Books by and about giants, rebels, blowhards, madmen, screwups and troublemakers

By Jack Brummet, Lit. Ed.

A lot of my favorite books are about rebels, eff-ups, blowhards, troublemakers, and giants (or some hybrid of these).  It's no coincidence that most of the books on the list are hilariously funny.  Some of these books are often referred to as picaresque novels.  A partial list, off the top of my head:

• almost any book - Jim Thompson
• Rivethead - Ben Hamper
• The Natural Man - Ed McLanahan
• Catch 22 - Jospeh Heller
• Moby Dick - Herman Melville
• In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash - Jean Shepherd 
• The Paul Bunyan Tales - the one true American myth that grew from folk tales in Canada and the midwest, and were collected and expanded upon by later writers.  These are great stories that I have reread my entire life.  When I was about ten years old, I had read every PB book in the King County and Seattle library system.
• Gargantua and Pantagruel - Francois Rabelais
• Bound For Glory - Woody Guthrie
• Amerika - Franz Kafka
• One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
• A Cool Million - Nathaniel West
• Henry IV, Part I - William Shakespeare
• A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
• The Good Soldier Schweik - Jaroslav Hasek
• Don Quixote - Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra
• The Magic Christian - Terry Southern
• Blue Movie - Terry Southern
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson
• Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail - Hunter S. Thompson
• The First Third - Neal Cassady
• The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test - Tom Wolfe
• The Monkey Wrench Gang - Edward Abbey
• Lord Of The Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
• Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
• The Bad Popes - E. R. Chamberlin
• On The Road - Jack Kerouac
• Guerrilla Warfare - Che Guevara
• Revolution for the Hell of it - Abby Hoffman
• Steal This Book - Abby Hoffman
• almost any book - Carl Hiaasen
• almost any book - Elmore Leonard

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