/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.19878915]

What's the most horrifying book you've read?

[Anonymous No.19878930]

American Desperado.
Because it was all real and backed up with sources at the end of each chapter.

[Anonymous No.19878935]

mon journal désu

[Anonymous No.19878950]

>>19878915
tractatus logico-philosophicus
I'm serious.

[Anonymous No.19878952]

>>19878915
1984

[Anonymous No.19879038]

The Plague. It's not even particularly horrifying I guess but it seriously fucked me up. Maybe my fault for reading it while my social life probably ended for good because of covid.

[Anonymous No.19879041]

>>19879038
Covid is a cold bro move to texas

[Anonymous No.19879068]

>>19878915
The Last Messiah

[Anonymous No.19879693]

>>19878915
Cant remember the name . it was rom my childhood there was a dragon that took up two pages. What really scared me though was my mom was watching some housewife dramam thing where there was a murder ex husband going around breaking into their homes . i was pretending to read the dragon book as i was shaking in fear realising anyone could walk in my house and kill me if they wanted to. I think if i saw that illustrated dragon i would freeze

[Anonymous No.19879719]

>>19879693
Buy a gun. What kind of parents don't have 5 or more?

[Anonymous No.19879724]

>>19879719
This was still at a time where i thought adults were all powerful bare in mind

[Anonymous No.19879729]

>>19878915
Didn't finish it but Husserl's Ideas On First Phenomenology made me doubt reality for a bit if that counts

[Anonymous No.19879734]

>>19878915
It's a tie in Animorphs. The permanent rat-ification of a fellow child will haunt me.

[Anonymous No.19879945]

>>19878950
Why is it horrifying?

[Anonymous No.19879956]

>>19879729
Why did it make you doubt reality?

[Anonymous No.19879969]

>>19878915

[Anonymous No.19879973]

>>19878915
Nick Land's excrement

[Anonymous No.19879974]

>>19878915
https://pastebin.com/Y2vDggXq

[Hostage to the devil No.19879977]

Hostage to the devil by fr. Malachi Martin

[Anonymous No.19879988]

>>19879956
Epistomology is basically lmao bro we don't know anything and can't know anything so just do nothing and try not to fall through the atoms in the floor

[Anonymous No.19880058]

Memoirs of an actual highly established German judge who goes schizo and manic, believes all kinds of crazy shit. I got 1/3 of the way through during the holidays then got busy and picked up lighter reads as a wagie.

[Anonymous No.19880064]

>>19878915
anons diary

[Anonymous No.19880243]

>>19880058
Fuck me that colour is bloody painful

[Anonymous No.19880254]

>>19879988
>hasn't read german idealism

[Anonymous No.19880275]

>>19880058
is that cover designed to cause nervous illness

[Anonymous No.19880281]

>>19880058
Been meaning to get around to reading that one. While most "scary" books/films sadly don't do anything for me Freud's Rat Man case study really got under my skin. For some reason reading about schizos always manages to spook me

[Anonymous No.19880291]

>>19880254
>I'm not like the other girls

[Anonymous No.19880296]

>>19878915
The 120 Days of Sodom were honestly kind of sickening

[Anonymous No.19880305]

Mao's Great Famine by Frank Dikotter. The only word to describe the "great leap forward" is horrifying. I made the mistake of listening to the audio book version with my little brother in the car, and of course that's when the chapter on widespread rape began. I had to turn it off and play music instead.

That said I don't read horror books. I'm not a fan of the "horror" genre of media.

[Anonymous No.19880317]

Bloods is pretty fucked up

A set of real accounts by black Vietnam vets, talking about how they saw countless horrors in Vietnam, were often the front lines in major battles, and came back home to be treated like shit by liberals and their own communities for fighting.

