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50 best cult books

Sam Leith and friends

12:01AM BST 25 Apr 2008

335 Comments (http://w w w .telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3672915/50-best-cult-books.html#disqus_thread)

Our critics present a selection of history's m ost notable cult w riting. Som e is classic. Som e is catastrophic. All of it had the pow er
to inspire
What is a cult book? We tried and failed to arrive at a definition: books often found in the pockets of murderers; books that you take very seriously
w hen you are 17; books w hose readers can be identified to all w ith the formula "<Author Name> w hacko"; books our children just w ont get
Some things crop up often: drugs, travel, philosophy, an implied tw o fingers to conventional w isdom, titanic self-absorption, a tendency to date fast
and a paperback jacket everyone recognises w ith a faint w ince. But these dont begin to cover it.
Cult books include some of the most cringemaking collections of bilge ever collected betw een hard covers. But they also include many of the key texts
of modern feminism; some of the best journalism and memoirs; some of the most entrancing and original novels in the canon.
Cult books are somehow , intangibly, different from simple bestsellers though many of them are that. The Carpetbaggers w as a bestseller; Zen and
The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance w as a cult.
They are different from books that have big new ideas though many of them are that. On The Origin of Species changed history; but Thus Spoke
Zarathustra w as a cult.
They are different from How -To books though many of them are that. The Highw ay Code is a How -To book; Baby and Child Care w as a cult. These
are books that became personally important to their readers: that changed the w ay they lived, or the w ay they thought about how they lived.
The Bible, the Koran and the Communist Manifesto, of course, changed lives but, in the first instance, they changed the life of the tribe, not of the
individual.
In compiling our list, w e w ere looking for the sort of book that people w ear like a leather jacket or carry around like a totem. The book that rew ires your
head: that turns you on to psychedelics; makes you w ant to move to Greece; makes you a pacifist; gives you a w ay of thinking about yourself as a
w oman, or a voice in your head that makes it feel okay to be a teenager; conjures into being a character w ho becomes a permanent inhabitant of your
mental flophouse.
We w ere able to agree, finally, on one thing: you know a cult book w hen you see one. And people have passionate feelings on both sides: our appeal

