Best fucked up books

[rocknrollmartian]

Yeah, Patrick Bateman is much more sadistic and depraved in the book. But I think the movie is so well done, so funny, and so visually appealing. It was a great--albeit sanitized--adaptation given the source material.

 

[SofondaCox]

My main social group circulate book after book to each other, and the only book I've had any of them complain about was The Conspiracy Against The Human Race by Thomas Ligotti, mostly the complaints were that it was too dark or unsettling to finish reading. I think the author is actually trying to disturb and alienate his readers.

"The Conspiracy against the Human Race is renowned horror writer Thomas Ligotti's first work of nonfiction. Through impressively wide-ranging discussions of and reflections on literary and philosophical works of a pessimistic bent, he shows that the greatest horrors are not the products of our imagination. The worst and most plentiful horrors are instead to be found in reality. Mr. Ligotti's calm, but often bloodcurdling turns of phrase, evoke the dreadfulness of the human condition. Those who cannot bear the truth will pretend this is another work of fiction, but in doing so they perpetuate the conspiracy of the book's title."

--David Benatar, author of Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence; Department of Philosophy, University of Cape Town, South Africa

It's funny. I love Ligotti's fiction, but the Conspiracy Against the Human Race blows everything else out of the water. He knows. He has seen. If you are a natural pessimist, the book feels like a homecoming. There is solace, to see such a personal, intimate despair articulated perfectly, succinctly, honestly. I think the healthy mind shuns the information as part of our internal 'Terror Management' systems, making it a difficult read. For the lost, it's a map leading through this dark territory. ♡

 

[BrunoMattei]

I'm stretching the qualifications a little bit but I can't help but mention Hit Man:

Hitman A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors Paladin Press : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Hitman A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors Paladin Press

archive.org

A how-to manual for being a hit man.

 

[Angry New Ager]

Geek Love, by Katherine Dunn, is about a family-owned carnival in which all the kids have been intentionally made into freaks for the sideshow tents (by the mother taking various substances that cause birth defects). Their sociopathic eldest son, who has flippers instead of arms and legs, performs swimming routines in a tank of water and ends up creating a cult of followers who amputate healthy limbs to become more like him.

Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro, is about a group of young people who grew up at a boarding school together, and what happens to them as adults. However, they're not normal kids; they're clones, created and raised and socialized to be living organ donors, "gifting" various parts of their own bodies, and with the knowledge that they will all die at a young age by giving their final "gift." The whole story is told in such a calm, measured way, with such subtlety, that the true horror of it all doesn't really catch up to the reader until late in the game. It's a beautiful, haunting, heartbreaking book, in which the horrors are completely normalized and the fate of the characters inevitable.

 

[Dolphin Lundgren]

I'm surprised nobody else has said The Turner Diaries considering it's offended most of the public because of the story line and it's considered to be a white nationalist novel.
That book makes everyone very angry.

 

[Bassomatic]

Yeah, Patrick Bateman is much more sadistic and depraved in the book. But I think the movie is so well done, so funny, and so visually appealing. It was a great--albeit sanitized--adaptation given the source material.

The film is so well done and lets be real most people know movies more than book, while different some can fight movie was better, they are both great and book is darker and fleshed out, I see a debate movie is better because it's stunningly well done and you can see Pat doing worse and thinking worse.

I'm surprised nobody else has said The Turner Diaries considering it's offended most of the public because of the story line and it's considered to be a white nationalist novel.
That book makes everyone very angry.

Murdoch Murdoch summed it up so well "it's just trying man"

It's mad max and race war, but not as awesome as you expect.

 

[Dolphin Lundgren]

The film is so well done and lets be real most people know movies more than book, while different some can fight movie was better, they are both great and book is darker and fleshed out, I see a debate movie is better because it's stunningly well done and you can see Pat doing worse and thinking worse.


Murdoch Murdoch summed it up so well "it's just trying man"

It's mad max and race war, but not as awesome as you expect.

A mediocre book but so controversial since all you have to do is mention the book and you get people raging at you.

 

[BrunoMattei]

I completely forgot to mention Michael Gira's The Consumer:

https://www.scribd.com/doc/244958410/Michael-Gira-The-Consumer

Gira, front man of The Swans, writes a very in depth hellscape of the modern world. Reading the Consumer will mark you.

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

People have brought up Blood Meridian, but I want to suggest another Cormac McCarthy book, Child of God. The book centers on an antisocial guy living on the fringes of society in rural Tennessee. As the book goes on, he secludes himself more and more and becomes increasingly sexually depraved, including but not limited to necrophilia.

What really messed with me about the book was the utter detachment of the narration. There was something voyeuristic about watching this mountain man become more unhinged. The ending also fucked me up; you know this guy's not going to have a happy ending but holy shit I was not prepared for what ultimately happened.

 

[2 litre soda]

Lots of good stuff mentioned so far. Shout out to all my fellow McCarthy fans!

One that I'm surprised not to see mentioned yet is The Story of O by Pauline Réage. It's what you get when you have a woman trying to write the best possible BDSM novel, and actually succeeding in doing so. And it was published in 1954, of all times.

Another amazingly fucked up book is Bear by Marian Engel. It's the story of a librarian who is hired to catalogue the works of an old dead guy who lived on an island in rural Canada, and ends up fucking the (literal, as in the animal, not a gay hairy dude) bear that lives there. It won basically every award that can be given for literature in Canada.

