Classic Cult Fiction: A Companion to Popular Cult Literature

by Thomas R. Whissen

Overview

Question: What does Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye (1951) have in common with Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774)? Answer: Actually a great deal. They are classics of cult fiction and share many attributes. Cult fiction is a reader-created genre. A cult book can appear within any type of literary genre—for instance, romance, mystery, science fiction—but will achieve cult status only on the basis of reader response. It has qualities that speak to a reader, who may feel that it has been written for him or her alone; yet this very personal appeal is widespread, and such a book may grow in popularity almost as an underground movement, inspiring a generation of readers and sometimes enduring as a mainstream classic. Though amazingly diverse, such books also have astonishing commonalities pervasive enough to qualify them as comprising a genre.

Classic Cult Fiction is a history, analysis, and reference guide to books that have become bibles to generations of Europeans and Americans over the past two hundred years. Though canon formation is an awesome prospect, sure to lead to challenges by scholars and readers alike, author Thomas Whissen fearlessly identifies the top fifty classic cult books, first presenting an informed and witty interpretation of the phenomenon and its characteristics with examples from different cultures and periods. Cult fiction is shown to be a product of the Romantic movement and a reflection of the persistent romantic temperament in Western civilization. The work offers insights into the mentality of the Golden Age of Cult Fiction, the 1960s, by analyzing the cult books that both influenced the age and were influenced by it. The fifty individual works are each discussed relative to time and place, impact, and audience psychology and analyzed in terms of common cult attributes. A chronological listing of cult fiction adds a number of titles not chosen for the top fifty. An original approach to criticism, this literary companion argues the case for cult fiction as a distinct genre and offers fifty fresh and thought provoking essays to back up the contention.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780313265501
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	03/30/1992
Pages:	360
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.94(d)
Lexile:	1410L (what's this?)

About the Author

THOMAS REED WHISSEN is Professor of English at Wright State University. Among his academic interests are the topics of decadence in literature, cult literature, and writing and editing. His most recent books reflect these interests, including A Way with Words and The Devil's Advocates: Decadence in Modern Literature (Greenwood Press, 1989). His own way with words has led him into fiction, poetry, and lyrics as well as scholarship, and he is presently developing a study tentatively titled Wretched Writing and Why It Works.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction
Cult Classics
Against Nature, Joris-Karl Huysmans
Animal Farm, George Orwell
Another Roadside Attraction, Tom Robbins
Axel, Philippe Auguste Villiers de Lísle-Adam
Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me, Richard Farina
The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
Catch-22, Joseph Heller
A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
The Day of the Locust, Nathanael West
Demian, Hermann Hesse
Dune, Frank Herbert
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson
The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
Frankenstein, or the Modern Promethus, Mary Shelley
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
The Killer Inside Me, Jim Thompson
Lady Chatterley's Lover, D.H. Lawrence
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
Look Homeward, Angel, Thomas Wolfe
Lord of the Flies, William Golding
Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
Lost Horizon, James Hilton
Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey
On the Road, Jack Kerouac
The Outsider, Colin Wilson
The Outsiders, S.E. Hinton
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
RenEÉ, Francois-RenEÉ de Chateaubriand
A Separate Peace, John Knowles
Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse
Slaughterhouse-Five or the Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death, Kurt Vonnegut
The Sorrows of Young Werther, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Stand, Stephen King
Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse
The Stranger, Albert Camus
Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, Carlos Castaneda
This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Time and Again, Jack Finney
Trout Fishing in America, Richard Brautigan
2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke
Walden II, B. F. Skinner
Warlock, Oakley Hall
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig
Chronological Listing of Cult Fiction
Works Cited
Bibliography of Primary Works: First and Current Editions
Books for Further Reading
Index

Editorial Reviews

Whissen argues persuasively that cult fiction is a distinct genre that can influence and change individuals and Western society. Cult books encompass the cultural components of ``romanticism, democratic idealism, myth-dream, opportunity, and truth'' and the psychological components of ``idealization, alienation, ego-reinforcement, suffering, and vulnerability'' and reinvent reality because the world has strayed from traditional values or is heading in the wrong direction. Reader response is crucial for cult status; readers must feel that the book speaks for them. To explore this genre, Whissen selected 50 novels, most written in the United States after 1945, and wrote individual essays. He summarizes the plots, themes, and characters; describes the cult status of each book; and makes appropriate comparisons to similar cult books. Thought-provoking and challenging, Classic Cult Fiction is recommended.-- Cheryl L. Conway, Univ. of Arkansas Lib., Fayetteville

Library Journal

Essays on 50 books that have acquired a permanent underground following in the past two centuries, analyze each story, its place in its world, and the manifestations of its cultism. Animal farm, Dune, Lord of the rings, and Walden two, are among the books. Also includes an introductory survey of the cult phenomenon, general and specific bibliographies, and a chronological list, 1774-1979, that also notes books not discussed. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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