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/lit/ - Literature

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2874615 No.2874615 [Reply] [Original]

What's the saddest, most depressing book you've ever read?

>> No.2874616
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2874616

>no gf

>> No.2874656

The Sun Also Rises (by Ernest Hemingway), while not a very sad book, really depressed me after I finished it.
I don't know why.

>> No.2874664

looking for alaska by john green

>> No.2874662

Fifty Shades of Grey.
That shit depresses me like nothing else.

>> No.2874691

>>2874656
I had kind of a bittersweet feeling but was left mostly hopeful about things. Farewell to arms on the other hand though.

>> No.2874694
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2874694

>> No.2874702

"The Life of a Stupid Man" Ryunosuke Akutagawa

>> No.2874705

Not a single book, but Beckett's trilogy is pretty soul-destroying. No Longer Human, Book of Disquiet. All the cliché /lit/ stuff really.

>> No.2874717

When I was maybe twelve, I borrowed High Fidelity from the library. Partway through it I got hugely depressed and still don't know why.

>> No.2874721

lolita broke my heart

>> No.2874722

>>2874721
Lolita made me fart. All night. Like bad cheese.

>> No.2874731

It's trashy but Flowers in the Attic because it made me think of all those girls held in basements for years in Austria. Wish someone would write a better written version.

>> No.2874746

>>2874656
It didn't really depress me, but it's definitely the sort of book that sticks with you.

>> No.2874751

>>2874615

Love you forever - Children's literature

>> No.2874757

Flowers for Algernon

You can't experience true depression unless you inject snippets of hope.

>> No.2874788

Demian by Hermann Hesse

>> No.2874802

Any random book by Thomas Hardy.

>> No.2874805

>>2874757
this, a thousand times this

>> No.2874806

>>2874751
Yes, really. Jesus christ.

>> No.2874819

Requiem for a Dream by Hubert Selby Jr.
holy fucking shit
kinda babby's first introduction to drugs, though; I was a freshman in high school.

>> No.2874825
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2874825

>> No.2874834

Lord of the Flies hit me pretty hard.
I read it when I was in grade 6, so naturally a lot of it went over my head. I really felt the last line though, where Ralph weeps over the loss of innocence. Shit hit me hard yo

>> No.2874836

>>2874825
lol

>> No.2874865

Flowers for Algernon

>> No.2874874

>You can't experience true depression unless you inject snippets of hope.

Of Mice and Men anyone?

>> No.2874885

Well not exactly a book but "I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream" is pretty damn depressing.

>> No.2874893

>>2874885

>But

*and

My bad.

>> No.2874941

>>2874722
Go to bed, Joyce.

>> No.2874946

Shiloh. Shit is fucking awful.

>> No.2874953

It's technically a play but Waiting for Godot.

>> No.2874966
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2874966

>>2874757

Oh God. This fucking book had me sobbing.

>> No.2874983

>>2874691
Somewhat this, but more Homage to Catalonia (George Orwell). Basically, anything about the Spanish Civil War, especially if it builds up all happy in the beginning or middle, because it always ends the same way. History is funny that way.

>> No.2874984
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>> No.2874997

I read this book when I was a kid about a Viking who was cursed with superpowers by an Irish monk, which I thought was the coolest thing ever at that age, but for the life of me I can't remember the book's name or who wrote it.

For the first half of the book he's going around doing typical superhero stuff, like helping people and fighting his enemies with his super strength, flight, invulnerability, etc. But as the book progresses his powers start to get more extreme, like he can cause earthquakes and breathe fire and stuff. His physical form starts to change as well. He gradually becomes less humanoid, until the final few chapters where he's just a writhing blob of bone and muscle. His friends bind him in chains and throw him into a well until they need his powers for something. And I'm not kidding, it goes on for three chapters just describing his constant agony and sadness while he's at the bottom of the well. It went over my head a little back then, but I think he went through the five stages of grief.

Then, one day, he hears what he recognises as the sounds of battle, but nobody lifts him. He can hear his friends being butchered and his village being burned, and he starts to cry. The enemy just think it's a cow trapped in the well or something and they decide to board it up. In the final chapter, he starts to grieve over everything he's lost, but then remembers that, in the end, his friends and family all hated him and thought he was grotesque. He resolves to just stay there and wait for death, but as the book ends, he realises that he probably can't die.

