No, not really underground, in that Dostoevsky is one of the best known people ever, but the main question it asks is VERY underground: "Which is better - cheap happiness or exalted sufferings?" NOTES is one of his most important works ever, and much easier to swallow (length-wise). So this has to be the first one on the list, because it's so damn important for EVERY novel that came after.

Yeah. Brautigan was a counter-cultural hero in his time and now you're lucky to meet someone who's even read his most famous work, Trout Fishing in America. I think In Watermelon Sugar is much better. Tighter poetics and higher-pitched passion.

This is the REAL treasure of the Lost Generation. Faulkner set the tone for so much modernist and postmodernist avant-garde work. THE SOUND AND THE FURY is, I think, his greatest contribution - told in four parts, each with its own totally unique experimental style.

And then you gotta get Ginsberg's poems. To tell you truth, I've milked these for all I can and after years of studying them don't get much out of them anymore. But like Burroughs, an essential starting point to get deeper into strange, underground art.

The king of prose poetry. THE TUNNEL will give you an overview of the main bulk of Edson's work, his best years. If you haven't read him, definitely do - very quirky and surreal but above all, excersizes in logic.

I REALLY THINK THIS IS THE BEST BOOK OF THE 21st CENTURY! Get down with Stet and with everything James Chapman does. It's beautiful, deep, and yet to be discovered by the masses.

I add the Romaji Diary because his masterpiece, Carl Sesar's translation of POEMS TO EAT, is very hard to find. However, it's possible, usually about $60 and a very beautiful book, well worth it. ROMAJI DIARY is real good too, because it gives you a SUPER-deep look into Takuboku's troubled head.

Because I think graffiti provides the best free art galleries we have in the world today, and Banksy is a well-known spokesperson for it. Dig it.

Sometimes Corso was bad, sometimes he was unstoppable... in this book it's the latter. Read "Ode to Coit Tower," the first poem in this collection, and get hooked.

Don't let the fact that Oprah stuck her fingers in this bum you out. Okay, it bums me out too...

Cameron Pierce is one of my favorite writers going today. He's got the freshest ideas and poetics out of just about anybody. AGA tells the story of these conjoined twins in the hallucinatory version of Auschwitz as they try to escape - lots of real feeling in here to weigh down the trippiness.

I think this is his best, and I definitely think Palahniuk is one of the realest MAINSTREAM writers in the world today.

Enough headtrips to braindamage you. Enjoy JRJ.

PKD is great - if you haven't already read him you definitely should, because once you get into him that's like 30 more books you know you'll love. UBIK is the one I started on, and still my favorite.

Even if I don't 100% embrace her style, there's things about her writing that I embrace 150% that have been very influential to me. This one's working with the raw material of Rimbaud and The Sound and the Fury - Acker started getting really into working with source material to make totally new things. Kinda like hip hop.

Shatner fights all the fictional characters he's ever played. For most people, that's all you need to hear to get hooked. Reads a lot like a Llyod Kaufman film - very worth checking out.

This could go to any of Aronofsky's films - my favorite might actually be PI - but THE FOUNTAIN got so stupidly slept on by the public that I needed to take the time to throw a shout out to it. This is the most beautiful film of the 21st century, maybe.

This movie's insane. The sound really is half the movie. This is David Lynch's art school film and I think the only one that gives you his full vision, uncut.

Representational of one of the most important underground movements of the 20th century: hip hop.