A friend of mine showed me his novel House of Leaves last year and I ended up reading that and another of his works, Only Revolutions.

If you've read them or know of this author, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts.

If you haven't, then I recommend him. These two novels are both very avant-gard, almost postmodern in their writing. Lots of collage and pastiche, the first novel is a book about a man reading a book compiled about a story of a supernatural house (a story within a story within a story, as it were). He uses unusual features of embedded composition, formats text on pages to look like objects or be evocative of single words, pastes nonsense and interrelated text within the main text, uses stories in the forms of letter and diary entries interpolated over the main story, and so forth. It's as much a work of art as it is literature.

The second book is two books in one from the perspective of two people full of news reports from each day written in the margins and random historical information. It's written with a lot of strange imagery and almost poetic alliteration, almost like a stream of consciousness. I can't explain it much better than that without actually showing the books to people.

So if you've read these books I'd be interested to hear your thoughts, or especially your recommendations if there are similar avant-gard novels you know. If you haven't read them, check them out!