I can't remember if it was actually a kid's book, or if it was particularly well written. I do remember it had sort of a morbid simplicity to it. It gave me nightmares for weeks.

>> No.2875008
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2875008

every time I read Chris Ware I am just broken for days

>> No.2875015

>>2874788
demian isn't thaaaat sad fucktard

>> No.2875023

Death of a Salesman is pretty grim, King Lear too. Also that which is banned from mention because I read it aware that there's literally thousands of people who follow the stupid bitch's philosophy

>> No.2875025

My Brother Sam is Dead was the first book I cried to. I think I read it when I was in third grade.

>> No.2875031

>>2874946
Was going to post this. Seemed like my entire class went through depression when we read that. Stone Fox too.

>> No.2875032

Madame Bovary

I wouldn't say it's too sad or depressing but sure left me a very bitter taste in my mouth.
fucking whore

>> No.2875034

notes from underground pretty sad

>> No.2875039

Hansel and Gretel. The thought of them out there in that dark forest by themselves breaks my heart.

>> No.2875040

great expectations

>> No.2875043

I cry whenever i do anything

>> No.2875060

>>2875032
Still remains one of the best books I have ever read. Dat ending.

>> No.2875097
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2875097

this czech girl I met at a party last weekend told me she wrote. She was attractive, if a little chubby and unfashionable, but it seemed endearing.

When I asked her what does she write, short stories? Her friend answered for her, telling me that she writes 200 page handwritten fiction on sheets of paper.

I asked her if she published them or if she has a website or something? She dodged the question, and told me she's written some 30 'books', and if i'd like to see them some day.

Fast forward to the next day, we left the party together around 5am and slipped into her dorm because i asked to see her work and although I was genuinely curious to see whether she was bluffing, i really just wanted to fuck.

Well it turns out she was telling the truth, stacked like mini towers all over her big writing desk were these compendiums written in purple ink. She seemed really enthusiastic for me to read her work, (at this point I was pretty shattered and drunk (maybe a little stoned too)), so reluctantly reached pulled the head off one of the paper phalluses and clutched the tattered canvas as my eyes strained to see in the dimly lit bedsit.

i wasn't prepared for what came into focus.

>> No.2875098
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2875098

'Naruto's Naughty Nights'
By Tereza (she had her last name in Japanese characters).

I skimmed the first few pages briefly, and through the lazy grammar, clumsy spelling and the occasional scrubbed out letter where the hallmark descriptions of naruto-kun's cute lips and 'delicious' eyes that categorise the archetypal yaoi fanfiction.

They were all anime fanfiction, /lit/.

Every.
Single.
One.

It was only then that the sun had started to rise and the room was illuminated with glittering bleach, naruto and death note posters and I could clearly make out the smirking face of asuka blown up across her chest, mocking my misguided lust.

I still fucked her, and i still don't feel clean.

>> No.2875100

>>2875097
>>2875098
ahahahahahaha thats fucking awesom

>> No.2875123

>>2875098
>>2875097
Brilliant.

Captcha: come!"

>> No.2875136

>>2875098
pretty sure you can claim rape, you konw, if you want to

>> No.2875147
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2875147

>>2875098

but trumie you are every chubby weaboo's wet dream

>> No.2875171

Where the red fern grows.
It's as if someone had taken onions, laced them with mace, squeezed it into a highly concentrated juice, and proceeded to take an eyedropper and put it directly into the surface of my eyes.

>> No.2875189
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2875189

>>2875147
>dat thread

>> No.2875190

Journey at the End of the Night by Celine.

The worst part is wondering how you’ll find the strength tomorrow
to go on doing what you did today and have been doing for much
too long, where you’ll find the strength for all that stupid running around, those projects that come to nothing, those attempts to escape from crushing necessity, which always founder and serve only to convince you one more time that destiny is implacable, that every night will find you down and out, crushed by the dread of more and more sordid and insecure tomorrows. And maybe it’s treacherous old age coming on, threatening the worst. Not much music left inside us for life to dance to. Our youth has gone to the ends of the earth to die in the silence of the truth. And where, I ask you, can a man escape to, when he hasn’t enough madness left inside him? The truth is an endless death agony. The truth is death. You have to choose: death or lies. I’ve never been able to kill myself.

>> No.2875219

Death with Interruptions by José Saramago

death is coming. she's good, but IT'S RUNNING FOR YOU FUCKING NOW

>> No.2875227

I'm surprised, no one has posted The Bell Jar.

