Could you recommend me some pretentious and avant grande literature?

Could you recommend me some pretentious and avant grande literature?

I love exotic allusions and really rare words being used. The more incoherent the better

The pictured is actually a helpful book if youre just setting out to study the German Philosophy and Lit Crit of that time period, and very clever. Like Walden and Shelley's poetry it becomes clearer the older you get. ..Had to read it for a Vic Lit class when I was 19 and found it entirely incomprehensible, however. But have read it twice since then, and, no problem. His French Revolution is wonderful.

Bump

Zettels Traum by Arno Schmidt

In Partial Disgrace by Charles Newman

>78x125

Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene might be exactly what you're looking for, user

Good choice. I was also going to mention the Anatomy of Melancholy, but I'm sure OP's already aware of it.

Carlyle isn't pretentious, but I think I know what you're looking for

Anthony Burgess (M/F)
Samuel Butler (Erewhon)

Lewis Carroll is probably worth a revisit too.

Why, Death's Jest Book, of course. And Sir Thomas Browne's works, esp. the Pseudodoxia. Others come to mind, but these two require quite a bit of patience.

just here to namedrop the inevitable finnegan's wake

Another comes to mind-- perhaps THE book: Doughty's Arabia Deserta. Dover Books used to publish it unabridged in a cheapo edition, 2 vos.

Nevertheless, this may be the purloined letter of the bunch.

This is perfect

lol at your name

the emphasis has been on P at the expense of the AVG. Therefore, bamp:

Annals of the Former World, if you want to combine a plethora of geologic buzzwords with a rather useful, if controvetsial, history of the topography of the U.S. He isn't avg, but used to be. He's also (last I heard) alive.

John McPhee, i.e.

...

how much of a chore is it?

I really liked it. The excess terminology annoyed me at first, but I looked a few things up, and it all went pretty smoothly. It's a combining of his four geology-specific books, each of which can be read seperately in individual volumes, plus about a 40 page epilogue that rounds things out. One does gain a great sense of the topography of the U.S., which is why I read it. Made me want to travel, and see for myself.