It's a bit more contemporary but I just finished Natasha Wimmer's translation of Roberto Bolaño's 2666 and really loved it. It's sprawling and heavy. Because it's broken into different books it's not too hard to take a break from it either.

In the 90s, a Canadian sketch show had a recurring segment where they would fire a chicken cannon at a "chump of the week" style target

I'd love an Old Man Gary mini series

I might be cherry picking but I think American Splendor is probably the platonic ideal of this situation, where Pekar needed collaborators to make it happen, but no one is making it without him