>> No.2876950

Street of crocodiles. Bruno Schulz

>> No.2876978

>>2875227
I felt little reading The Bell Jar except thinking A) man, this is some really, fluid(?) prose and B) dramatic hoe. Perhaps I need to re-read. I was like 15.

>> No.2877012

I've read so many depressing books (my favorite 'genre' in all the world truth be told) I can't name a single one:

The Plague by Albert Camus
Kokoro by Natsume Soseki
Germinal by Emile Zola
Journey at the End of the Night by L-F. Céline
No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai
Memories from the House of the Dead by Dostoevsky
The Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann
The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck

>> No.2877023

>>2875219

I typically like Saramago, but I hate how he approaches the narrator gig. Every other page he goes like "and now I bet smart readers are wondering how X happened, and since I'm the narrator I'm in a privy position of knowledge and thus I can tell you. It happened like this" and it rustles my jimmies for some reason.

>> No.2877199

>>2877012
Thanks for adding a couple of books to my to-read list, anon!

>> No.2877215

This thread. Again. Sage.

>> No.2877240

>>2877215
Wut?

>> No.2877298

My bank book.

>> No.2877321
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2877321

Marley and me & Fifteen Hours

>> No.2877366

teh road

>> No.2877422

Jimmy Corrigan.

God I hate that book

>> No.2877436

>>2877012
I found The Plague to be much more uplifting than the Stranger. Why would you say it is depressing?

>> No.2877444

>>2874757
This.

I cried when I read of mice and men, but that was 7th grade.

Creep

>> No.2877446

Not a particularly depressing book, but the very last page of Atonement is particularly heartbreaking.

>> No.2877477

>Dune
>mass murdering on a galaxy-wide scale is okay

Even more depressing is that many readers praise it to high heaven.

>> No.2877485

>>2877422

This, except I love it and have read it like 4 or 5 times.

>> No.2877491

History of Bestiality by Jens Bjørneboe

>> No.2877537

>>2877477
I will never forget that one part where Paul was talking with one of the other guys about some of the bloodiest figures in the history of Earth.
Paul mentions Hitler and says something like "He killed six million. Not bad for back then."

My mouth was fucking agape at the time.
Whatthefuckamireading.jpg

>> No.2877545
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>> No.2877555

>>2877485
I hate it because there's no point. It's just awkward suffering, awkward suffering, flashback with more awkward suffering, stilted silence, more awkward suffering and then it ends. No moral, no lesson, no real plot, just acres and acres of some guy being totally pathetic and not even pitiable in his patheticness.

And the art is shitty too

>> No.2877630

>>2877436
I got that impression story/character-wise. I mean, everybody of significance dies. Poor, poor doctor and his wife ;_;

Don't get me wrong, I found human solidarity enriching and uplifting, but it wasn't bright enough for me, or the doctor, I should guess.

I'll have to re-read it some day soon.

>> No.2877649

I find the saddest moment in literature to be when Odysseus returns home after 20 years and the only one to notice him in disguise is his neglected, flea-infested dog who dies right after seeing him.

>> No.2877654

>>2877649
Why didn't his wife take care of the dog?

>> No.2877709

Slowly Downward by Stanley Donwood.

>> No.2877793

nausea can be pretty unsettling. no tragic turns of fate or characters locked in futile battle against insurmountable odds. Just a dude who loses a bit more of himself everyday, struggling against loneliness, absurdity and apathy in a life he never chose but must live anyway. at least he has jazz.

>> No.2877804

>>2877654
Because the suitors have basically taken over the household for the last couple of decades. And they're all dicks.

>> No.2877826

>>2877804
And the dog is really fucking old.

>> No.2877869

"No one writes to the colonel" by Garcia Marquez

Because the poor old chap keeps waiting for the pension check that is never going to be sent to him and his only valuable possession is a fighting cock that he is reluctant to sell even if that means starving to death because they don't have any money to buy food

makes me depressed to think that it's not such a crazy story and that millions of people might be living just like that at this very precise moment, always on the verge of starvation

>> No.2877882

>inb4 bible

>> No.2877907

on the beach
everyone's fucked and theres nothing they can do about it except wait for the end to slowly come creeping along.

>> No.2877925

>>2877491

The entire triology or one of the books?

>> No.2877935

>>2877793

but that ending is one of the most uplifting things i've ever read