In Fiction, Quirks Offer Perks

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Angine de Poitrine! The video I took this screenshot from is at the end of today’s post.

I recently heard about a French-Canadian musical duo named Angine de Poitrine, and I must say that getting-very-popular band is delightfully quirky in its goofy appearance and mesmerizing songs.

The “q” word reminds me of some of the quirkiest authors and novels I’ve read over the years. Sometimes that quirkiness can be too much, but it’s often a nice change of pace…entertaining, compelling, and original. 

One of the first authors to come to mind is John Irving. He frequently deals with quite serious matters – war, abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, etc., but mixes in all kinds of weird things. Bear appearances, wrestling situations, a deadly foul ball during a baseball game, and more. Life is unpredictable…

There’s also Franz Kafka’s writing, which is…Kafkaesque. 🙂 One obvious example is the human Gregor Samsa becoming a giant insect in that author’s The Metamorphosis.

Herman Melville got quirky in his rare 100%-land-based novel Pierre, which includes strong hints of incest as well as the author using his title character as a vehicle to obliquely reference Melville’s real-life dismay over the poor reception for his previous year’s Moby-Dick.

Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman? The title alone telegraphs just how oddly the author uses food in her debut novel.

Anthony Burgess’ dystopian A Clockwork Orange is also very offbeat with its slangy different language and more.

Or how about Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five? It mixes horror, black humor, time travel, and more as it makes its antiwar points.

Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle features an isolated ultra-eccentric family, strange murders, and other eyebrow-raising content.

Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita includes the devil in its cast as well as a flying human (no airplane involved) and other fantastical elements.

Which reminds me that magic-realism novels, such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, can also feature flying humans and other peculiar things.

Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman includes absurd content such as cops who speak mostly in non sequiturs and are obsessed with bicycles.

And we can’t forget Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll, who offers readers all kinds of surreal stuff: Alice’s body changing sizes, bizarre chess goings-on, the fading-away Cheshire Cat…

I’ll end by noting that there are novels that are mostly not weird but have at least one weird element. For instance, the tragic-yet-delightful ghost in Elin Hilderbrand’s The Hotel Nantucket.

Your thoughts about, and examples of, this topic?

An Angine de Poitrine song:

Misty the cat says: “Before the rain the birds get noisy/That doesn’t mean I live in Boise.”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂 Not my voice. 🙂

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece – about ICE agents again menacing my town and more — is here.

61 thoughts on “In Fiction, Quirks Offer Perks”

  1. II read many of the ones you listed, Dave although I guess I didn’t consider them quirky at the time. I would add one I’ve added before, Richard Brautigan’s The Hawkline Monster was quirky in the extreme. I would also toss in Great White Doctor by Bradley Lewis.

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  2. Hi Dave, such an interesting post, and I really enjoyed that vid. It seems that I have read rather a lot of quirky novels (I wonder why?). Still, some of my favs are these:
    There’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman – such a delightful novelette. Of course, I will mention The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fford, and I think for me the best one. Finally, I’ll mention this one: Mr Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan. I felt this was brilliant, although I know quite a lot of people didn’t.

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    • Thank you, Chris! Glad you liked the post and that Angine de Poitrine video!

      You mentioned some excellent quirky novels. I also enjoyed “The Ocean at the End of the Lane,” “Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore,” and Jasper Fforde’s work — all with a bit or more of weirdness. 🙂

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  4. In your today’s “quirky and perky “reading list I can see several books you mentioned and which I loved, above all The Metamorphosis, and the transformation of the main character into an insects still haunts me today! Many thanks, Dave, for your excellent proposals.

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  5. hi Dave, an interesting post. My first reaction was that I don’t read quirky novels but then when I read your list of books, I realized I’ve read most of them so I do read quirky books. My second thought is that this type of book is quite difficult to get into as the quirky nature of the writing means they are quite complex reads that you have to focus on. I don’t think Catch 22 was on your list. On thinking about it, quirky seems more prominent in American authored books. I think Eva Ibbotson’s books fit this criteria. I love them even now as an adult.