There are very few happy endings

[Anonymous No.19880362]

>>19880317
Vietnam was a fucked up war, to be sure. But the real villains weren't the poor guys who got drafted and fought. It was the government and military officers for being utterly incompetent and having no plan, and behind them, the news media who covered for their incompetence by shifting blame to the vets, most of whom were drafted.

It's bad enough that I support posthumously stripping the officers and DOD civilians involved of all honors and awards they received throughout their careers.

[Anonymous No.19880377]

>>19879956
I dunno, the lucid descriptions of material essence and the hypnotic repetition of certain, what do you call philosophical made up terms for the philosophy itself? I dunno, I ended up noping out of the second chapter.

[Anonymous No.19880383]

>>19880058
Sounds cool thanks for posting this

[Anonymous No.19880384]

>>19878915
I don't read much fiction but I heard Johnny Got His Gun was fucked up

[Anonymous No.19880414]

>>19879693
Bruce Coville's Book of Nightmares?

[Anonymous No.19880440]

>>19878915
pic rel should help fren recently read one flew over the cuckoos nest i have a fairly good understanding of mental illnesses and have had drug induced bad episodes so fantasizing about schizophrenia was very uncomfortable to me
>>19878952
for me it wasn't so much the totalitarian government but the TORTURE scenes how you can take an organism and just make it find joy in something it hates and hate what it loves and just mess with and cause pain until you break it love, god, who you are as a man all stripped away methodically and carefully i asked my therapist about it and all she said is "you can't blame someone under duress" kek

[Anonymous No.19880469]

>>19880440
crossed out american psycho because i read it not because it's bad it'slike reading a serial killers file which we've all done if we browse 4chan and it also has graphic sex/abuse against sex workers

[Anonymous No.19880521]

>>19880469
Sex worker absue is what makes it good though

[Anonymous No.19880573]

>>19878915
1984

I read it at the peak of the pandemic panic, early 2021

[Anonymous No.19880786]

>>19880281
>Freud's Rat Man case study
What's that?

[Anonymous No.19880822]

>>19880440
I once effortposted describing the general tone and contents of each of these books I have read (I've read 17 of them), but I really don't have the energy to do it again.

[Anonymous No.19880843]

>>19880822
you can give some keywords so that we can find the initial post on the archive

[Anonymous No.19880857]

>>19880843
it was a chart thread, I remember I mentioned that babyfucker was mostly just surreal ramblings, that perfume was extremely well-written and only as disturbing as an old-timey novel about a serial killer needs to be and mentioned something about Naked Lunch being a look into the life of a homosexual drug addict in a time and age where it wasn't almost government and corporate enforced.

[Anonymous No.19880925]

>>19880786
Just some neurotic with an obsession with a description of rat torture (A hungry rat is forced into the prisoner’s anus to gnaw his way through the prisoner’s guts. Contrary to the belief of feminists this method of torture was not invented by Bret Easton Ellis.)
Freud claims to have cured the guy of this obsessive fascination but he wound up dead in the trenches of WW1 not long after. (And rats might very well have crawled up his anus to eat his innards but at least he wouldn’t have felt it. Hopefully.)

[Anonymous No.19880979]

>>19880440
>>19880843

>120 Days of Sodom
Not even the best by Marquis de Sade (Justine being much better), the book is just endless self-indulgent tales of sexual tortures and all manners of bizarre deviant debaucherous acts, with little to no substance holding it all together. It manages to be inferior to Pasolini's film, which at least has undertones of political satire and social critique of the Fascists at the time.

>A Season In Hell
Actually a really surreal and beautiful poem that reads as the journey of a man who dies and goes through hell as a rather hysterical but heartfelt allegory to the break up between Rimbaud and Verlaine.

>American Psycho
Like the movie but going for a more psychological horror than black comedy tone. The book makes it more explicit that Patrick is VERY insane and constantly hallucinates and witnesses weird things. It is also much, much more boring in its endless descriptions of clothes and food and the frivolities of the rich to make the point of the emptiness of their lives, but also much more gruesome and over the top in its violence, often to such a ridiculous extent that it is clearly pointing towards it being just a reverie.

