avant-garde

Beautiful Losers

by Leonard Cohen Beautiful Losers was apparently a big deal when it was originally published in the ’60s. From what I’ve read, critics understood it to be the most interesting and unique Canadian novel of its time, but for the most part it was panned for being incoherent and vulgar. (And, I mean, it is,…
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Ulysses

by James Joyce Well, this one’s a doozy. I tried to prepare as best as I knew how, both by reading the Homeric epics beforehand and by waiting to attempt the lofty undertaking that is Ulysses until I had a bit of a grounding in literature that I lacked due to a similar lack of…
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Duluth

by Gore Vidal Where to begin with this one? It’s not even that I have a hard time expressing my opinion of Duluth––it’s really good––but I find it difficult to explain why I found Vidal’s surrealist satire as enjoyable as I did. And, even though I walked away with such respect for the story and…
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Ravenscrag

by Alain Farah Some books really lose me right from the get-go. This could be due to a myriad of reasons, but, in the case of Ravenscrag, it seemed to be because of the author’s misunderstanding of avant-garde, with scenes mashed together that appeared weird just for the sake of being weird. Before long, however,…
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Naked Lunch

by William S. Burroughs Naked Lunch should be thought of less as a book and more as an undertaking. It took me multiple attempts to trudge through the “narrative” and actually––I assume––somewhat walk away with a bit of understanding of what I witnessed. I will also admit that the humour passed me by more-or-less unnoticed…
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