/lit/ - Literature

King Lear, Blood Meridian

Das Kapital

>>6972215
I wouldn't call it the most depressing but Catch-22 did catch me horribly off-guard. In fact most post-modern stuff does, but hell, Heller really fucked me over.

>>6972215

Ágota Kristóf trilogy:

The Notebook
The Proof
The Third Lie

>>6972225
You think that's bad?

Im reading Heller's Something Happened right now and it's probably the most consistently depressing piece of literature I've ever read. It doesn't even have the absurdist and satirical humor of Catch to lighten the mood. It's just bleak, bleak, bleak.
Current chapter title: My daughter is unhappy
Previous chapter title: My wife is unhappy
Next chapter title: My little boy is having difficulties

Keep in mind, I've read The Book of Disquiet and Steppenwolf and I find this more depressing

>>6972250
i love that book so much
oh boy are you in for a good time

I'm 2/3rds through Stoner and it's killing me. When is this poor guy going to catch a break?

>>6972280
book sucks. if Depressed English Prof who Loves His Daughter And Has a Bitch Wife depresses you just fuckin hang yourself

El Pozo by Juan Carlos Onetti
anything by Onetti really

>>6972291
calm down edgelord

My diary, tbh

>>6972264
that cover is sexy as fuck

>>6972405
this will never catch on and you know it. please stop trying to force it.

>>6972250
>Something Happened not containing absurdity and satire
Granted not the same style as Catch-22, it's more subtle, but it's there

>Steppenwolf
Have you read his Beneath the Wheel? More depressing than anything you mentioned, with Something Happened close behind

On another Heller-related note, have you read either the sequel to Catch-22 (Closing Time), or Picture This? The former was really quite disappointing to me overall, but not bad and had some great parts, the latter is phenomenal, like Catch-22 but more absurd and more well-crafted in my opinion

The Bell Jar

>>6972215
We were warned unironically by the department chair that if any of us were suicidal to skip reading Oblomov altogether, and just attend a study group with the well adjusted normies who could finish it.

>>6972434
I realize it's there, that was a bad choice of words in my part. It's just nowhere near the level of blatant as Catch. I've read neither but I've read a few mini Biographies on Heller and he sounds like a very dissatisfied guy. I'll check out Picture This if all goes well with Something Happened

>>6972235

this tbh

this hit me fucking hard at the end

>>6972215

Kokoro - Soseki
Germinal - Zola
The Maimed - Ungar
Memories from the House of the Dead - Dostoevsky
Tadeys - Lamborghini
The Book of Disquiet - Pessoa
A Dark Night's Passing - Shiga
Black Rain - Ibuse
A Fool's Life - Akutagawa
No Longer Human - Dazai
The Road - McCarthy
The Painted Bird/Steps - Kosinski

>>6972479
steps was great times

>>6972291
tsk

I just finished stoner. Actually didn't find it too depressing. Kinda uplifting for me at the end. Like yeah maybe life turns out really bad but at least we all die.

Dosty's The Idiot really affected me. He very accurately depicts people's hostility to kindness and virtue.

>>6972215

>tfw change

>>6972479
>Memories from the House of the Dead - Dostoevsky
what? i mean the narrator was sad and everyone was a bit depressed but they all found distractions and in times its even hilarious how simple common russian folk were though maybe its a bit lost in translation for foreigners

>>6972291
>not understanding that small, everyday depression is the worst, because it reminds you of how petty it all is

jude the obscure

>>6973388
This. Not exactly bleak, but it hit me right in the feels with no real form of relief. Brothers K at least has an overarching sense of resolution.

Also, in the calmly, almost unnoticeably bleak category: the Metamorphosis, If this is a Man. Both rather dispassionate in storytelling but appaling in the relentless misery of what they describe. The contrast is all the more striking.

Conversations in Sicilia was pretty bleak in its untroubled emptiness, until the resolution.

The Guepard is pretty depresssing, don't know if it is exactly bleak.

The Human Beast is pretty dark, it ends with a foretelling of general murder basically.

The other "depressing" books I've read were more cynical or with a bad ending than resolutely bleak.

>>6973596
Also I've heard Journey to the End of the Night is exactly what OP is talking about. Hamsun's Hunger is supposed to be similar in this respect.

>>6973388
I've been mad at him the whole book. I just don't get how someone can be this stupid. It's not kindness and virtue he was displaying, it's plain retardation.
Even Dosto hated this novel.

The Elementary Particles

>>6972225
Why can't the fucking people on this board answer a question?

>what's the most depressing book?
Well I wouldn't say it's depressing as such but...

>What's the most dream-like book?
Well it's not as much dream-like as it is...

You faggots try so fucking hard to think differently that you have lost the ability to answer a fucking question.

>>6974003
Either that, or you've only read three books, and you just answer all questions indiscriminately with them

Atomised- Michel Houllebecq
It fucking sucker punched and left me in a slump for days afterwards. The amount of sex and jacking off in it is ridiculous and gave me libido fatigue.
Also left me with an incredible hatred of baby boomers.

>>6974034
anything by houllebecq really

>>6974003
Or perhaps anon didn't have the right answer but he had something close enough, so he mentioned it anyway, because that's what people do when they're not spergs.

>>6974038
That image is the most perfect encapsulation of /r9k/ i've seen.

>>6972215

>>6974054
That's what people do when they're sad faggots who want to join in despite having nothing to contribute

Gravity's Rainbow

You think I'm meming? I'm not. It's very bleak. The humor only highlights it.

>>6974092
What shall we call all the turds of a post you have blessed us with in this thread, then, you gigantic cum-guzzler ?

>>6974003
He said it wasnt the 'most' which I think was his way of saying that it was depressing but he hasn't read enough to make a completely informed response so he humbled himself WHICH IS FUCKING FINE.

>people are being honest and trying to contribute
>fuuuuuuck
You aspie, get outta here

>>6972215
Some stories from Dubliners made me feel pretty Sad. The End Of Confessions of a Mask also gave me a bittersweet feeling.

>>6974097
You shall call them valid contributions.

>>6974038
>Homeboy in the background
Travis confirmed literal cuckold

>>6974099
Oh it's fine is it? Hey everyone this guy says it's fine so I guess it's fine.

Hedda Gabler or The Pillowman

>>6974137
Hey everyone this guy gobbles knobs. I bet you read for plot

>>6974269
>I bet you read for plot
Bahahaha what a limp dick insult

Im this guy, still reading Something Happened: >>6972250

This guys daughter, who he has a terrible relationship with and is only 15 and only pretends to hate him to get attention comes into his study and says "You never like to talk to me, do you?" And he knows this is true but tries to play it off but really is just mean. And she tells him that he never comes to her room and he knows this is true and is mean again. She just wants him to see her fucking room and take a fucking interest in her. Then she says:

>"I've got posters on my wall and some funny lampshades that I painted myself and some funny collages that I made out of magazine advertisements. And I'm reading a book by D. H. Lawrence that I'm really enjoying very much. I think it's the best book I ever read."

And he is just a cunt AGAIN
>funny lampshades I painted myself
I think I'm going to cry I mean holy shit who the fuck can create a character so devoid of sympathy this is the most pitiful attempt to connect with a father I've ever seen and he just crushes it

The Well of Loneliness

"Einer" by Norbert Gstrein.
Austrian Weltschmerz

Jude the Obscure was devastatingly bleak
Also agree with the anon who said Gravitys Rainbow was deceptively harrowing
In terms of ones that haven't been mentioned yet - Asylum by Patrick McGrath

>>6974495
This is very sad anon, and it's not so easy for a 4chan abstract of a scene in a book to be very sad.