franzelneekburm

Ok, help me out here, as a Christmas gift I am compiling The Pretentious Reader Starter Kit and need suggestions for books to include. (In addition to books, the kit contains various accessories of the pretentious reader: Starbucks gift card, flash cards with ostentatious vocabulary, etc. Suggestions for other accoutrements would also be appreciated.)

The criteria for inclusion are:

1. The book has to have a popular perception of being pretentious and/or cerebral. (But must be widely recognizable, too pretentious also would not work.)
2. In addition to (or inspite of) #1 the book has to actually be good.
3. The book has to be relatively small and not imposing, this is a starter kit after all. (So: Demian, not The Glass Bead Game; The Crying of Lot 49, not Gravity's Rainbow, etc. And this definitely means Proust is out of the question.)
4. In addition to English, original works in Russian, Spanish and French are also acceptable.

This is what I have so far:

• Italo Calvino: If on a Winter's Night a Traveler.
• Umberto Eco: A few essays, his fiction doesn't pass criterion #3, unfortunately.
• Herman Hesse: Demian, or possibly Siddhartha.
• Milan Kundera: The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
• Thomas Pynchon: The Crying of Lot 49.
• Patrick Süskind: Perfume. (Not sure if this one passes #1, it's just such a good book, though.)

What else should go on this list?

cuervo

I haven't read it yet, so can't say if it's good, but The DaVinci Code is popular.

Going back a little, Clockwork Orange

Grancey

Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America

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alansmithee

I'd say The Great Gatsby, definately. It's suprisingly small, and well written. Candide by Voltaire would also fit the criteria, IMO. Don't know if it's widely recognizable, but Point Counter Point by Aldous Huxley is an amazing book (and much better than Brave New World, IMO).

Tophat665

To be truly pretentious, you'll need:
Something short by James Joyce, say <i>Dubliners</i> or <i>Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man</i>.
<I>The Tin Drum</i> by G&uuml;nter Grass.
Something short by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The missus knows her Spanish, so I asked her, and she said something in Spanish that I think is the Spanish title of <i> No One Writes to the Colonel</i>. <i>The General in his Labyrinth</i> is the one I might suggest, though.
Sun Tzu, <i>The Art of War</i>. For a non military person to read it appears pretentious. If they are military, then Niccolo Machiavelli, <i>On War</i> is the pretentious choice.
Anything at all by Philip K. Dick. "The Nine Billion Names of God" is one, and <i>The Man in the High Castle</i> is the other. (<I>Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep</i> is every bit as pretentious, but, because they made it into a movie with a much slicker name, no one notices that any more.)
Sylvia Plath, anything at all.
Ginsberg, "Howl".
<i>Mythologies</i> or <i>The Eiffel Tower</i> by Roland Barthes. There is nothing more pretentious than a French anthropologist trying to structurally analyze everyday life. (Actually, they're both pretty good reads too. 80 to 120 pages of one to 3 page essays. Good for the bathroom.)
<i>Mrs. Byrne's Highly Selective Dictionary of the English Language</i>, 200 pages of words everyone should know, but nearly no one does.
<i>The Transitive Vampire</i>, grammar made goth.

That's it for now

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Derwood

Throw some Oscar Wilde in there.

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franzelneekburm

Ok, we can use this one as the exact opposite of what I was looking for.

franzelneekburm

Thanks, good stuff. I definitely needed a few from the Latin American "magical realism" group in there.

Tophat665

You may want to look into some Jorge Luis Borges, then, particularly if you can find a collection that has <i>el Axolotl</i> in it.

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Kostya

Confucius - The Analects. Quite short, you can dip in and out, and the pretentious factor is doubled by the fact that you can subtly drop in quotes and allusions during conversations over cognac at the next soiree.

Equally good, with perhaps more classic leanings is Marcus Aurelius - Meditations. This book is just plain cool.

Xell101

One-Dimensional Man
Simulation and Simulacra
Dialectic of Enlightenment

maleficent

YOu must include thost labels for the front cover of the books -- that say "borrowed from the personal library of..... "

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Tophat665

Black Beret. Pack of Gauloises.

Chairman Mao's Little Red Book.

