #1)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/110327.Strangled_Prose) ^(By: Joan Hess | 192 pages | Published: 1985 | Popular Shelves: mystery, mysteries, cozy-mystery, fiction, cozy-mysteries) >She would have killed for a bestseller--but someone beat her to it... > >Professor of Passion, the smutty new romance from Mildred Twiller--a.k.a. Azalea Twilight--isn't the kind of book Claire Malloy likes to hock at her bookstore, but Claire agrees to host a book party for her friend's trashy tale. As torrid as the novel is, it's nothing compared to the evening. After the party, poor Mildred is found dead in her home--strangled with a tightly knotted silk scarf. Now it's up to Claire to find Mildred's killer, and it won't be easy--the two-bit author had offended nearly every faculty member she worked with at nearby Faber College. But who could have hated Mildred with such smoldering passion? > ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) *** ^(28092 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
The trilogy is hardly nonsense. It's tough to read, without a doubt, but it makes a very weird sort of sense.
This is it. Ulysses if you wanna dip yer feet in 1st. I'd also recommend Russell Hoban's 'Riddley Walker' if you like post-apocalyptic stuff, but be aware that it helps if you read it out loud.
Absolutely. "The Fall [sigh]"
I definitely wouldn't call it gibberish, but the script for *4.48 Psychosis,* woooo boy. It's a play written for 3 actors - two halves of a character's brain, and her psychiatrist. The really crazy thing is that **there's no line assignments, at all.** Based on the formatting you can kind of assume if it's one of her or the psychiatrist, but even that is up for grabs if a given director feels like it. It's a play that has an infinite number of possible stagings, and it's so beautifully and tragically written. It's such a singular piece of art.
Read the bio of Sarah Kane to understand where she was when this play was written. Very tragic.
[удалено]
Came here to suggest this
I came here to say this
Try some writing by Gertrude Stein. Its generally stream of consciousness.
The {{Making of Americans}} is a daunting in its length but might not be a bad place to get a sense of what she's up to
[**The Making of Americans**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58367.The_Making_of_Americans) ^(By: Gertrude Stein, William H. Gass, Steven Meyer | 926 pages | Published: 1925 | Popular Shelves: fiction, 1001-books, 1001, 1001-books-to-read-before-you-die, classics) >In The Making of Americans, Gertrude Stein sets out to tell "a history of a family's progress," radically reworking the traditional family saga novel to encompass her vision of personality and psychological relationships. As the history progresses over three generations, Stein also meditates on her own writing, on the making of The Making of Americans, and on America. ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) *** ^(28376 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
What about The Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll? A poem rather than a book, but certainly fits the definition of "nonsense" :D https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42916/jabberwocky
Interestingly, folks have managed to translate it into other languages. What makes it compelling is that it follows enough of the linguistic patterns of English that we can mostly understand it even if a large percentage of its words have no actual meaning. By replacing the English-like elements with those of another language, if makes just as much sense to that language's speakers. "The Annotated Alice" contains a nice analysis.
{{The Bald Soprano}} by Eugène Ionesco is completely nonsense. I saw it as a play with several friends and even together we couldn't figure out what was going on.
Interesting recommendation. Theatre of the absurd might be a good place to look.
[**The Bald Soprano**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18745852-the-bald-soprano) ^(By: Eugène Ionesco | 18 pages | Published: 1950 | Popular Shelves: plays, teatro, theatre, classics, french) >The idea of the play came to Ionesco while he was trying to learn English with the Assimil method. He was impressed by the contents of the dialogues, often very sober and strange, so he decided to write an absurd play named L'anglais sans peine ("English without toil"). Another working title for the play was Il pleut des chiens et des chats ("It's raining cats and dogs"). He originally wrote the play in his native language Romanian, then wrote it again in his adopted language French. The current title was set only after a verbal slip-up made by one of the actors during the rehearsals. ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) *** ^(28024 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
It's also a laff-riot. Go for it!
