/lit/ - Literature

>Mickey and Ben were searching for the cure to boredom. After one too many drinks the obscure back-page sex ad somehow sounded appealing.
>The old man seemed kind enough. His frail, weathered body was no longer able to please his wife, and selflessly, he hoped that the boys would. He just wanted his Bessie to feel pleasure. He wanted it so bad that he needed to see it with his own eyes.
>When it was all over, the evening of debauchery felt like a distant nightmare. The only problem was, it was a nightmare that neither Mickey nor Ben could awaken from…

>Angela has everything she thought she ever wanted—a successful husband, a lavish house, and a bottomless fortune.
>But the sight of a strange man in a grocery store one night reawakens her dormant sexuality and soon Angela embarks on a dangerous descent into the world of underground pornography and back-alley plastic surgery.
>As the stakes get higher, long-buried memories resurface and Angela finds herself enamored with Reena, a fetish film performer. With some help from a queer gang called The Waifs, Angela is forced to make the decision between her unhappy upper-class life and the treacherous world of underground film.

>Jefferson Wellman is a lawyer and has everything—money. He also has a particular taste when it comes to pleasure. And what Jefferson doesn’t have he can purchase. His friend, Richard, visits him at his office one day with a contract and an invitation for a fetish auction by a new company. Bad Pain Entertainment guarantees to have what Jefferson is looking for . . . a ‘ponygirl’. But when Jefferson shows up for the auction located in a remote wooded area, things don’t go exactly as planned: Richard never arrives, Bad Pain’s personnel are a little peculiar, Jefferson wakes up missing a few fingers, and the rest of the attendees are dead. Jefferson believes he has the knowledge to keep his reputation from being ruined. But what he doesn’t know is he is now the focus of a new kind of fetish.

>These woods are dark and full of monsters…In 1991, hell was unleashed upon Saint Christopher’s Summer Camp for Kids. The killers left behind piles of bodies and rivers of blood. Some say a family of inbred cannibals was responsible. A masked psychopath with a butcher's knife is another popular theory. Some still believe a camp counselor lost his mind and went crazy on everyone with an axe. But there’s also the mysterious, derelict factory that sits nearby, atop Kill Hill. A place where urban legends are manufactured, the grotesque and bizarre.Twenty-five years later, the factory on Kill Hill is still said to be operational, but no one can get near it. It’s safely guarded along with the secrets within. But there are a few loose strings and hitman Frank Harmon has been sent to tie them up. His kill list is short, but the night is long and full of unspeakable horrors. With the help of a few college students on an impromptu camping adventure, Frank must contain the mess at Kill Hill before it spreads to the neighboring towns. Before it infects the entire country.

>Not all monsters are fantasy. Some are very real, and they walk among us. They're our friends, family, neighbors, and co-workers. They're the people we're supposed to trust...and they know it. Contained within this anthology are 35 never-before-published works by supremely talented authors and best-selling novelists. Brace yourself for the unexpected and unimaginable horror of...human monsters.

>A fateful family trip to an amusement park. An island movie theater that takes more than the patrons' cash. A cross-country drive with an unexpected encounter. A family man hellbent on making great time, no matter the cost.
>Fourteen horror authors share terrifying and twisted tales of summer vacation gone wrong in Worst Laid Plans: an Anthology of Vacation Horror.
>This anthology includes stories by V. Castro, Hailey Piper, Patrick Lacey, Scott Cole, Laura Keating, Malcolm Mills, Jeremy Herbert, S. E. Howard, Chad Stroup, Kenzie Jennings, Waylon Jordan, Greg Sisco, Asher Ellis, and Mark Wheaton, as well as a special introduction by Sadie Hartmann.

The only splatter punk I've read is The Hellbound Heart. Is it just an aesthetic that might or not work depending on the writer? How is it different from eroguro nansensu outside of cultural context?

>>22034688
I've tried with Laymon but he was a genuinely bad writer. Shock value is all you get with him. I did manage to complete The Cellar though, very fucked up book, he was probably a pedo for real

>>22035405
Did he write scifi?

>>22035412
Not that I know of, I think he did exclusively "horror" aka edgy sex novels.

>>22035386
>How is it different from eroguro nansensu outside of cultural context?
I'm only aware of stuff like Shōjo Tsubaki in ero guro, but that was more focused on body horror and trauma than being outright splatter, which is closer to slasher and thriller but with over-the-top gore and sexual themes. It's more exploitative and grindhouse influenced than how ero guro is overly inspired by erotic art and Japanese creepy ghost stuff. Obviously, they inform another in some ways. The most egregiously splatter movie of the 60s was Japanese: Jigoku.

