I'm talking like 1000+ pages, big honkin' novels
Current list (not complete by any means)
- infinite jest
- if on a winters night a traveler
- manuscript found in saragossa
- raw shark texts
- s – dorst
- piranesi
- xx – hughes
- Gravity's rainbow
- Atlas shrugged
- Cyclonopedia
- Themystery.doc
- Zettelstraum
- 2666
- In watermelon sugar
by TheGrimmAngel
17 Comments
Ducks, Newburyport
Shogun
Ilium and Olympos by Dan Simmons
Cryptonomicon (or almost any other book) by Neil Stephenson
1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
I’d guess these would fit the bill as both dense and experimental, even if they’re not quite 1000 pages.
Dhalgren!
Also Riddley Walker—considerably shorter, but you might enjoy the experimental prose
XX by Rian Hughes is mindblowing, nice to see it listed here.
Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon is magnificent. Definitely in my top 5 books of all time. 1100 pages.
The Recognitions by William Gaddis is on my list to read, it’s around 1000 pages.
Jerusalem by Alan Moore
Ulysses and Finnegans Wake by James Joyce, Castle of Crossed Destinies by Italo Calvino, House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon
Life and fate by Vasily Grossman. Arguably better than War and Peace with better author lore
A suitable boy by Vikram Seth
Also House of Leaves might be up your alley!
Not sure if this counts as experimental enough, but – Tom’s Crossing. I picked it up out of curiosity – huh, the House of Leaves guy wrote a Western, what is that even like? And then fell in love hard. Over 1000 pages and I didn’t want it to end. Maybe experimental as a real departure from his previous work, and it reinvents the Western in some ways. (I don’t want to give anything away, but after a while you start wondering exactly who is telling the story and how they know what they know – and the answer you finally get is freaking awesome.)
Honestly it’s kind of divisive, but Antkind by Charlie Kaufman fits this theme to a T
The Recognitions by William Gaddis. I read this 2 years ago, it’s one of the densest books I’ve ever read. The moment I finished it I wanted to reread it. It’s absolutely incredible. There’s also a website for it (william gaddis dot org) that contains annotations for every single page. I loved this book and I’m always sad that I can’t recommend it to people at my bookstore job because most people aren’t interested in long dense novels.
Infinite Jest – Wallace
Contre le jour – Pynchon
Piranesi is like a novella length or just barely longer no where near 1000 pages.
Hopscotch isn’t 1000 pages, but it’s substantial.
***4 3 2 1* by Paul Auster (2017)** is a roughly thousand page chonker that tells the life story of the main character from birth to death four times.
Then I’ve just read ***The Last Samurai* by Helen DeWitt (2000)** and while it’s only a mini chonker, around 500 pages, it’s one of the stranger and more experimental narratives I’ve read.
Reading Bubblegum by Adam Levin right now and it fits the bill.
It’s not 1k pages (a modest 800) but takes place in a fictional alternate universe where the internet wasn’t invented.