Further reading is required to tell how well Gerald Murnane executes the idea behind Barley Patch, but the hook is mightily intriguing:

One day, I decided not to go on reading one after another book of a sort that could be called literature – that day was only a few months before the day when I decided to write no more fiction. When I made the earlier decision, I intended to confine my reading in the future to the few books that I had never forgotten; I would re-read those books – I would dwell on them for the rest of my life. But after my decision to write no more fiction, I foresaw myself reading not even my few unforgotten books. Instead of reading what could be called literature and instead of writing what I called fiction, I would devise a more satisfying enterprise than either reading or writing. During the rest of my life I would concern myself only with those mental entities that had come to me almost stealthily while I read or while I wrote . . .