Welcome to Litsy!

This is hard @Kalalalatja! I feel like a lot of books that are classed as "cult" are too well known now to really fit the definition so I've fallen back on books that I've read that have, at one time, been considered cult novels (I couldn't leave my beloved Master & Margarita off!)
Tree of Codes is probably the only one that can really claim cult status for its continued obscurity.
#cult5
@TobeyTheScavengerMonk @batsy @elkeo

Let me tell you about this book I borrowed.

Jonathan Safran Foer took one of his favorite books, Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz (European Jewish writer whose work mostly disappeared during WW2) and made a "graverubbing" of the text by cutting up the book to make his own story. The spliced text is preserved in printed form.

Tree of Codes is lovely, rare, + out of print - on eBay it will run you $100+. #bookart #thankslibrary #bucketlistbook

This entire book is created out of the text of another book. Each page is diecut with words removed. Craziest book idea I've ever seen. But still beautiful so far! "In the depths of the grayness, weeks passed like boats waiting to sail into the starless dawn, we were full of aimless endless darkness." #readathon

Who else is doing the #deweyreadathon today? I'm starting off with Tree of Codes. #readathon

It has taken me an age to track down a copy of this gem but I finally managed it! It's a masterpiece of invention created by cutting into (and out of) Bruno Schulz's Street of Crocodiles and the finished result is amazing. As a text and an object it is just beautiful.

"Already our town had been sinking at the edges, lowering under the fantastic dome of night." Collaged self portrait of Bruno Schulz with Foer's collaged prose from Street of Crocodiles.

"August had expanded into enormous tongues of greenery. August painted the air with a mop. Hours passed in coughs." Drawing by Bruno Schulz, whose text Foer is manipulating into his own prose.

I love chefs who play with their food, artists with their medium and above all writers with their books. Except you don't get the idea that Foer is playing, but rather everything is deeply felt. Ever since Rauschenberg erased a DeKooning, I've been fascinated with the act of creation by negation. Here you have a book that commands respect from the way you hold it as gently as Shavuoslekh for fear of tearing it, to the way you read it like a prayer

This is what happens when books cost upwards of $200 to replace. Poor book. I'll be careful, I promise! #libraryproblems