THE AESTHETIC CATEGORY OF THE UNCANNY IN THE NOVEL AT THE END OF THE 20TH CENTURY AND THE BEGINNING OF THE 21ST

Professional and common book readers alike share, occasionally or frequently, a fascination not only with the classic, reputable, and famous books, but also with the unusual, bizarre, atypical, exotic (and so on and so forth) tomes. The term I use to describe these books is simply "uncanny". Whereas classic-famous books provide the reader with life values, psychological and moral states (and many others, including the pleasure of the reading, why not?, otherwise the world would end, in a manner of speaking), uncanny books get the right end on the stick by bemusing, by shocking, and not just in any way, but by a form of falling in awe. In their turn, they can also elicit savor from reading; the difference resides in that they make it by way of vast bewilderment, following the shock (or, perhaps, concurrent with the shock). The shock does not necessarily pertain to the (licentious or violent or simply experimental) language, but rather to the subject and the circumstances, to the characters, to the epical structure.