>Babyfucker
A man who self-titles as a Babyfucker is in a room with baskets full of babies, maybe. It is one long almost stream of consciousness ramble that is mostly just edgy surrealism trying to be oh-so-experimental than anything. It's one of those many edgy and transgressive books that are just a void exercise in self-indulgence in style that isn't even that remarkable, and end up being boring and aimless.

>Blindness
If not for the sparse prose that could instead been more lavish to really set the sensory experience, it tells the story of people who end up with some white blindness (in which they see everything white, or "as a sea of milk") and the chaos that ensues once these people are sent to a facility where everyone is blind, and a few people take control of resources and start forcing women to exchange sexual acts for food. It's one of those novels with a strong sociological angle that observes the dehumanization of people in highly volatile and precarious environments.

>Cows
A deeply disgusting novel about a guy who lives with his disgusting mother and gets a job at the local slaughterhouse. It is mostly very, VERY disgusting and not much in the way of point, philosophy or style that saves it from being pretty shit.

>Crash
So similar to the movie that you might as well instead watch it.

>Hogg
One of those transgressive fiction novels that have nothing to say. Just a series of scenes showing one rape after the other. A 12 years old (or something like that) boy is sold to a disgusting animalistic rapist named Hogg, who is paid by wealthy clients to rape women. He then proceeds to rape several people alongside a band of other characters, all narrated with a very mediocre prose and nothing really comes out of it other than that.

[Anonymous No.19881068]

>>19880440

>In the MIso Soup
Think of something like the lunar equivalent to the solar Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas while the latter is a cheerful although politic sober novel that shows the fun exploits of two madmen in Vegas, here you have a much darker and more meditative, while also violent and disturbing exploration of Tokyo by an eloquent degenerate akin to our own Judge Holden and a young man going along with his shenanigans.

>Maldoror
Similar to A Season in Hell somewhat, it is a series of poems that vary in style and approach, telling the misadventures of a character named Maldoror and sometimes other events, all told in a very surreal and slapsticky way sometimes comparable to vaudeville acts. Interesting if you are into stuff like that.

>Naked Lunch
A deeply surreal, very imaginative for 50's standards and bewildering account of the life that homosexuals and junkies used to lead back in a time where it shunned one into becoming a social anathema to be kicked to the undeground of violence and degeneracy of society. A lot of it is allegorical to politics and what not but it is so bizarre in nature that it is hard to tell for sure what is what on a first read. It mostly reads as very surreal sci-fi with chapters that can be read in any order.

>Perfume
A fantastically written novel that is only as disturbing as a novel about an old-timey french serial killer needs to be. One of the least disturbing novels in this chart, I strongly recommend it, but it's been a long time since I've read it.

>Story of the Eye
A mostly erotic story that is not very sexy and somewhat disturbing at points but not so much that it would freak one out as much as the rest of this chart. Some gross sexual stuff happens, some light violence, nothing too bad, but at the same time, the reading experience isn't that great either.

>The Obscene Bird of Night
A very abstract type of disturbing novel, with plenty of stuff like a character observing a girl having sex with himself from outside of a car, stuff like that. It describes a mythological concept of a creature with its limbs tied in a limiting and tortuous position to describe the situation of a person who's "stuck in life". Very cerebral stuff.

>The Room
From the author of Requiem for a Dream, The Room is about a man who's in prison and angrily rambles about the vengeance he would like to deliver to all the people who lead to his life getting in that position, including cops and wardens and what not. A short read, not very good, but an interesting display of the catharsis of impotent rage.

[Anonymous No.19881075]

>>19878935
kék

[Anonymous No.19881098]

>>19881068

>The Was Factory
An eerie psychological story about a creepy kid who lives in a remote scottish island with his scientist dad. He has an older brother with psychological issues who's away and our protagonist is one of those psychopath children, and performs some gross rituals he invented with animals and insects for some reason. Somewhat violent but mostly disgusting, it has some CRAZY plot twists towards the end and leaves a strong impression but isn't that great.

