Harry Stephen Keeler

Here's one of the most famous quotes from one of his books, by the way:

"It must be remembered that at the time I knew quite nothing, naturally, concerning Milo Payne, the mysterious Cockney talking Englishman with the long-beaked Sherlock-Holmesian cap; nor of the latter's "Barr-Bag" which was as like my own bag as one Milwaukee wienerwurst is like another; nor of Legga, the Human Spider, with her four legs and her six arms; nor of Ichabod Chang, exconvict, and son of Dong Chang; nor of the elusive poetess, Abigail Sprigge; nor of the Great Simon, with his 2163 pearl buttons; nor of - in short, I then knew quite nothing about anything or anybody involved in the affair of which I had now become a part, unless perchance it were my nemesis, Sophie Kratzenschneiderwumpel - or Suing Sophie!"

>>8475734
Sounds quite goofy. I think he might be an interesting fun read, but I don't know if he can be read from a philosophical lense, or socio-economical/political and psychological for that matter, since I never read him nor heard of him till now

>>8475785
He is definitely quite goofy. About half of it is from laughing at how weird/stupid his writing is, and the other half is laughing with him, since he does put jokes in and is at least somewhat self-aware.

I wouldn't ascribe much philosophical merit to his books, asides from their similarities with some modernist/po-mo literary features and experiments with form. His characters are usually pretty flat, as well, so unless you want to examine the author's psychology (he has a fixation with human skulls and they appear in all his books) you're out of luck.

Political stuff might be very interesting, since he writes a lot about criminal underworlds and themes of race in rather unique ways.

You can get some of his books for cheap on Amazon and there's one or two floating around online for free.

There are no books by him at my library. You're treading into some murky literary waters, OP.

>>8475990
It's exciting stuff, eh? Most of his stuff was out of print for decades after his death (and before it, too).

>>8475918
Will look into him soon. /lit/ likes the goofies.

>>8475734
Except for the obvious joke at the end with the obnoxiously long name, that's actually quite good.

>>8476094
I recommend it. 'The Riddle of the Travelling Skull' is his best/most accessible book and a real page-turner. 'When Thief Meets Thief' is free online and a good intro to his style.

>>8476163
The guy has a thing for weird names. I've yet to see one that's normal.

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>>8476040
How did you discover him, OP?

>>8476577
On a thread on some forum about all-time worst authors. He was posted more as a curio, along the lines of, 'I can't tell if this guy is bad or not, he's so weird and hard to grasp'.

There was also a mention of skulls which intruiged me to research him, and thankfully there's a fair few articles about him online that explain what Keeler is 'like', interesting facts about him and his books (there are many), stuff like that.

I discovered that there's an indue press (Ramble House) who've been republishing all his out-of-print books, so I bought one and got hooked.

>>8476643
*an indie press, even.