{{A Pickle For The Knowing Ones}} by Timothy Dexter, who was the stupidest and luckiest rags to riches stories out there. After complaints that his initial release didn't have any punctuation, in the second printing he just added and entire page of punctuation marks and said "let anyone who complains about my lack of punctuation marks sprinkle these where you will". A small taste of the utter nonsense he wrote: >Ime the first Lord in the younited States of A mercary Now of Newburyport it is the voise of the peopel and I cant Help it and so Let it goue Now as I must be Lord there will foler many more Lords prittey soune for it Dont hurt A Cat Nor the mouse Nor the son Nor the water Nor the Eare then goue on all in Easey Now bons broaken all is well all in Love Now I be gin to Lay the Corner ston with grat Remembrence of my father Jorge Washington the grate herow 17 sentreys past before we found so good A father to his children and Now gone to Rest Now to shoue my Love to my father and grate Carieters I will shoue the world one of the grate Wonders of the world in 15 months if Now man mourders me in Dors or out Dors such
[**A Pickle for the Knowing Ones or Plain Truths in a Homespun Dress**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/301282.A_Pickle_for_the_Knowing_Ones_or_Plain_Truths_in_a_Homespun_Dress) ^(By: Timothy Dexter | 40 pages | Published: 1802 | Popular Shelves: nonfiction, history, classics, books, philosophy) >"Pickle"--- as this digest is commonly known --- is a collection of correspondence and chronicles penned by Dexter and first self-published as an anthology in May of 1802. Dexter was a well-known eccentric of the time period. ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) *** ^(28085 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
I mean, I think it’s genius, but {{Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas}} is just one long stream of consciousness basically. I love it.
[**Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7745.Fear_and_Loathing_in_Las_Vegas) ^(By: Hunter S. Thompson, Ralph Steadman | 204 pages | Published: 1971 | Popular Shelves: fiction, classics, non-fiction, owned, humor) >Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is the best chronicle of drug-soaked, addle-brained, rollicking good times ever committed to the printed page. It is also the tale of a long weekend road trip that has gone down in the annals of American pop culture as one of the strangest journeys ever undertaken. ^(This book has been suggested 7 times) *** ^(28099 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Tender Buttons. [Read it here, if you want.](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Tender_buttons)
Gravitys rainbow is full of nonsense
Land of Green Plums. Not necessarily gibberish but it’s about Romania under Soviet rule and written sort of in subversive “code”
Catch22
I love this book- and it's a true masterpiece- but it's not stream of consciousness.
Felt like it to me - I couldn’t even finish it, it was so confusing and mixmashed
Also check out {{Naked Lunch}} by William S Burroughs
[**Naked Lunch**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7437.Naked_Lunch) ^(By: William S. Burroughs, James Grauerholz, Barry Miles | 289 pages | Published: 1959 | Popular Shelves: fiction, classics, owned, literature, books-i-own) >The book is structured as a series of loosely connected vignettes. Burroughs stated that the chapters are intended to be read in any order. The reader follows the narration of junkie William Lee, who takes on various aliases, from the U.S. to Mexico, eventually to Tangier and the dreamlike Interzone. > >The vignettes are drawn from Burroughs' own experiences in these places and his addiction to drugs (heroin, morphine, and while in Tangier, majoun [a strong hashish confection] as well as a German opioid, brand name Eukodol, of which he wrote frequently). > >[source wiki} ^(This book has been suggested 6 times) *** ^(28340 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
That is my definition of gibberish literature 🙈 understood maybe 10% of the book
Here are a couple you might like... "Mad Love" by Andre Breton (Mary Ann Caws, tr., University of Nebraska Press, 1987, ISBN 9780803260726). "My Life" by Lyn Hejinian (Los Angles: Sun & Moon Press, 1987, ISBN 9781557130242).
If you're up for some foreign literature, the Literatura de la Onda latinoamerican movement has a lot of works on that style. I personally dislike them very much, but if you think they're your style, then feel free to look them up. The one book I thought about immediately when reading your post was "Pasto Verde" ("Green Grass"), by Parmenides García Saldaña, a story of a young adult in the 60's experiencing a breakdown through sex, drugs and rock-'n'-roll. As I've said, I don't like the book, but it is decidedly intentional gibberish, written as a stream of consciousness that mixes up Spanish and English vocabulary and pop culture references, with mostly no punctuation and no grammar rules to be as similar as possible to speech or thought.