for suggestions yielded enough for a list at least three times as long as this one.
So if youve loved or hated or grow n out of or grow n into one of these books or another book w eve omitted please visit our w ebsite and tell us
about it. Sam Leith
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (1969)
Sidew ays fantasy from the Diogenes of American letters, a comic sage w ho survived the firebombing of Dresden and various familial tragedies to
w ork out his ow n unique brand of science-fictional satire. Like much of Vonnegut's stuff, this is savage anger barely masked by urbane
anthropological sarcasm. Very much the place to start. TM
The Alexandria Quartet by Law rence Durrell (1957-60)
The great modern Baroque novel. Made it possible for the middle classes to embrace the Mediterranean. No such Alexandria ever existed, nor did the
potboiler thriller plot of space/time exploration, Kaballa, sex, good food and drink (it came out during rationing) or philosophical enquiry. Some beautiful
sentences, sure; but lots of them dont make sense. AMcK
A Rebours by JK Huysmans (1884)
Plotless, morality-free salute to decadence. An individual based on its French author lounges about his luxurious home indulging in pursuits such as
embedding gemstones in the shell of a tortoise until, loaded dow n, it expires. Dripping w ith Baudelairean ennui (and not a little dull itself), A Rebours
w as a bible for the Symbolists, Oscar Wilde and alienated creative types everyw here. SD
Baby and Child Care by Dr Benjamin Spock (1946)
Childcare experts go in and out of fashion, but Dr Benjamin Spock remains the daddy of them all. From his reassuring first sentence "You know more
than you think you do" he revolutionised the w ay parents thought about their children, asserting the right to cuddle, comfort and follow your
instincts. He also tells you how to deal w ith croup. SC
The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf (1991)
The w oman w ho made feminism sexy by being gorgeous and shaving her legs also taught her readers to eat a hearty meal. This book argues that a
cult of thinness has desexualised and disempow ered w omen just w hen, after the acceptance of free love and the introduction of the contraceptive
pill, the opposite should have happened. The most important feminist text of the past 20 years. SD
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (1963)
In one of the original misery memoirs, Sylvia Plath delivered an intense, semiautobiographical story of grow ing up at a time w hen electroshock therapy
w as used to treat troubled young w omen. The narrator is a talented w riter w ho arrives in New York w ith every opportunity before her, but buckles.
The Bell Jar became a rallying call for a better understanding of mental illness, creativity and the impact on w omen of stifling social conventions. Plath
killed herself a month after its publication. CR
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961)
Bitterly bouncy military farce, responsible for inventing the dilemma to w hich it gave its name: you're only excused w ar if you're mad, but w anting an
exemption argues that you must be sane. Literary history w ould be entirely different if Heller had follow ed his original intention and called it Catch-18: it
w as changed to avoid confusion w ith a Leon Uris book. TM
The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger (1951)
Ur-text of adolescent alienation, beloved of assassins, emos and everyone in betw een, Gordon Brow n included. Complicated teen Holden Caulfield at
large in the big city, w orking out his family and getting drunk. You've probably read it, be honest. TM
The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield (1993)
Deep in the South American jungle an intrepid explorer is about to stumble on a sequence of ancient prophecies that could change our w ay of living,
even save the w orld. If only w e didnt have to buy the other novels in that the series to find out w hat they w ere! For a similar effect on the cheap, rent
an Indiana-Jonesalike film Tomb Raider, say and ask a hippy to w hisper nonsense in your ear w hile you're w atching it. TM
The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart (1971)
Blame a burgeoning mistrust of conventional psychiatry for the immediate impact of The Dice Man a novel w hose hero, a disillusioned psychiatrist,
vow s to make every decision of his life according to the roll of a die. As one might have expected from the times, chance sends him into violence and
anarchy, w hich also explains the books enduring appeal. AC
Chariots of the Gods: Was God An Astronaut? by Erich Von Dniken (1968)
Those Easter Island things, they're blokes w earing space suits, arent they? Er, no. Hugely influential w ork of mad-eyed fabricated Arch & Anth,
responsible for decades of pub pseudoscience as w ell as for splendid stuff such as The X-Files. Increasingly common at jumble sales these days,
though Von Dniken happily got another 25 books out of the idea. TM
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (1980)

