Sureal

if you haven't read it you should read ' The Beach' by Alex Garland. top book mate.

Well, I don't know if this counts as surreal, but it is definitely an out of body experience: Cities of the Red Night by William S. Burroughs. For that matter, almost anything he wrote would probably fit the bill. If you like this one, then try Naked Lunch, The Place of Dead Roads, and The Western Lands.

Some of the surrealists DID write. Dali wrote a novel, for example! It's a very big label, is 'surrealist' - 'magical realism' sometimes sort of holds hands with it. I'd suggest 'The Tin Drum' by Gunter Grass (magical realism) 'Breakfast of Champions' by Kurt Vonnegut (erm, spaced out!) 'Visions of Cody' by Jack Kerouac (pretty much surreal) I'll have a think, and get back to you! Chris ?{:^)

Get real sir seb. your local store will only stock mainstream surreality which you have probably already spotted by using the perambulation technique. for really psychedelic stuff you need a tardis. alternatively you could press the search button on your browser which should give you quicker results than waiting for this forum of witless tosspots to reply. sally :-))

is this thread an r short or am i missing cur reality?

Cheers everyone, even the cynical among you. I'll give some of these guys a read. I was hoping that no one would notice the misspelling. Lol. Seb.

I think what sally, in a late night kind of way, was trying to say seb is that since the ending of the net book price agreement, local bookstores seem to stock very little other than mainstream guaranteed sellers. They will order for you if you know what you are looking for so long as you can wait and so long as you do indeed know what you are looking for. Have you tried Tad Williams or Terry Goodkind or are they too mainstream? In fact, are they even surreal? I don't know.

I'm surprised about Dali. I know he did some films. Is his book any good? If it's like his painting I might enjoy it.

The Unfortunates by B.S. Johnson. Comes in a box - each chapter is separately bound - you can pick it up and read it in any order ( except first and last chapters which are marked as such.)

Dali: I think I still have a copy somewhere. I think Picador published it. I'll have a trawl around.

'Could it be magic?' by Paul Magrs is a good surreal/magical realist novel. A guy gives birth to a half human, half leopard child out of his leg, and another guys all-over tattoos come to life. V. good, he makes it v. real.

You could try the works of Carlos Castaneda, about his adventures in Mescalin induced halucagenic highs with Hopi Indians, credited with being true they have since been discreditted as suurrealist fictions, - of course lots of beat generation authors are surrealist, Keroak, Ginsberg, Burroughs, etc, Dali also wrote a diary, Diary Of A Genius, which is excellent, a lot of fantasy and SF takes on a surrealist look and feel, try some HP Lovecraft, very suureal monsters lurk there, - the surrealists were basically trying to capturee a senseof what our minds look like on canvas, so lots of dream and dark psychological imagery, try some cyberpunk stuff too, ie, Willaim Gibson's Neuromancer, about what happens when heads can be accessed as easily as any other computer internet system - very surreal stuff - hope this helps, AC arthurchappell@clara.net www.arthurchappell.clara.net/contents.htm

Yay, nice to see someone mention Breakfast of Champions, Chris_Maitland. Very funny, in a disjointed, wandering kind of way. Also, "Cock-a-doodle-don't" by Ivor Cutler is in the same sort of vein, though not strictly surreal (strictly surreal? is that an oxymoron?). Anyone read it? It's a collection of very short stories which seem to lead nowhere, but infact lead...nowhere.

Franz Kafka: The Metamorphosis Man wakes up and finds he is changing into a giantinsect. Some of his other works may count as surreal too. regards, 1leg

I read a book a couple of years ago about a man waking up to find he is someone elses body....Its about a parallel univese...totally bizare and thought provoking....I will go and see if I can find the book and give you the title etc....

fear and loathing in las vegas by hunter s thompson, and then there is also the one who we can only look on with wonder, naked lunch by william burroughs. i have often thought that reading naked lunch is like fighting Ali, you're standing there in the ring, all ready to fight, when all of sudden he comes out of nowhere, hitting you, teasing you, jabbing you, without you have any idea where the next punch is coming from, as you swing hopelessly in a pathetic effort to fend him off, he just hitting you, and still you don't know where the next hit is coming from...