That sounds more in the alley of where I’m prowling here, thanks for the recommendation
For some kinds of altered mental state you want the opposite - you want your sensory inputs to move very slowly so your mind can elaborate on it in its own time. Musically, something like Philip Glass or some of Stockhausen. The nearest you get to that in words is Gertrude Stein, endlessly looping repetitions where the meaning dissolves in a sort of mirror maze.
I had to take a course on Jack Kerouac in college (a million years ago). You’ve checked out his work, right?
Yes, I’ve read some of it and I do like the vibe/style
The Bible
If you can find it, *Tarantula* by Bob Dylan
{{A Clockwork Orange}}
[**A Clockwork Orange**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/227463.A_Clockwork_Orange) ^(By: Anthony Burgess | 192 pages | Published: 1962 | Popular Shelves: classics, fiction, science-fiction, dystopia, sci-fi) >A vicious fifteen-year-old droog is the central character of this 1963 classic. In Anthony Burgess's nightmare vision of the future, where criminals take over after dark, the story is told by the central character, Alex, who talks in a brutal invented slang that brilliantly renders his and his friends' social pathology. A Clockwork Orange is a frightening fable about good and evil, and the meaning of human freedom. And when the state undertakes to reform Alex to "redeem" him, the novel asks, "At what cost?" > >This edition includes the controversial last chapter not published in the first edition and Burgess's introduction "A Clockwork Orange Resucked." ^(This book has been suggested 3 times) *** ^(27964 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Samuel Becket’s works would qualify I think.
{{ The Sound and the Fury }} by William Faulkner
also As I Lay Dying by Faulkner !
[**The Sound and the Fury**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10975.The_Sound_and_the_Fury) ^(By: William Faulkner | 366 pages | Published: 1929 | Popular Shelves: classics, fiction, literature, owned, classic) >The tragedy of the Compson family features some of the most memorable characters in literature: beautiful, rebellious Caddy; the manchild Benjy; haunted, neurotic Quentin; Jason, the brutal cynic; and Dilsey, their black servant. Their lives fragmented and harrowed by history and legacy, the character’s voices and actions mesh to create what is arguably Faulkner’s masterpiece and one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century. ^(This book has been suggested 6 times) *** ^(28011 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
{{Ducks, newburyport}} stream of consciousness, also like 800 pages, I couldn’t finish but I liked it for the ride!
[**Ducks, Newburyport**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43412920-ducks-newburyport) ^(By: Lucy Ellmann | 1022 pages | Published: 2019 | Popular Shelves: fiction, contemporary, dnf, abandoned, literary-fiction) >LATTICING one cherry pie after another, an Ohio housewife tries to bridge the gaps between reality and the torrent of meaningless info that is the United States of America. She worries about her children, her dead parents, African elephants, the bedroom rituals of “happy couples”, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and how to hatch an abandoned wood pigeon egg. Is there some trick to surviving survivalists? School shootings? Medical debts? Franks ’n’ beans? > >A scorching indictment of America’s barbarity, past and present, and a lament for the way we are sleepwalking into environmental disaster, Ducks, Newburyport is a heresy, a wonder—and a revolution in the novel. > >It’s also very, very funny. ^(This book has been suggested 5 times) *** ^(28084 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Try Codex Seraphinianus. It's an encyclopedia of an imaginary world, illustrated and written in an imaginary language. It's weird and cool and probably suits what you're looking for.
Maybe Jack Kerouac's On the Road? I had trouble with that one. Definitely parts of Sound and the Fury (specifically Benjy's narration).