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  6. I have to say Jeanette Winterson’s fiction is quirky indeed. In addition, quite a few of Ray Bradbury’s short stories. Nice theme Dave. It’s been awhile since I’ve posted, but I’ve been up to my ears in cats. Just gave 2 kittens away and have one to go. My mama cat got pregnant right after her first litter all of which we are keeping, no 3rd litter as soon as I can get her fixed. Although, I got a black one outta of the first batch with a white spot on her nose. I guess life is quirky period. As The Moody Blues sang “Isn’t life strange”. Susi

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    • Thank you, Susi! Nice to hear from you again! That’s quite a cat saga you’ve been going through, but those creatures are so worth it. 🙂

      I have yet to try Jeanette Winterson’s fiction.

      Some of Ray Bradbury’s work, as well as sci-fi by other authors, can indeed be quirky.

      That Moody Blues song (which I have at home on their wonderful “Seventh Sojourn” album) is very appropriate for this post. 🙂

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      • I do not know Jeanette Waterson’s work, but when I looked her up, the first novel I saw was called Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal, which suggests something quirky. I will give her a read. I love quirky people and characters in novels. Eleanor Oliphant comes to mind (she is perfectly fine), and I think Lillian Boxfish was also a bit quirky (Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk).

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  8. I find these books a bit hit-or-miss, Dave. I hated ‘A Clockwork Orange’ and ‘One Thousand Years of Solitude’, as well as Kafka, although I was okay with Vonnegut and Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass. I have ‘The Master and Margarita’ on my TBR pile, so we’ll see about that. I loved ‘Midnight’s Childen’, Rushdie’s story of babies born with special powers on the stroke of midnight when India gained independence. Maybe a love or hate reaction is all a part of quirky stories? Oh, and ‘The Life and Loves of a She-Devil’ might fit this category. Have a good week. 🙂

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    • Thank you, Laura! Yes, some quirky novels are not to everyone’s liking. Re several of the ones you mentioned, I also disliked “A Clockwork Orange,” mostly liked “One Hundred Years of Solitude” despite it being a bit confusing at times, and thought that a lot of “The Master and Margarita” was brilliant. Have a good week, too!

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  10. “We Have Always Lived in the Castle” is still on my reading list! Several friends have recommended Jackson’s book for the quirk factor! I’ll take your post as another friendly nudge, Dave. (And I love the title of this post!) ❤️😉❤️

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  11. Dave, I rarely remember books as quirky. I remember the characters and the experience of entering their worlds. But looking at your examples, I can see how often the unexpected becomes the very thing that makes a story memorable. I immediately thought of Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book, which I am currently reading. I am going slowly through the chapters because there is depth that is easy to overlook. The conversations between Sophia and her grandmother have a wonderful eccentricity about them. They are not extraordinary in the way Kafka’s giant insect is extraordinary, but they constantly surprise me. Some writers turn the world upside down, while others simply give us characters who see the ordinary world from a slightly different angle. This is a quote from the chapter I just read:

    “It’s funny about love,” Sophia said. “The more you love someone, the less he likes you back.”

    “That’s very true,” Grandmother observed. “And so what do you do?”

    “You go on loving,” said Sophia threateningly. “You love harder and harder.”

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  12. Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 about burning of books. Not quite as dystopian in today’s insane political climate with this horrid administration wanting to ban books,stories,history of LGBTQ, diversity, equity,inclusion. DJT probably never read a real book in his life,just newspapers and magazines.

    Michele

    E & P way back

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    • Thank you, Michele! What Ray Bradbury scarily depicted in “Fahrenheit 451” was morally weird yet not unrealistically weird given what various dictators and wannabe dictators have done. Trump, as you note, is certainly one horrid example. I wonder if he even read the books ghostwritten for him?

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  14.          One morning, as Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible verminous bug.

             I should be so lucky.

    Thus begins my own take on Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. It’s about a guy who’s always on fire. Just go with it. My high school English teacher said I wrote like Kafka, which I found interesting because I was trying my best to rip off Dostoevsky. Well, 30 or 40 years later, I embraced my inner Kafka and… well, probably failed, but I’m proud of it anyway.

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    • Thank you, Maggie! Angine de Poitrine is quirky indeed. 🙂 And you have an excellent memory about my love of Rush. 🙂 I heard about that Neil Peart documentary (saw a trailer) and hope I can watch the whole thing at some point. The late/great Peart’s drumming successor — Anika Nilles — is doing an amazing job on the current tour.

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