Ignatius J Reilly is a fat anti-hero to thw art Promethean selfdramatisation in any reader. With the medieval poetry of Hrosw itha sw irling in a head
jammed into a green hunting cap w ith earpieces, Reilly eats steadily, despises modernity, seeks solace in canine fantasies and remembers w ith terror
his one experience of leaving New Orleans. CH
Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1782)
In the age of titles such as "No, Please, Daddy, Not There!", the soul-searching autobiography looks about as cutting edge as a Findus Crispy Pancake.
But w hen Rousseau told his story, confessions had never been so confessional. "I have resolved on an enterprise w hich has no precedent," he
declared, rightly. He added, w rongly: "and w hich, once complete, w ill have no imitator." SL
The Private Mem oirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg (1824)
A Calvinist convinced of his indefectible election to salvation is led to acts of murder by Gil-Martin, his devilish doppelganger. More a myth than a
religious satire, it vividly survives James Hogg's not entirely satisfactory manner of recounting it. Consider this: there may be a Gil-Martin near you. CH
Dianetics: the Modern Science of Mental Health by L Ron Hubbard (1950)
Do you often feel unhappy? Depressed? Ill at ease w ith others? You w ill if you read this. Creepy bit of mind-mechanics by the indifferent sci-fi novelist
w ho founded Scientology. TM
The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley (1954)
The book that launched a thousand trips. William Blake said that if w e could cleanse the "doors of perception" w e w ould perceive "the infinite". Huxley
thought mescalin w as the w ay to do so. In this essay, he pops a pill, goes on about "not-self" and "suchness", and decides love is the ultimate truth.
He also took LSD w hen dying, but hardly stuffed it dow n the w ay his fans did. Jim Morrison w as one: he named the Doors after Huxley's book,
gobbled mouthfuls of acid and w as dead by 27. SD
Dune by Frank Herbert (1965)
Sandw orms, ornithopters, Atreides, Harkonnen and spice: chop and blend for sci-fi fantasy, strangely like an intergalactic cousin of James Clavell.
The first in an increasingly soap-operatic sequence. Equally cultishly adapted for the screen by David Lynch, and the root of many a lifelong passion
for complex character names and/or arcane ceremonial w eaponry. TM
The Hitchhiker s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (1979)
Forget Asimov or PKD. Douglas Adams w as so brilliant a visionary that even in the late 1970s he w as able to foresee a time w hen digital w atches
w ould look pretty silly. The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy a radio show before it w as a novel, and a film, and a game, and a TV show w as
incredibly clever and w ildly funny. Thanks to the Guide, an entire generation of Britons w as nursed to adulthood w ith the phrases "Dont Panic" and
"Mostly Harmless", and the number 42. SL
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe (1968)
New journalism, non-fiction novel how ever you define it, Tom Wolfes 1968 account of the novelist Ken Keseys psychedelic bus ride across
America w ith his "Merry Pranksters" established a style of free-associating, hyperbolic w riting (count the exclamation marks!!!) that spaw ned
countless imitations. To a generation of readers it fostered a burning envy that they had not been in San Francisco w hen the Kool-Aid dispensers
w ere being spiked w ith "Purple Haze". Now a vivid social history of a period that seems as remote as Byzantium. MB
Fear of Flying by Erica Jong (1973)
More 1970s searching for "authenticity" and "selfhood": a housew ife has an affair w ith a radical psychoanalyst ("Adrian Goodlove", geddit?) and
fantasises about sexual liberation. At the end, though, she goes back to her husband. John Updike called it the most "delicious erotic novel a w oman
everw rote" but really, w hat on earth w as all the fuss about? DS
The Fem ale Eunuch by Germaine Greer (1970)
Women should taste their ow n menstrual blood to reconcile themselves to their bodies, declared Germaine Greer in the seminal feminist text of the
1970s. Greer told a generation of w omen that society had turned them into meek, self-hating, castrated clones. The book w as an international
best-seller w hich earned Greer a mixed but enduring legacy. CR
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (1943)
Bew ilderingly popular and extremely silly Nietzschean melodrama, in w hich Ayn Rand gives her mad arch-capitalist philosophy a run round the block in
the person of How ard Roark, a flouncy architect. Loved by the kind of person w ho tells you selfishness is an evolutionary advantage, before stealing
your house/lover/job. TM
Gdel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R Hofstadter (1979)
About w hat it means to think, and how that happens, this is w ritten in the spirit of Lew is Carroll. Pattern recognition in the w ork of geniuses. Loved by
maths geeks and anybody w ith Asperger's syndrome and anyone w ith sense. But at root a chess textbook. AMcK
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (1973)

