Pierre

"Pierre is so bananas that a contemporary reviewer’s headline read “HERMAN MELVILLE CRAZY.” It’s an incest novel in which the titular Pierre is variously entwined suggestively with his mother, a portrait of his father, his cousin Glen, his half-sister Isabel (whom he pretends is his wife), and his fiancée Lucy (whom he pretends is his cousin). In addition to listing all the made-up words that Melville had inexcusably included in his novel (see image below), another reviewer declared it “A bad book! Affected in dialect, unnatural in conception, repulsive in plot, and inartistic in construction.” But I could not love the novel more: it’s so densely, perversely strange, so elaborately, bombastically contrarian. The pressures of patriarchal expectation, compulsory heterosexuality, and professional writing have never been so outlandishly portrayed. (Also, see Maurice Sendak’s jaw-dropping and, um, revealing illustrations of a version of Pierre, featured here .)"