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shakran

don't forget Anna Karinina. That's pretty much the gold standard of pretentiousness

Willravel

HOLY CRAP! THAT'S A GREAT LIST! I have all of those books (what are the odds?).

rockzilla

Don't forget the Ayn Rand. Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead should be in there.
Wait, Atlas Shrugged is pretty hefty, The Fountainhead's alright though. Anthem is a good quick read too, and all Ayn Rand Books are the basically the same.

franzelneekburm

The Russian classics won't work, she (the giftee) is quite a buff in the area and has probably read more of them than I've ever heard of.

franzelneekburm

I thought Ayn Rand wrote fairly generic science fiction? Granted I don't know much about the stuff...

CSflim

You could always be meta-pretentious and throw in Intellectual Impostures by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont.

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martinguerre

Lmao...

I think my mind just broke...

book's i'd include:

*The Quest of the Historical Jesus by Albert Schwietzer on the grounds that it is the founding edition of modern religion dorkery.
*fear and trembling by kierkegaard
*portrait of the artist as a young man
* anything by gertrude stein, esp. "little buttons"

can you tell i'm not a huge fan of stream of consciousness?

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asaris

Shouldn't there be some Derrida in there (speaking of meta-pretentious)? Of Grammatology is probably too big, but Spurs or Limited Inc. would be about the right size.

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"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

snowy

I'm going to have to agree with whoever suggested Simulacra and Simulation by Baudrillard.

In that same vein, I'd suggest picking up some Don DeLillo--White Noise, Underworld, Libra.

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Slavakion

Try anything by William Faulkner. If anyone doubts the, uh, cerebrocity of his works, just hand them a copy and tell them to try to read it.

Or how about Stephen Hawking's books? A Brief History of Time, or The Universe in a Nutshell will give anyone a faint migraine. Although they're more geared towards the science crowd and i don't know if that describes your giftee.

Mephisto2

Plato's Dialogues.

Short and sweet. Rather interesting actually, but could be considered pretentious.

Along that vein, you could also include The Histories by Herodotus. Actually, I like this book and it may be a little too long, but it's a great read.

What about Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt. I have to admit I've never read this as, rather appropriately, I've always heard it was rather pretentious!

Mr Mephisto

Tophat665

You know, I don't believe the french exisitentialists have shown up here yet. The Creme de la creme vis pretention would be Sartre's "Nausea". I rather like Camus' "The Plague", and it is relatively short - like 250 pages. Any Camus or Kafka would do. "The Trial" is a very thin book, and most of the time has a super pretentious cover.

For patriotic pretentsion, John Locke's 2nd Treatise on Government is a good one.

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Tophat665

I would have bet pretty damn low. Are you sure you're not me?
(And thanks much. One does one's pretentious best.)

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brianna

the stranger by camus

Kadath

Apparently I'm the antithesis of pretention. While my gf loves "Crying of Lot 49" and I enjoy PKD, I have almost none of the books suggested. Rolling through my book shelf I did find "The Prince" but that's played out (as is The Book of Five Rings).
I did find some book called "The Art of Courtly Love" by Andreas Capellanus, which is pretty much the most useless book I've ever seen -- it's life in Queen Eleanor's court between 1170 and 1174, and the opening sentence is:
Wow.

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franzelneekburm

You know, I've noticed that about Kafka books, and they aren't often all that creative either. The edition of The Castle that I have has "Castle in the Pyrenees" on the cover, which I've seen on books all over the place, I myslelf have at least two other books with that cover (one's a philosophy textbook from college, forget what the other one is).

Just saying, pretention is good and everything, but a bit of creativity wouldn't hurt

Mephisto2

Make sure to post the final list.


Mr Mephisto

roachboy

georges perec: w, memoirs of a childhood or species of spaces
j.l. borges: ficciones
j.m. coetzee: waiting for the barbarians
w.g. sebald: austerlitz, rings of saturn or vertigo
calvino: castle of crossed destinies
marcel benabou: why i have not written any of my books
william s burroughs: the ticket that exploded
j g ballard: atrocity exhibition

i dont really understand what is understood by pretentious here, but i figured out the kind of books being asked for by reading through the thread. or something. i gues pretentious is just the opposite of tedious reading.

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cabron

What about modern pretention? What has been listed so far seems to fit the category of "intellectual" or "classic." This may be what the poster wants, however.

How about Dave Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius? Or perhaps some Tom Robbins?

Tophat665

No, there's Joyce in the list, and Pynchon. If find both of their attempts at cleverness to be definition tedious. Sylvia Plath too, and her depression and complaints are evey bit as tedious no matter what kind of evocative language they're wrapped in. Henry James could make an appearance on the list (maybe), and he is the man who made parentheticals a style don't.