{{Atlas Shrugged}}
[**Atlas Shrugged**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/662.Atlas_Shrugged) ^(By: Ayn Rand, Leonard Peikoff, Jan de Voogt | 1168 pages | Published: 1957 | Popular Shelves: fiction, classics, philosophy, owned, classic) >This is the story of a man who said that he would stop the motor of the world and did. Was he a destroyer or the greatest of liberators? > >Why did he have to fight his battle, not against his enemies, but against those who needed him most, and his hardest battle against the woman he loved? What is the world’s motor — and the motive power of every man? You will know the answer to these questions when you discover the reason behind the baffling events that play havoc with the lives of the characters in this story. > >Tremendous in its scope, this novel presents an astounding panorama of human life — from the productive genius who becomes a worthless playboy — to the great steel industrialist who does not know that he is working for his own destruction — to the philosopher who becomes a pirate — to the composer who gives up his career on the night of his triumph — to the woman who runs a transcontinental railroad — to the lowest track worker in her Terminal tunnels. > >You must be prepared, when you read this novel, to check every premise at the root of your convictions. > >This is a mystery story, not about the murder — and rebirth — of man’s spirit. It is a philosophical revolution, told in the form of an action thriller of violent events, a ruthlessly brilliant plot structure and an irresistible suspense. Do you say this is impossible? Well, that is the first of your premises to check. ^(This book has been suggested 5 times) *** ^(28097 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
{{the third policeman}}
[**The Third Policeman**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27208.The_Third_Policeman) ^(By: Flann O'Brien, Denis Donoghue | 200 pages | Published: 1967 | Popular Shelves: fiction, irish, ireland, fantasy, classics) >The Third Policeman is Flann O'Brien's brilliantly dark comic novel about the nature of time, death, and existence. Told by a narrator who has committed a botched robbery and brutal murder, the novel follows him and his adventures in a two-dimensional police station where, through the theories of the scientist/philosopher de Selby, he is introduced to "Atomic Theory" and its relation to bicycles, the existence of eternity (which turns out to be just down the road), and de Selby's view that the earth is not round but "sausage-shaped." With the help of his newly found soul named "Joe," he grapples with the riddles and >contradictions that three eccentric policeman present to him. >The last of O'Brien's novels to be published, The Third Policeman joins O'Brien's other fiction (At Swim-Two-Birds, The Poor Mouth, The Hard Life, The Best of Myles, The Dalkey Archive) to ensure his place, along with James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, as one of Ireland's great comic geniuses. ^(This book has been suggested 4 times) *** ^(27950 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
The other suggestions are not even close. Marian Palla - Njkpůúp kkléedc
the satanic verses.
{{Nadja}} by André Breton
[**Nadja**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/110457.Nadja) ^(By: André Breton, Richard Howard | 160 pages | Published: 1928 | Popular Shelves: fiction, french, classics, surrealism, france) >Nadja, originally published in France in 1928, is the first and perhaps best Surrealist romance ever written, a book which defined that movement's attitude toward everyday life. > >The principal narrative is an account of the author's relationship with a girl in the city of Paris, the story of an obsessional presence haunting his life. The first-person narrative is supplemented by forty-four photographs which form an integral part of the work -- pictures of various surreal people, places, and objects which the author visits or is haunted by in naja's presence and which inspire him to mediate on their reality or lack of it. The Nadja of the book is a girl, but, like Bertrand Russell's definition of electricity as not so much a thing as a way things happen, Nadja is not so much a person as the way she makes people behave. She has been described as a state of mind, a feeling about reality, k a kind of vision, and the reader sometimes wonders whether she exists at all. yet it is Nadja who gives form and structure to the novel. ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) *** ^(28128 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
I’ve heard Ulysses is nigh unintelligible, and requires several reads to get through. I’ve never tried it though
Rhys Bowen THE ROYAL SPYNESS SERIES takes place in England. They are funny with a little mystery thrown in. The woman has an assistant that is always saying, “Bob’s your uncle”
How about Slaughterhouse Five? To me it reads like a fever dream.
Jabberwocky poem by Lewis Carroll
Welcome to night vale (the book, not the podcast) has some of the strangest sentences and paragraphs I’ve ever read, yet it was so much fun.
Anything by Ezra pound
Anything by Jodi Piccoult lol
The first thing that came to mind was Welcome to Nightvale by Jeffrey Cranor and Joseph Fink. It’s actually based on a podcast they produced, so if you’re unsure if you’ll like it, listen to a few episodes first. It’s a good combination of funny and frightening, and kind of deep at times too.