Europe-hopping comic metanovel of w ar and pow er, stuffed w ith maths, shaggy-dog stories, childish humour and ravishing sentences. And lots of
rockets. Genius, though long enough to lie unfinished. TM
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln (1982)
Similar territory to The Da Vinci Code but earlier, less balefully stupid and w ith the nerve to claim factual accuracy (its authors took Dan Brow n to court
and lost). The usual song and dance about Templars, bloodlines of Christ and global conspiracies, but somehow still chilling for all that. Staple text of
the bonkers brigade. TM
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (1948)
This heady mix of romance and reality opens w ith its teenage heroine Cassandra Mortmain w riting w hile sitting in the kitchen sink. It ends w ith the
w ords "I love you" scribbled in the margins of the imaginary journal that forms the substance of the novel. In betw een a story unfolds that feeds the
fantasies of every lovelorn young girl; but its status ow es much to the w ay that, as in life, things dont end happily ever after. SC
If on a Winter s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino (1979)
A book composed of the first chapters from other invented books. Either a classic w ork of literary snakes and ladders or a tiresomely recursive bit of
postmodern sterility depending on your interlocutor. Italo Calvino w as arguably better elsew here. TM
Iron John: a Book About Men by Robert Bly (1990)
For decades, the cow ed menfolk of the w orld ambled about in pinafores, dusting ornaments and saying "yes, dear". Then Robert Bly w rote Iron John,
invented mythopoetic masculinity, and the daft creatures all rushed off into the w oods together, hugged, bellow ed, w ept, painted their furry parts blue
and felt re-empow ered to w ee standing up. SL
Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach and Russell Munson (1970)
The book that gave 1970s idealism a bad name, the nauseating story of a seagull w ho defies his fellow s to soar into the heavens. "The only true law ,"
the bird solemnly tells us, "is that w hich leads to freedom." Richard Nixon's FBI director, L Patrick Gray, ordered all his staff to read it. Later, he
resigned for gross corruption, a fitting punishment for his dreadful taste. DS
The Magus by John Fow les (1966)
Posh young teacher goes to idyllic Greek island, there to be exquisitely tormented by young w omen and a Prospero-like figure. Like most John Fow les,
this is solid middlebrow dressed as highbrow , but stunning setdressing, TS Eliot quotations and a tw ist at the end guaranteed a lifelong place in the
hearts of a certain type of bookish male. TM
Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges (1962)
Miniature literary mindw arps from the w orld's most famous blind librarian, a w riter like Kafka w hose w ork, once encountered, adds a new
adjective to the mental lexicon. Unforgettable stuff, after w hich mazes and mirrors w ill never be the same again. Often beloved of the kind of person
w ho agrees w ith its author that "there is a kind of lazy pleasure in useless and out-of-the-w ay erudition", and none the w orse for that. TM
The Leopard by Giuseppe di Lampedusa (1958)
A thing of beauty, the sole bequest of the last in the line of Sicilian aristocrats on w hom the novel is based. An ineradicable elegy for a vanished
society, and, despite its risorgimento setting, still the best psychological and botanical guidebook to parts of southern Italy. TM
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (1967)
Satan live and in person, a mansized black cat, a magician and his helpmeet, Pontius Pilate Classic text of dissident magic realism, banned for years
under Stalin: now youll struggle to find a Russian w ho hasn't read it. Essential stuff, and w ith the finest description of a headache yet committed to
paper. TM
No Logo by Naomi Klein (2000)
Few books have caught a political moment better than Naomi Kleins stylish and impassioned report on the abuses of brands, and the activists w ho
fight them. It w as published in 2000, just as "antiglobalisation" crashed into the mainstream, and Klein w as adopted as its poster-girl. SL
On The Road by Jack Kerouac (1957)
Supposedly filled in under three caffeine-fuelled w eeks, the roll of paper on w hich Kerouac typed his seminal novel recently sold for more than tw o
million dollars, and has spent the past few years on the road itself, travelling from museum to museum in the US, w here it attracts queues of bearded
jazz fanatics. It is the result of seven years of road-trips across America during the 1940s. Initially it celebrates the alternative lifestyle, although by
the end it is coloured by disappointment. TC
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson (1971)
Needs little introduction. Bad craziness as the Duke of Gonzo and his helpless attorney blaze a streak of pharmaceutical havoc across 1970s
California, all in demented bar-fight prose and fever-dream set-pieces. Now also a core text for ex-public school drug bores, w hich tends to obscure
the anarchic excellence of HST's journalistic talent. TM

The Outsider by Colin Wilson (1956)

