Huhm, the one that came to mind for me is <i><blue>House</blue> of Leaves</i>, though I guess it's only 21 years old. It's (almost) fully legible English, but the pages are all sorts of messed up: Text goes forward, backward, sideways, meanders outside standard directions (including through the page), the footnotes span multiple pages and have their own multiple-page footnotes (all telling multiple storylines in parallel) (also one of the footnotes is editing the book as you read it), there's one section written in a simplistic code...<p>There's some pictures of the pages of this book in these reviews:<p><a href="http://www.cornerfolds.com/2014/08/book-review-house-of-leaves-by-mark-z.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.cornerfolds.com/2014/08/book-review-house-of-leav...</a><p><a href="https://stingingfly.org/2016/11/01/house-leaves-mark-z-danielewski/" rel="nofollow">https://stingingfly.org/2016/11/01/house-leaves-mark-z-danie...</a><p><a href="https://www.horrorbuzz.com/2015/09/13/house-of-leaves/#" rel="nofollow">https://www.horrorbuzz.com/2015/09/13/house-of-leaves/#</a><p><a href="http://www.thefeedbacksociety.com/television/house-of-leaves-the-screenplay/" rel="nofollow">http://www.thefeedbacksociety.com/television/house-of-leaves...</a>
Article is pretty cool, and the book itself is amazing. The book is Codex Seraphianus, by Luigi Serafini, to save some of you a click. Apparently there is a new 40th anniversary edition with a few new pictures out now, but I think if you have an older edition you are fine.<p>I bought a used copy through AbeBooks (a book finding service) in the late 1990's after hungering after it for years. It cost $300 used back then, which seemed insane, but I've never regretted it. Some years later another edition came out for $150 or so, which is a downright bargain. I don't know if that one is still available.<p>AbeBooks still sends me about 1 notice per week 20+ years later whenever another copy becomes available. I could of course click the link to get them to stop, but receiving them makes me smile even though I have a procmail rule directing them to a special folder that I only look at occasionally. In internet terms, it seems like an unreal amount of time.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Seraphinianus" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Seraphinianus</a>
Weirder than Hiroyuki Nishigaki's seminal "How to Good-bye Depression: If You Constrict Anus 100 Times Everyday. Malarkey? or Effective Way?"<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/How-Good-bye-Depression-Constrict-Everyday/dp/0595094724" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/How-Good-bye-Depression-Constrict-Eve...</a>
This isn’t the Voynich manuscript. It’s not weirder than that one: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript</a><p>Very artistic though. It is whimsical and full of drawings but gets a bit too much credit: LoTR has multiple real languages. The lore is even too dense, but it’s not weird? These drawings are fantastic and seem very “80s”. Maybe he will be a director like he wants to be and make something like the holy mountain.
I clicked on the article thinking to myself: this surelly will be the usual journalistic overreach and clickbait, but let’s see how their choice of weird compares to the Codex Seraphianus.<p>Turns out that is the book they wrote about. Now I wonder if there are other such weird gems I haven’t had the luck to hear about yet.
> <i>Umberto Eco and Roland Barthes were unavailable for comment.</i><p>Well yes, they're dead.<p>EDIT: look, I'm not a native English speaker, so maybe am I misunderstanding something about how to use the expression "... were unavailable for comment" in general, but I find it very strange to apply it to two people who passed away. It sounds as if the author means to imply that that's no excuse for them to not respond.
Haven’t read the article, but being italian and a Serafini aficionado, the funniest thing is that when his book became known worldwide a lot of fakes started to be available (mostly chinese) and he started collecting them just to be surprised about how good they were (just a few to be clear)
My cousins had a copy of this book sitting on the coffee table at their lake house. Being a good bit more affluent than my own family, I remember being too afraid to ask them what it was... good times.
See also Woodring.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Woodring" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Woodring</a>
Is this a manifestation of synesthesia?<p>Serafini is quoted as saying: <i>"Because it's a memory of, I don't know, ages ago. I was in Salzburg one summer just to follow two or three operas of Mozart. And I don't know why but one day I saw that I was making a different drawing with colors. It was connected with Mozart, but I didn't know that [yet]."</i><p>Compare to one of many random descriptions of synesthesia: <i>“In addition to feeling the sounds of musical instruments on her body, Crane sees letters and numbers in brilliant hues. And for her, units of time each have their own shape: She sees the months of the year as the cars on a ferris wheel, with July at the top, December at the bottom.”</i> <a href="https://www.apa.org/monitor/mar01/synesthesia" rel="nofollow">https://www.apa.org/monitor/mar01/synesthesia</a><p>Is he drawing what he sees? Any synesthetes available to comment?
I still look at the pages have a vague sense that the text might not be just gibberish; for a while I wanted to run it through openCV to map all the different characters and do frequency analysis...<p>The page numbering scheme does make sense though, I once looked at it in detail and I forget exactly what it was, but runs something like base 20
This book holds a special place in my heart. I remember reading about it in the literary magazine The Believer about 15 years ago. At that point in time, the only way to explore the book was to find a rare used copy for a reasonable price. I finally found one (real nice Abbeville First American Ed from 1983) for $250 from Strand Books. I was over the moon. I loved flipping thru it randomly and showing it to friends and acquaintances. When I quit my job I sold it to help pay for school and living expenses. Fortunately, many new editions are available now; making it easier for more people to discover his work.
Even the 40th year edition is a bit expensive at approx $100. For a similarly weird book at less than half the price I’d suggest this one: <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnerotomachia_Poliphili" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnerotomachia_Poliphili</a>
For those that enjoy this, you'd probably also love the game Hylics (and its sequel, Hylics 2). Mason Lindroth made what is essentially a claymation fever dream of an RPG.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgNUgeEryCM" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgNUgeEryCM</a>