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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Gadsby, the novel without the letter "E"

By Jack Brummet, Literature and Poetry Editor

Have you ever heard about the novel "Gadsby"?  It is a 50,000+ word tale, written by in 1939 by Ernest Vincent Wright.  It reads fairly normally actually, but when you think about it as you read, it really does change the feel of the language.  In the first sentence here, I used an "e" 22 times. I'm not saying go read the book (it's rather dull), but it is online, and you can at least sample it and see what I mean.  


If you like language, it's pretty interesting to read a chunk of this to feel English without the "E"  He uses surprisingly few awkward constructions (you know the -ed verbs had to be really tough work around).  But the lack of "e's" surprisingly changes the sound of the language--both, by the lack of the "e" itself, and by the "A's" and "I's" and "O's" becoming more dominant visually, and in the sound of the language.

Click here to read Gadsby online. 

Youth cannot stay for long in a condition of inactivity; and so, for only about a month did things so stand, until a particularly bright girl in our Organization, thought out a plan for caring for infants of folks who had to go out, to work; and this bright kid soon had a group of girls who would join, during vacation, in voluntarily giving up four days a month to such work. With about fifty girls collaborating, all districts had this most gracious aid; and a girl would not only watch and guard, but would also instruct, as far as practical, any such tot as had not had its first schooling. Such work by young girls still in school was a grand thing; and Gadsby not only stood up for such loyalty, but got at his boys to find a similar plan; and soon had a full troop of Boy Scouts; uniforms and all.

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Raucous/picaresque/books that always make me laugh and smile

Here are some of the books I return to over and over in the moments when I need a laugh.

Henry IV, Part I - William Shakespeare
A Cool Million - Nathaniel West
Gargantua and Pantagruel - Francois Rabelais
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - Laurence Sterne
Amerika - Franz Kafka
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
Ball Four - Jim Bouton
Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
Moo - Jane Smiley
The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle - Tobias Smollett
Bonfire of the Vanities - Tom Wolfe
The Good Soldier Schweik - Jaroslav Hasek
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson
Rivethead - Ben Hamper
Blue Movie - Terry Southern
Most books by Carl Hiassen
Trout Fishing In America - Richard Brautigan
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1972 - Hunter S. Thompson
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Summer reading - some books I read this summer

Here are the books I remember reading this summer. It's a pretty normal mix for me--a touch of Shakespeare, some fiction, some music books, poetry, several expedition books, and a lot of history and nonfiction.


NF - nonfiction; F - Fiction; M - mountaineering/expedition

The Tempest - William Shakespeare (F - more or less, in verse and play form)
The Measure of a Mountain: Beauty and Terror on Mount Rainier - Bruce Barcott (M)
Coltrane: The Story of a Sound - Ben Ratliff (NF)
Moo - Jane Smiley (F)
Julie & Julia - Julie Powell (NF: a cooking memoir)
The land where blues began - Alan Lomax (NF)
The story of Butch Cassady - Charles Kelly (NF)
Searching for the sound - Phil Lesh (NF)
Marvin Bell - Iris of creation (poems)
How to tell a secret - R.J. Huff and J.G. Lewin (NF)_
The last picture show- Larry McMurtry (F)
Montana's righteous hangmen - Lew Calloway (NF)
Memoirs of Fanny Hill - William Cleland (F)
Pop. 1280 - Jim Thompson (F)
In the presence of grizzlies - Peacock and Peacock (NF)
Dark Summit - Nick Heil (M)
Forever on the Mountain - James. M. Tabor (M)
Havana Nocturne - T.J. English (NF)
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