Cult Fiction

A Reader's Guide

By Andrew Calcutt & Richard Shephard

Contemporary Books, Lincolnwood, IL. 1998. Odd-sized paperback, 7" square. 302 pages. Short biographical sketches of about 240 authors. The strange thing here is that the book's authors define "Cult Fiction" as just about any type of writing that someone, sometime thought was ahead of its time. The bottom line is that most of your favorite (and not so favorite) authors are probably here: Edgar Allan Poe, Samuel Beckett, H.P. Lovecraft, George Orwell, Chester Himes, Elmore Leonard ... even Robert Louis Stevenson. Not quite "Cult" to me, but it's actually a great little book for reading short histories of hundreds of popular authors. I really enjoyed it.