Here's a Japanese story associated with ero guro nansensu if anyone wants to compare it to splatterpunk.
https://as.vanderbilt.edu/nashvillereview/archives/14612

Could James Herbert early stuff be considered splatterpunk?
And what are his most violent books besides The Rats and the Fog?

>>22035532
I feel like you can say Stephen King as the low end in horror that depicts sexual themes and violence, but someone at a higher end would be something like Terrifier or outright gorno/torture porn. I'm not sure where you think James Hebert sits, but I suppose he'd be somewhere in the middle. King is much more commercial and palatable, although he does dabble in risque subjects at times.

>Nick Graves is a miserable man. Every day he comes home from his dream job to a stale marriage. On the day he finally summons the courage to tell his wife, Eve, he wants a divorce she has exciting news for him – she’s pregnant.
>Nick is a spiteful man. He purchases his dream home in an ideal location far away from family, friends, and coworkers. It’s a life changing decision he’s chosen to make without Eve’s consultation.
>Nick is a terrified man. He quickly realizes the residents of his new hometown are a bit eccentric. After a trip to the local doctor’s office Eve begins to behave strangely. And once Nick finds out what’s really going on he’ll never be able to look at Eve the same way.

>Originally published in 1988, Ray Garton's fourth novel, following not long after his award nominated Live Girls, is regarded as a classic of the splatterpunk movement in horror fiction. Garton has a way with teenage boredom, atmospheric small town isolation, incest, drug abuse, and over the top violence and he has managed to create a modern remake of the story of the Pied Piper with a sinister character, Mace (who wears a crucifax around his neck a crucifix with an axlike blade on it) appearing on the scene, seducing mixed up kids with his siren song of pleasure, power, and indulgence, all leading to a horrifically unsettling climax of death and destruction. And then there are the ratlike things that do the piper's bidding...

>It’s called The Scream... Once you get it, you simply cannot stop screaming. You can’t eat or sleep. It drives you more and more insane until you can’t stand to be alive a second longer.
>When the phenomenon hits Chuck's city, the chronically unemployed pervert joins a band of misfits to make his final stand.

>>22035405
I have also read the Cellar and get the impression that Laymon is a legitimately bad person

>>22035405
He was definitely fucked up. I read a couple of Richard Laymon's books about 10 years ago. One ending I remember particularly was to Island. Very funny, but typical Richard Laymon ending.

Anyone ever read Snuff by Adam Huber?

Would you consider Palahniuck's Haunted a splatter punk novel?

>>22034688
How can a book, especially a pulp book, actually be that disturbing or scary? The only thing I've ever really read that has scratched the itch I'm imagining you're looking for, OP, is American Psycho. If that's not splatterpunk, then I don't know what is. The clinical, almost anatomic attention to detail in regard to Patrick Bateman's murders made me really uncomfortable when I read it as a teenager. JG Ballard's Crash comes at a close second, I would say.
Can you explain the appeal of "splatterpunk" and "slasher fiction"? In my experience, books that are violent for the sake of being violent tend to just be boring, repetitive, and juvenile. Usually, it's the same for movies I feel like too. "Gory" movies never seem to get it right because they always seem to go for the "over-the-top" and "fun" approach instead of the "through-the-dead-center" approach of something like "Men Behind the Sun" which show violence much more accurately, with much less blood but a lot more grotesque details and good acting.

>>22036745
American Psycho is seen as splatterpunk. In fact, it's one of the examples for the genre.
>Can you explain the appeal of "splatterpunk" and "slasher fiction"? In my experience, books that are violent for the sake of being violent tend to just be boring, repetitive, and juvenile.
I'm a bit of style over substance type of person, especially since I rate the decadent movement and some parts of romanticism, where they're usually much more concerned with mood and use the same tropes and subject matter to create aesthetic pleasure or emotions. Gothic also comes to mind, but obviously these movements aren't as shallow as an 80s rape monster in a haunted house,

Do you hate roaches?
I mean, really, really hate them?

Have you ever wanted to read a book where swarms of roaches eat people, animals, children alive and screaming, sometimes by forcing themselves down screaming throats? By chewing through eyeballs to get to the brain? Do you just want to read some of the most disgusting bug shit imaginable?

Then boy howdy do I have the pulp splatterpunk novel for you.

>>22037131
Saved. I’ll try find a copy online after dinner.

>>22037131
The prose is pretty good. I'll probably read on.