Cult Classics & Modern Minds: for the Eclectic Intellectual
Explore a curated list of cult classics and modern masterpieces for the eclectic intellectual. Discover timeless books that challenge, inspire, and expand the mind.
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The Bell Jar
by Sylvia Plath
The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under--maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experiece as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic.
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Lamb
by Christopher Moore
The birth of Jesus has been well chronicled, as have his glorious teachings, acts, and divine sacrifice after his thirtieth birthday. But no one knows about the early life of the Son of God, the missing years -- except Biff, the Messiah's best bud, who has been resurrected to tell the story in the divinely hilarious yet heartfelt work "reminiscent of Vonnegut and Douglas Adams" (Philadelphia Inquirer). Verily, the story Biff has to tell is a miraculous one, filled with remarkable journeys, magic, healings, kung fu, corpse reanimations, demons, and hot babes. Even the considerable wiles and devotion of the Savior's pal may not be enough to divert Joshua from his tragic destiny. But there's no one who loves Josh more -- except maybe "Maggie," Mary of Magdala -- and Biff isn't about to let his extraordinary pal suffer and ascend without a fight.
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On the Road
by Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouacâs classic American novel of freedom and the search for originality that defined a generation âAn authentic work of art.ââThe New York Times Inspired by Jack Kerouacâs adventures with Neal Cassady, On the Road tells the story of two friends whose cross-country road trips are a quest for meaning and true experience. Written with a mixture of sad-eyed naĂŻvetĂ© and wild abandon and imbued with Kerouacâs love of America, his compassion for humanity, and his sense of language as jazz, On the Road is the quintessential American vision of freedom and hopeâa book that changed American literature and changed anyone who has ever picked it up.
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Naked Lunch
by William S. Burroughs
Since its original publication in Paris in 1959, Naked Lunch has become one of the most important novels of the twentieth century. Exerting its influence on the relationship of art and obscenity, it is one of the books that redefined not just literature but American culture. For the Burroughs enthusiast and the neophyte, this volumeâthat contains final-draft typescripts, numerous unpublished contemporaneous writings by Burroughs, his own later introductions to the book, and his essay on psychoactive drugsâis a valuable and fresh experience of a novel that has lost none of its relevance or satirical bite.
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A Separate Peace
by John Knowles
Nominated as one of Americaâs best-loved novels by PBSâs The Great American Read. An American classic and great bestseller for over thirty years, A Separate Peace is timeless in its description of adolescence during a period when the entire country was losing its innocence to World War II. Set at a boys' boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II, A Separate Peace is a harrowing and luminous parable of the dark side of adolescence. Gene is a lonely, introverted intellectual. Phineas is a handsome, taunting, daredevil athlete. What happens between the two friends one summer, like the war itself, banishes the innocence of these boys and their world.
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The Dharma Bums
by Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouacâs classic novel about friendship, the search for meaning, and the allure of nature âIn [On the Road] Kerouacâs heroes were sensation seekers; now they are seekers after truth . . . the novel often attains a beautiful dignity.ââChicago Tribune First published in 1958, a year after On the Road put the Beat Generation on the map, The Dharma Bums stands as one of Jack Kerouacâs most powerful and influential novels. The story focuses on two ebullient young Americansâmountaineer, poet, and Zen Buddhist Japhy Ryder, and Ray Smith, a zestful, innocent writerâwhose quest for Truth leads them on a heroic odyssey, from marathon parties and poetry jam sessions in San Franciscoâs Bohemia to solitude and mountain climbing in the High Sierras.
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Dry
by Augusten Burroughs
Augusten Burroughs describes his experiences working in advertising in Manhattan and chronicles his battle with alcoholism.
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Notes from Underground; the Double
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
âIt is best to do nothing! The best thing is conscious inertia! So long live the underground!âAlienated from society and paralysed by a sense of his own insignificance, the anonymous narrator of Dostoyevskyâs groundbreaking Notes from Underground tells the story of his tortured life. With bitter sarcasm, he describes his refusal to become a worker in the âant-hillâ of society and his gradual withdrawal to an existence âundergroundâ. The seemingly ordinary world of St Petersburg takes on a nightmarish quality in The Double when a government clerk encounters a man who exactly resembles him â his double perhaps, or possibly the darker side of his own personality. Like Notes from Underground, this is a masterly study of human consciousness.Jessie Coulsonâs introduction discusses the storiesâ critical reception and the themes they share with Dostoyevksyâs great novels.
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