Classic Cult Fiction A Companion to Popular Cult Literature

Subjects:

• Literature » World Literature
• Popular Culture » Popular Culture (General)

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 re-invent 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.
  —Library Journal
• During the 1950s, such novels as Catcher in the Rye and Lord of the Flies attracted a dedicated following on college campuses. During the 1960s, these perennial favorites were joined by a number of new publications, including Catch-22 and Trout Fishing in America; and by the 1970s, students were reading and identifying with such works as The Stand and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. In this guide, Whissen, an English professor at Wright State University, explores the phenomenon of books that have captured the imagination of readers to such an extent that they have achieved the status of cult fiction. In a long introductory essay, he traces the history of cult works for more than 200 years, analyzing the common elements and themes in such novels as well as the cultural and psychological components that generate these works. Characterizing a cult book as one that "touches the nerve of its times with uncanny accuracy," Whissen identifies 50 titles that he considers to be the classics of cult fiction for treatment in separate essays. Although these classics range chronologically from Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) to Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979), more than half of them were published after 1960. The essays, arranged alphabetically by title and averaging five pages in length, offer lively analyses of each novel within the context of the period in which it was published, discuss the principal characters and themes, and frequently draw parallels to similar elements in other cult novels. Each essay concludes with a brief bibliography of critical sources on the work or the novelist. Additional features include a chronology of 83 major works of cult fiction, a list of the first and current editions of the 50 classics, and a brief, annotated bibliography of works for further reading. A three-page index includes references to major themes treated in the introduction and to the authors and titles of the books accorded separate essays. Cult movies have been the focus of a number of books, but this is the first work to study cult fiction to any extent. Although one might quibble with Whissen's choice of the "classics"--is Time and Again really more of a classic than Jonathan Livingston Seagull or Love Story?--he has created a unique and useful source. Since many of the novels treated in Classic Cult Fiction frequently appear on required reading lists in high schools and colleges, this will be an especially suitable purchase for those types of libraries as well as for public libraries.
  —Reference Books Bulletin
• Highly recommended for all literary history and U.S. history collections
  —ARBA
• Highly recommended for all literary history and U.S. history collections.
  —ARBA 93

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