>Blood Meridian
(because I forgot it)
From the author with a notoriously bleak philosophical view of the world, an old-timey cowboy story about a band of scalp hunters back in the days of the exploration to the west who are paid to massacre indians, in the American-Mexican border, with the omnipresent brutality being eventually embodied in the ambiguously supernatural entity of Judge Holden, a philosophically minded extremely brutal man of inhuman proportions who serves as the spiritual, social and intellectual influence over the band. This may be as violent as a novel can get without becoming cartoony and ridiculous, and is easily one of, if not THE most violent and disturbing book most people will read. Still, beautifully written, with a wealth of content pertaining to history, creed and philosophy, and being something of a contemporary spiritual successor to Moby Dick.

[Anonymous No.19881253]

>>19881068
>>In the MIso Soup
>Think of something like the lunar equivalent to the solar Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas while the latter is a cheerful although politic sober novel that shows the fun exploits of two madmen in Vegas, here you have a much darker and more meditative, while also violent and disturbing exploration of Tokyo by an eloquent degenerate akin to our own Judge Holden and a young man going along with his shenanigans.
Maybe one of the best descriptions of the book that I've ever read. Your analysis of Naked Lunch is also spot on

[Anonymous No.19881373]

>>19881253
Thanks anon, that's nice to hear.

[Anonymous No.19881411]

When i was ten someone gave me a book as a gift. It was about a satanic sex cult run by a demon taking over a small town. There was lots sex, incest, violent murder, rape, cannibalism and other things. I used to take the book to school and read it to the other kids who were absolutely fascinated by it.

[Anonymous No.19881464]

>>19880979
The book Crash is way more graphically descriptive and fucked up, so i wouldn't say to skip to the movie.

[Anonymous No.19881483]

>>19878915

[Anonymous No.19881504]

>>19880979
>Blindness
Didn't they make that into a movie? I remember seeing a movie near about ten years ago with a similar premise. the difference being is that one woman can see and she has to take care of everyone

[Anonymous No.19881644]

>>19880979
>>19881068
Good posts anon!

[Anonymous No.19881683]

>>19881644
I would do terrible things to ally sneedy

[Anonymous No.19881706]

>>19881504
Yes, they did and Saramago liked it, apparently. It is also a plot point in the novel that one of the women can see

[Anonymous No.19881710]

>>19879945
something something language is meaningless

[Anonymous No.19881723]

>>19881710
It says language is meaningless? Then how is the tractatus itself have meaning?

[Anonymous No.19881864]

>>19880243
>colour
Go listen to Oasis or something you damn limey

[Anonymous No.19881953]

>>19880979
>>19881068
thanks for this anon, I much enjoyed reading these

[Anonymous No.19882022]

[Anonymous No.19882023]

>>19881644
>>19881953
My pleasure.

[Anonymous No.19882028]

>>19881710
>>19881723
refuted in Philosophical Investigations

[Anonymous No.19882079]

>>19879041
please stfu we don't want any more of them here.

[Anonymous No.19882115]

>>19880979
Great Descriptions, specifically on American Psycho

I forced myself through it and have no desire to touch it again. Its interesting in concept and definitely well written since it seems like it accomplished its goals in portraying a rambling psychotic murderer. I'm not sure I ever want to re-read descriptions of a man forcing a rat to eat its way out of a live woman though.

[Anonymous No.19882239]

>>19879068
This is the one. Moralists don't even know what to make of this one.

[Anonymous No.19882511]

>>19881483
>white victimhood
ahaha behold the master race

[Anonymous No.19882587]

>>19878915
Naked Lunch, not sure if it was horrifying, but it I read it when I was sick and nearly vomited.

[Anonymous No.19882610]

>>19880979
>>19881068
>>19881098
Kino posts. Thank you anon

[Anonymous No.19882614]

>>19880573
>>19878952
lol

[Anonymous No.19882644]

my parents gave me this when I was 9 years old yet were confused when I reached 18 without ever bringing home a girl

[Anonymous No.19882665]

>>19879974
That talk about pigs iq's is one of the most retarded things i have ever read.

[Chud No.19883546]

>>19878915
House of leaves but it wasn't that horrifying in my opinion. Either books just are not that scary to me or house of leaves isn't that great of a horror novel and I have not read enough.

[Anonymous No.19884143]

>>19879969
Apples poop?

[Anonymous No.19884246]

>>19881864
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhO3Ae8C6Zc

[Anonymous No.19884259]

>>19881723
It doesn't say language is meaningless, it says that the vast majority of philosophy is meaningless. The argument is that words, being the atomic units of language as far as Wittgenstein is concerned, do not confer the meaning of our personal feelings, thoughts, etc when we utter them; but rather act as sign-posts of predetermined social meanings, that operate in a purely pragmatic "whatever works for the language game we happen to be playing right now" sort of way. The meaning of Justice, Goodness - or any metaphysical notion - is, therefore, purely dependent on the way the word is used in the particular socio-personal level it arises in, and thus when a philosopher concerns themselves with the essence of these concepts (say by studying ethics), they are deluding themselves into thinking their words mean anything beyond common social use. Capital T truth is just social agreement of terms, and the reason we know what other people mean when they speak at all is precisely due to this inherent public-ness of language.

[Anonymous No.19884368]

>>19882644
Yeah my parents fucked up with me, too. If I ever succeed in having kids I'm going to tell them to go wild, fuck all they want, and if they wind up having kids accidentally I'll cover for them.

I'd even go so far as to throw up a "pool house" in the backyard for them to fuck in. Reproducing is the most important thing in life.

[Anonymous No.19884458]

>>19880440
>dark and disturbing
>the wasp factory
seriously?

[Anonymous No.19884931]

>>19884368
My parents tried this approach and it didn't work

[Anonymous No.19885179]

>>19878915
my diary desu

[Anonymous No.19885374]

>>19880469
>sex/abuse
Are you imply sex IS abuse?

[Anonymous No.19885380]

>>19879041
>just move to a place where society collapses once you get past a half inch of snow, bro.

[Anonymous No.19885389]

>>19879724
And now that you have grown, what's your take?

[Anonymous No.19885396]

>>19884143
>he doesn't know

[Anonymous No.19885503]

>>19878930
State of seige by camus

[Anonymous No.19885554]

>>19880979
>>19881068
>>19881098
Very based anon
thk u
btw, what's your fav most horrifying book you've read?
And which are your top 5 books of all time (and why)?

[Anonymous No.19885559]

>>19880317
Definitely going to buy this.
>>19880362
Yeah I feel like people, liberals especially, are so trapped in the desire to be righteously angry that they forget that soldiers don't give their own orders or deployments.

It's easy to be an objector when nobody is drafting you or preying on you during high school

[Anonymous No.19885561]

>>19885554
Here, a succubus for u :)

[Anonymous No.19885718]

>>19878915
Fathers and sons

[Anonymous No.19886403]

>>19878915
120 Days of Sodom but it is also coincidentally the most sexually-exciting.

[Anonymous No.19886966]

>>19878915
I'm writing up my life story for some therapist. Looking at what I wrote so far disturbs me. It's not that my life is that terrible, but it's hard to not write like I'm some future schizophrenic mental patient.

[Anonymous No.19887156]

>>19884259
that's true though anon, aside from the fact that there aren't really predetermined social meanings but rather just a summation of a each individuals impression of what they think it means. We're just animals really, slighly more brainy apes. Anthropology suggests that our complex language really kicked off civilization, i.e. chimps have an almost machiavellian mindset and that makes sense as they don't have the same communication tools, but humans don't. Our use of tools is fairly unique too. Just remember we're animals anon, we're not special. But that doesn't devalue language, you can produce great works of art with it, it's just everything has a sell-by date and is a fashion. I.E. it's a modern belief to shit on medieval man, but in reality we're not much better, we just have a few better tools and transportation. They weren't dumb. It's why more people have read Dickens than Kant, they like having fun and he used lingo that's more appealing to a larger segment of society, rather than having to dedicate a year of your life to get Kant. Philosphy does alot of appeal to authorities and names and it's all bullshit really, it's pseud as hell. Just read and if you really like a bit, you can make a note of it

[Anonymous No.19887181]

kolyma stories

[Anonymous No.19887271]

green eggs and ham

[Anonymous No.19887308]

>>19887181
The one where they electro-shocked the guy pretending to have a hunchback was horrifying.

[Anonymous No.19887390]

>>19878915
Lolita

[Anonymous No.19888477]

>>19878915
Kafka's The Trial

[Anonymous No.19888551]

>>19887156
>>19884259
>>19881723
haven't read it myself but this is obvious from studying linguistics except that it's way more complicated and harder to pin down than that.

>and the reason we know what other people mean when they speak at all is precisely due to this inherent public-ness of language.
also that everyone has a separate language in their own head and words do not replicate the same meaning only vaguely point towards a shared understanding along with context and intelligence the listener works it out equally as vaguely according to their needs, impositions, and convenience. assuming any accurate (meaningful) communication happens at all. which it may not, especially if it's unusual, it might be reduced to a commonly communicated thing by the listener and the speaker goes along with it or edits it in their own head too.

but i fail to see how this stands in the way of philosophy other than to make it challenging and require discipline (mostly from the learner and other writers) possibly beyond what we are capable of especially considering an author is not just an author but a locus in academia with many authors grasping for its value to add value to themselves.

but yes, language is fundamentally pragmatic and not prescriptive of reality. trying to do away with this impedes communication or leads to isolated, meaningless constructing of meaning.

[Anonymous No.19888760]

>>19880440
>Not included in this chart are 'dark and depressing' and 'horror' works.
May I see those charts as well?

[Anonymous No.19888881]

>>19888760
No

[Anonymous No.19888883]

>>19888477
Seriously. This novel has a way of getting under my skin due to how many situations I've lived through that mirror the protagonist's.

[Anonymous No.19888924]

>>19886966
It's probably too personal to share, but I would be curious to see some of it anon.

[Anonymous No.19888978]

>>19879041
It’s too late now. I’m all fucked up.

[Anonymous No.19889012]

>>19888551
>>19884259
ok interesting, but how does it affect abstract concepts?

does it basically say that the labels we use for them are not used without social and individual dilution of it? because either way I don't think me ranting about chairs because I am annoyed that that one creeks differs the fact that I am thinking and communicating about CHAIRS the whole time regardless of situation and impression around it.

[Anonymous No.19889019]

>>19878915
Pet Sematary made me shit my pants.

[Anonymous No.19889057]

>>19880979
>critique of the Fascists
cringe

[Anonymous No.19889065]

At the Mind's Limits: An Intellectual in Auschwitz by Jean Améry

>a slight pressure by the tool-wielding hand is enough to turn the other – along with his head, in which are perhaps stored Kant and Hegel, and all nine symphonies, and The World as Will and Representation – into a shrill squealing piglet at slaughter.

[Anonymous No.19889208]

>>19889019
based honestposter

[Anonymous No.19889755]

>>19878915
The Idiot, All the Pretty Horses, The Sun Also Rises, Torrents of Spring

[Anonymous No.19889775]

>>19878915
Introduction to Magic Vol. I, Knowledge of the Waters.

[Anonymous No.19889879]

>>19888477
>>19888883
Just finished this last night, highly recommend.