"Curiouser and curiouser!" was Alice's verdict on her adventures down the rabbit hole in Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" (1865), a book that exposed the absurdity of adult conventions and manners above ground. Carroll (whose real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgeson) was a pathologically shy math

Fantastic, Fantasy, Layered, Mathematical, Quirky, Repetition, Surreal, Whimsical

The English language has been forced to jump through many hoops over the past century. One of the most delightful ringmasters in the circus was the American poet, novelist, and painter E.E. Cummings. His lowercased name can scarcely prepare the reader for the punctuational and syntactical oddities fo

Collage, Improvised, Modernist poetry, Playful, Profane, Quirky, Sexy

A minimalist jazz pianist who took bebop to even higher heights, Thelonious Sphere Monk was a unique character and a maverick in the music industry. How else can we describe a man who kept his grand piano in his kitchen? Not interested in using his music to please people, Monk strove to discover ways

Beats, Bebop, Enigmatic, Improvised, Loose, Playful, Quirky, Slangy

The son of a Golden-Age Hollywood agent, Independent filmmaker Kenneth Anger has an insider's jaded perspective on the film industry and all that goes with it. His scandalous 1958 expose of celebrity private lives, "Hollywood Babylon" (which discusses, among other things, the genital sizes of various

Avant-garde film, Catastrophe, Death, Homoerotic, Kaleidoscopic, Queer literature, Quirky