Pretentious reading doesn't so much have to do with whether or not the book is any good - most of the books listed are excellent; some are crap. It seems to me that a pretentious book is the kind of book that, if someone were to see you reading it or carrying it, they would say, "Hmm, he sure is trying to look intelligent and profund," unless they just said, "Goddamn college sissy-mary."

Pretentious books take in depth looks at things that should be patently obvious to anyone with two nerve cells to rub together. The Plague is a perfect example - What society says of a person has zip to do with whether or not they are a good person. Pretentious books use 50 cent words where 10 cent ones would be more clear. They use 20 words where four would get the same point across to more people. They are primarily about showing how bright the author is, and secondarily about what they are ostensibly about. Prentetious books have phrases in foreign languages that aren't translated into the books main language.

Basically, pretetious books are written for an Audience. If you are not a member of that audience (French intellectuals in the late 1940's trying to come up with an intellectual argument for the implications of WWII in the realm of ethics, for instance), then the best you can do is pretend to some part of that mindset. That is the definition of pretentious.

Note that there is not necessarily anything wrong with that. I really enjoy some of Umberto Eco's books, and they don't get much more pretentious that that. So to say a book is pretentious is not a value judgement on the worth of the book, but moreso on its context vis the reader's.

I could go on, but I am starting to write pretentiously.

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Tophat665

Robert Anton Wilson's <i>Prometheus Rising</i>, for instance? Some of Sam Delany's fetidly Joycean science fiction, like <i>Triton</i>? Jack Keroac(sp)? Frankly, anything by Anne Coulter is pretentious, popularity notwithsanding, as in pretending to be non-ficton and political analysis at that, rather than venom from a woman who can't reconcile having a brain with being biologically a baby oven. How about something totally reactionary, like Hunter Thompson. <i>Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas</i> may be too hip, but <i>The Great Shark Hunt</i> or <i>The Curse of Lono</i> might be the very thing.

Actually, reactionary pretention might be fun. These days, reading Kipling (who is, let's face it, a rollicking good read) where people enjoy the kind of highbrow intellectualism that makes up the bulk of the list so far will be seen by those folks as pretentious.

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franzelneekburm

When I was originally asking for suggestions, I used 'pretentious' in a somewhat ironic manner: basically I wanted books that have a reputation for being high-brow and intellectual, the stuff people mean by "literature" when they put the word in quotes. Most (or at least many) people would recognize these books, but probably have not read them because they expect them to be pompous and tedius. In fact they may, or may not be - I was mostly interested in the latter.

In other words, books that aren't just good, but which are also conversation starters. Here's an example: a couple of years ago I spent many a summer evening in Harvard Square reading À la Recherche du Temps Perdu, probably one time in four that I was out with it, someone would comment on my reading selection. Now, while an awesome book, it's quite a difficult read, because of this a lot of people assume that the only reason to read it is to somehow "impress" others.

Meta example: my giving the French title above could (as Tophat665 pointed out) be taken as pretention, or it could be that I just don't know if earlier translation's title or the more literal one is the "proper" way to refer to it these days. Pretention is often in the eye of the beholder, as well.

I think most of the people in this thread got the gist of what I wanted (despite the vague description), at least the suggestions were exactly what I was looking for.

No, not at all. Gravity's Rainbow is a paragon of both pretention and tedium; there isn't a person alive who wouldn't be put to sleep by the middle third of Foucault's Pendulum (though the other two thirds are one of my favorite books).

In fact pretentious, but not tedious is a good way of narrowing it down towards the list I had in mind.

franzelneekburm

No, truly pretentious books have passages in foreign languages. But it's still great fun, pretention or not; I, for example, was positively tickled when I realized I could read the correspondence in War and Peace - Isn't this why we get useless (from an employment standpoint) liberal arts degrees, so we can read this stuff and feel good about ourselves?


Great avatar btw, Ben Edlund is a freakin' genius.

TheWalkinDude

Someone's already mentioned it, but anything by Richard Brautigan. Because he's that good. And nobody's heard of him. At least not in the UK...

thinktank

What about Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintinance... i've met a bunch of people who claim to have read it but cant discuss any of it.

Mondak

I think you got her mixed up with Ann Rice. Ayn Rand wrote "The Fountainhead" in 1943 and I recently read it and loved it. I will read more of her stuff after this.

The real reason I posted in this otherwise abandoned thread is that I am curious what the final list was and what the kit ended up including.

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