Required reading in the coffee bars of the East Midlands in the late 1950s; unbelievably, some people paid good money for this study of the outsider
figure in Western literature. The TLS found 285 mistakes in a sample of 249 lines, but in its young authors eyes, it confirmed him as "the major literary
genius of our century". Modesty w as not one of his virtues; nor, sadly, w as literary ability. DS
The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran (1923)
Pocket-sized set of aphorisms that sound like they w ere w ritten by a medieval monk but w ere actually the product of a Lebanese-American alcoholic
w ho died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1931. The Prophet is a beautifully phrased exercise in pointing out the obvious but Sixties hippy kids loved it. SD
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell (1914)
The Americans had Upton Sinclair, and w e had Robert Tressell the pen-name of painter and decorator Robert Noonan, chosen because it sounded
like one of the tools of his trade. Tressell's posthumously published saga of "12 months in hell" w ith the exploited w orking classes their trousers the
victims of poverty and their minds the victims of false consciousness is a totemic text of British socialism. SL
The Rubiyt of Om ar Khayym tr by Edw ard FitzGerald (1859)
This is among the best-selling volumes of poetry of all time, and does all that a translation should: it introduces the idea of an exotic, different culture;
and it expresses w hat its readers feel, but lets them blame it on someone else. Here, in an age of doubt, aesthetics and Darw inism, these mysterious
verses, draw n from 11th-century Persian, stand as little examples of how to celebrate life even as it slips aw ay. TP
The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron (1937)
Modern travel w riters such as Colin Thubron and Bruce Chatw in w ere inspired by Robert Byron. Travelling through the Middle East and Asia in the
1930s, Byron provides detailed descriptions of Islamic architecture, w ith pungent asides: "The Arabs hate the French more than they hate us. Having
more reason to do so, they are more polite; in other w ords, they have learnt not to try it on, w hen they meet a European. This makes Damascus a
pleasant city from the visitor's point of view ." SR
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse (1922)
Hermann Hesses allegorical novel sounds a bit Buddhist but is actually saying that experience (including of w ealth), rather than contemplation, is the
key to enlightenment. It's persuasive, especially if you read it, as many do, chillum in hand, in the Himalayas. Although, thinking about it now ,
profundities such as "the secret of the river is there is no time" don't make much sense out of context. SD
The Sorrow s of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1774)
The book that w as supposed to have lovelorn young men reaching for their guns. Even if it didnt inspire as many suicides as people thought, its still a
vital w ork. As Werther tromps about the countryside, reading Homer and Ossian and agonising over his host's w ife, he show s how much you're
allow ed to feel in the Romantic age Goethe did so much to invent. Before he smashed the Mamelukes, Napoleon said he w ished hed w ritten it (and
surely so did the Mamelukes). TP
Story of O by Pauline Rage (1954)
Deliberately discomforting, Story of O takes as its subject the objectification of w omen. O is a beautiful w oman w ho submits to the sadistic w hims of
various men after she is kidnapped and taken to a chateau to be blindfolded, w hipped, branded and pierced. It ends w ith an odd sense of triumph, O
w earing nothing but a mask before a group of strangers. Bew ildering, creepy and joyless, it's a guaranteed detumescent. TC
The Stranger by Albert Camus (1942)
"Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I dont know ." The beach, the sun, the Arab, the gunshots, the chaplain: the stuff of millions of adolescents'
fevered imaginings. If you don't love this w hen you're 17, theres something w rong w ith you. In the film Talladega Nights, Sacha Baron Cohen's snooty
French racing driver reads it on the starting grid. Strange but true: George W Bush read it on holiday tw o years ago. DS
The Teachings of Don Juan: a Yaqui Way of Know ledge by Carlos Castaneda (1968)
Take an enterprising anthropology student (Castaneda) and a Mexican shaman (Don Juan), mix in liberal quantities of peyote, and you end up w ith a
text rooted in "nonordinary reality". Castaneda's multi-part account of his adventures, w hich started to appear in 1968, and includes lessons in how to
fly and talk to coyotes, has alw ays elicited queries as to its veracity. But w hen youve taken that many drugs, it may not matter. AC
Testam ent of Youth by Vera Brittain (1933)
A record of a lost generation in the shape of the contemporaries Vera Brittain loved and lost in the First World War, this memoir is also a poignant,
passionate and perfectly poised study of a w oman trying to find her place in a changing w orld. A bible to the generation w ho read it on publication, its
influence continues thanks to a Virago reprint. SC
Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1883-85)
Incendiary declamation through a megaphone. If only one knew w hat he w as on about. Put six Nietzscheans in a room and it ought to be a bloodbath;
except, since they're all nancies w ho fancy themselves as Supermen, there w ouldn't be one. Nietzsche w as brave and mad enough to kill God: but
look w hat happened to him. His acolytes are, largely, less brave. AMcK

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960)

Economical Deep South drama around perennially hot-button racial questions, further exalted in literary mythology by being the only thing its author
ever w rote. Even those w ho think they havent read it often have. TM
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: an Inquiry into Values by Robert M Pirsig (1974)
Burnt-out hippy takes son on bike trip. Remembers previous self: lecturer w ho had nervous breakdow n contemplating Eastern and Western
philosophy. Very bad course in Ordinary General Philosophy follow s. If hed done Greek at school and knew w hat "arte" meant, w e could have been
spared most of the 1970s. AMcK

Reviews by Mick Brown, Alex Clark, Toby Clements, Sarah Crompton, Serena Davies, Christopher Howse, Sam Leith, Tim Martin, Andrew McKie, Tom
Payne, Ceri Radford, Sameer Rahim and Dominic Sandbrook

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