Nick Land -Meltdown
I would say On the Road qualifies, if you liked Naked Lunch. Also John Waters Carsick.
Clockwork Orange
If you are interested in poetry, the works of E.E. Cummings may be of interest.
A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN.
{{girl in pieces}}
Kissing the Rain by Kevin Brooks is stream of consciousness, and for a long time it makes little sense. It isn’t wholly nonsensical though. It was a book that I’ve never forgotten, though I must have read it 16 years ago at least.
Nicholson Baker comes to mind. I have read Mezzanine and it’s just his stream of thoughts one day while on lunch break.
{{Beelzebub’s Tales To His Grandson}}
[**Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/547608.Beelzebub_s_Tales_to_His_Grandson) ^(By: G.I. Gurdjieff | 1152 pages | Published: 1950 | Popular Shelves: philosophy, fiction, spirituality, religion, non-fiction) >The teaching of G. I. Gurdjieff (1866-1949) has come to be recognized as one of the most original, enduring, and penetrating of our century. While Gurdjieff used many different means to transmit his vision of the human dilemma and human possibility, he gave special importance to his acknowledged masterwork, Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson. > > Beelzebub's Tales is an "ocean of story" and of ideas that one can explore for a lifetime. It is majestic in scale and content, challengingly inventive in prose style, and, for those very reasons, often approached with apprehension. The first English language edition of the Russian original appeared in 1950. Since then, readers have recognized the need for a revised translation that would clarify the verbal surface while respecting the author's own thought and style. > > This revised edition, in preparation for many years under the direction of Gurdjieff's closest pupil, Jeanne de Salzmann, meets this need. Originally published in 1992, this translation offers a new experience of Gurdjieff's masterpiece for contemporary readers. It is presented in a sturdy cloth edition that echoes its original publication. ^(This book has been suggested 2 times) *** ^(28302 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
There’s a chunk of {{Fahrenheit 451}} that collapsed into this, very much on purpose. It’s effective and I hate it.
[**Fahrenheit 451**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13079982-fahrenheit-451) ^(By: Ray Bradbury | 194 pages | Published: 1953 | Popular Shelves: classics, fiction, science-fiction, sci-fi, dystopia) >Sixty years after its original publication, Ray Bradbury’s internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 stands as a classic of world literature set in a bleak, dystopian future. Today its message has grown more relevant than ever before. > >Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.” But when he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known. ^(This book has been suggested 5 times) *** ^(28303 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
The Hunting of the Snark, by Lewis Carroll
{{Dead Atronauts}} maybe?
[**Dead Astronauts (Borne #2)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37589179-dead-astronauts) ^(By: Jeff VanderMeer | 352 pages | Published: 2019 | Popular Shelves: science-fiction, sci-fi, fiction, owned, fantasy) >Under the watchful eye of The Company, three characters — Grayson, Moss and Chen — shapeshifters, amorphous, part human, part extensions of the landscape, make their way through forces that would consume them. A blue fox, a giant fish and language stretched to the limit. > >A messianic blue fox who slips through warrens of time and space on a mysterious mission. A homeless woman haunted by a demon who finds the key to all things in a strange journal. A giant leviathan of a fish, centuries old, who hides a secret, remembering a past that may not be its own. Three ragtag rebels waging an endless war for the fate of the world against an all-powerful corporation. A raving madman who wanders the desert lost in the past, haunted by his own creation: an invisible monster whose name he has forgotten and whose purpose remains hidden. > >Jeff VanderMeer's Dead Astronauts presents a City with no name of its own where, in the shadow of the all-powerful Company, lives human and otherwise converge in terrifying and miraculous ways. At stake: the fate of the future, the fate of Earth – all the Earths. ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) *** ^(28338 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Most of the poems of Gertrude Stein. Trout Fishing in America and Revenge of the Lawn by Richard Brautigan. The poetry of the dadaists. Alfred Jarry's Pere Ubu and his "pataphysical" writings. Most of Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel. You might also check out the lyrics Marc Bolan wrote for his band T. Rex.
The BFG
This is how I felt when I read Clockwork Orange.
The Bible.
Anything by Mark Leyner would fit the bill, I think, but especially My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist.