/lit/ - Literature

[neip !qUTDn0wGHg No.2178335]

Can /lit/ recommend me some depressing books?
I feel need something that corresponds my current mood.

[Anonymous No.2178338]

I just finished reading All Quiet on the Western Front yesterday, I would say a good portion of it was depressing.

[Anonymous No.2178339]

The Bell Jar
The Book of Disquiet
The Cement Garden

[Anonymous No.2178342]

*Depressing-tier*

>Franz Kafka:
The Trial
The Castle

>Jean-Paul Sartre:
Nausea
The Wall
No Exit
Being and Nothingness
Existentialism is a Humanism
Critique of Dialectical Reason

>Albert Camus:
The Stranger
The Fall
The Myth of Sisyphus

>Friedrich Nietzsche:
Human, All Too Human
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
The Antichrist
The Will to Power

>Søren Kierkegaard:
Either/Or
The Sickness Unto Death

>Yukio Mishima:
Confessions of a Mask
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

>Meša Selimović:
Death and the Dervish

>David Foster Wallace:
Infinite Jest

>George Orwell:
1984

>John Steinbeck:
The Grapes of Wrath
Of Mice and Men
East of Eden

>Fyodor Dostoyevsky:
Crime and Punishment

>Haruki Murakami:
Norwegian Wood

Arthur Schopenhauer's stuff.

Also list that's probably worth checking:
http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1154.Most_Depressing_Book_of_all_time

[Truman Capote !!cO9KVBDtkqQ No.2178345]

>>2178342

Camus is all about trying to keep you from depression, whilst simultaneously giving you every reason to be depressed.

[Anonymous No.2178348]

revolutionary road

[Anonymous No.2178377]

Emil Cioran -- The Trouble With Being Born
Céline -- Journey to the End of the Night

[Anonymous No.2178392]

Ian McEwan can tell a depressing story.

[Anonymous No.2178416]

>>2178345
Well said.

[Anonymous No.2178568]

Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo

[Anonymous No.2178571]

>>2178342
good work sir

[Anonymous No.2178613]

>>2178339

>Norwegian Wood
wat

also most of that stuff is philosophy

[Anonymous No.2178650]

>>2178613
not the one you replied, but I found 'norwegian wood' quite sad. 'South of the border' was kind of depressing too

[Anonymous No.2178659]

>>2178335
DSM IV
read about your affliction

[sofia No.2178662]

I would recommend anything by Thomas Bernhard, for example his autobiographies.

[Anonymous No.2178663]

If you mean depressing as in "what depression actually feels like"
>Hunger - Knut Hamsun

If you mean depressing as in "inescapably tragic"
>Native Son - Richard Wright

[Anonymous No.2178671]

>>2178342
Sartre was a pseudo philosopher. Most of Sartre's works are mostly meaningless babble - obscure talk that will seem profound to the intellectually naive but incoherent to everyone else. Sartre was a political activist but not a philosopher. Minimal requirement for being an actual philosopher is that one actually produces coherent ideas and gives reasons to justify them, and I doubt that Sartre ever did this. The irony is that if we were to do a public poll of most recognizable intellectuals and best philosophers of the 20th century, Sartre would be near the top of the list. 100% truth.

[Anonymous No.2178677]

>>2178335
How about Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad?

[Anonymous No.2178690]

Ordinary People by Judith Guest
Pretty accurate re depression and its general affects, and probably saved my life

[Anonymous No.2178703]

The God Delusion and God Is Not Great.
>that feel when you realise that God isn't real and that there's nothing after death. pretty depressing imo.

[Anonymous No.2178727]

>>2178677
It;s not depressing! It;s true!

[Anonymous No.2178734]

>>2178703
Nothing is imperceptible. The only way to know if there is "nothing" after death is to die. Richard Dawkins doesn't know shit about anything other than evolutionary biology.

[Anonymous No.2178736]

>>2178703
That feel when you have never believed in god, but get depressed when you see religious freaks who can't appreciate reality for what it really is.

[Anonymous No.2178744]

>>2178663
I think I've read that Fante's "Ask the Dust" was highly influenced by "Hunger", and people consider it to be pretty depressing. And also Fante was a huge influence on Bukowski, whose books can vary from depressing to comical.

[Anonymous No.2178756]

>>2178734
fuck yea dawkins is a dumbass. biology is like his thing, not philosophy. people need to stop taking the guy so seriously because his knowledge of philosophy is next to nothing or close to zero

[Anonymous No.2178789]

Any Chuck Palaniuk book, i recommend Survivor

[megaman !DtMM0mp4B. No.2178820]

I never read Goethe's work but I heard that he's pretty depressing, amirite?

[Anonymous No.2178949]

Become friends with the Russian Lit section of your library. All those guys were pretty well-acquanted with the dark corners of the soul, and vodka. Lots of potato vodka, which is almost as good as a good depression.

[Anonymous No.2179000]

>>2178703

Faggot, that's Carl Sagan.

[Mean Mr. Milkman No.2179005]

[Anonymous No.2179908]

Infinite Jest, bro.

[Anonymous No.2179919]

>>2178335
Some of Franz Kafka's short stories, like "A Hunger Artist" and "A Country Doctor" are real downers.

[Anonymous No.2179920]

>>2178820
I guess he's suppose to be depressing, but The Sorrows of Young Werther just came off as whiney bullshit to me.

[Anonymous No.2179921]

>>2179919
Oh, also, David Foster Wallace's short story "On the Planet Trillaphon as it Stands in Relation to the Bad Thing." He wrote it as an undergraduate at Amherst. Very hard to find online though.

[Anonymous No.2179923]

>>2179921
Oh wait, here it is: http://quomodocumque.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/wallace-amherst_review-the_planet.pdf

[Anonymous No.2179924]

>>2179921
>very hard to find online
>first google result is a pdf

Nigger.

[Anonymous No.2179927]

Ethan Frome depresses the fuck out of me

[Anonymous No.2179929]

>>2179924
Well it was hard to find a few years ago.

[Anonymous No.2179963]

>>2179929
That link ends mid sentence. Is it supposed to or no? Could you look at it and say how much is missing?

[Anonymous No.2180007]

Steppenwolf made me weep ;_;

[Anonymous No.2180591]

>heart of darkness
>steppenwolf
>norwegian wood
>the god delusion

WTFAMIREADIN