 

[RumblyTumbly]

Although a bit archaic for modern audiences, The Monk, written by Matthew Gregory Lewis and published in 1796, was quite controversial in its day, serving as a morality tales with sexual and violent themes.

I read it in high school and quite enjoyed it.

 

[Chigurr]

Pin by Andrew Neiderman, published in 1981. Without doubt one of the strangest and most fucked up books I've read. Can't say there's any enduring philosophical aftertaste from the story, but it's definitely worth reading. The writing style is considerably good too. Here's a little passage:

"Closer, closer, closer she came to him, moving, it seemed,
in silent motion. He thought to kiss the lips between her thighs.
His heart beat steadily within the caverns of his bosom, driving
hot blood thick down, down into the depths of his loins. He
thought he caught the odor of a familiar perfume. And then,
like the predator he had become, he lunged from the deepest
darkest passions in us all. She turned without a sound and faced
him. He stopped abruptly. It was as if a knife had performed
instant castration. He was looking into the eyes of his sister."

 

[Marco Fucko]

The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum fits the thread theme of an interplay of sex and violence, featuring a sadistic alcoholic woman who lures teens into her home with loose rules and access to beer.

A Child Called It is an apparently true recounting of the author's severely abusive childhood. It has actually been both called fake and defended as true by different members of his family.

ends up fucking the (literal, as in the animal, not a gay hairy dude) bear that lives there. It won basically every award that can be given for literature in Canada.

Of course it did.

 

[Jerri's Kid]

I'd also recommend Panzram: a Journal of Murder that I finished a month or so ago.
https://www.amazon.com/Panzram-Jour...8&qid=1547505933&sr=8-1&keywords=carl+panzram

It's the diary of serial killer Carl Panzram interspersed with an editorial clarifying the history of the U.S. and the prison system at the time. The authors of the editorial make the point that it was really the prison system that was at fault that created Panzram.

I'd read this. Panzram was very unapologetic about his activities, so it would be interesting to see how such a callous monster was created.

I'm not as well read as a lot of you people here, you all have some really good picks, many that I've never heard of. The only thing I've read that I can think of right now that was pretty f'd up was "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair. It's a pretty common, well known book but if you've never heard of it, it's about an immigrant that gets a job in the meat packing industry in Chicago around the turn of the century.

I read this. The novel read like a Communist propaganda piece but it did play an influential role in increasing food safety. I remember reading that Teddy Roosevelt became so disgusted after reading the novel that he spit out his breakfast eggs, but that sounds fanciful.

Pet Sematary spooked me a great deal when I first read it. Mostly because of how much death is discussed and how unnatural it all feels. Not to give obvious spoilers but a main character dies prematurely somewhere in the book and another character goes on a long emotional dirge where they hallucinate the dead character's entire life had they not died. It's pretty fucked up.

Pet Sematary was easily his most depressing novel.

Room by Emma Donoghue. It's told from the perspective of a young boy who was born and raised in his mother's rape dungeon, so yes it's very fucked up. Imagine a story told by one of Josef Fritzl's grandchildren...

 

[BrunoMattei]

I'd read this. Panzram was very unapologetic about his activities, so it would be interesting to see how such a callous monster was created.

It is some truly dark shit. Panzram details very matter of factly how he raped and murdered multiple children and grown men.

 

[AnOminous]

It is some truly dark shit. Panzram details very matter of factly how he raped and murdered multiple children and grown men.

When he was thrown in prison for the last time, he told the warden "I'll kill the first man that bothers me," shortly before killing the first man that bothered him by beating him to death with an iron bar.

When anti-death penalty advocates tried to save him, he said: "The only thanks you and your kind will ever get from me for your efforts on my behalf is that I wish you all had one neck and that I had my hands on it."

And my favorite Panzram quote, about his crimes: "In my lifetime I have murdered 21 human beings, I have committed thousands of burglaries, robberies, larcenies, arsons and, last but not least, I have committed sodomy on more than 1,000 male human beings. For all these things I am not in the least bit sorry."

He may have been a murderous rapist and child molester, but he stood head and shoulders over all those fuckwads who "found Jesus" or some other bullshit to try to save their worthless hides.

 

[BrunoMattei]

He may have been a murderous rapist and child molester, but he stood head and shoulders over all those fuckwads who "found Jesus" or some other bullshit to try to save their worthless hides.

Funny you mention that because in his diary he would say how every time he was in a reform school or group home (which in reality was forced labor with beatings back in those days) or in front of a judge he would lie to them and say he found Jesus and will be a good boy. That's how he'd get leniency.

He also read Schopenhauer. Act surprised.

 

[GethN7]

Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" was disturbing on the first read, but it just gets worse with subsequent re-reads.

A little scene towards the beginning especially stands out as fucked up beyond all reason where kids are encouraged to molest each other by the adults and it's the one kid who doesn't want to molest or be molested who is considered to be the abnormal one.

It's supposed to desensitize them to the sex and drugs powered culture of the world they are in, but the implications are even MORE horrifying after several re-reads:

It's a world where pedophilia is completely normal and considered HEALTHY.

Worse, it's heavily implied and to some extent outright stated the adults directly intervene to make sure the kids are touching each other inappropriately, even if they have to get "hands-on" themselves.

It's still a good book that shows the idealized glittering utopia of free love and drugs 24/7 can be one of the most terrifying things, just as bad if not worse than Orwell's grim perma-terror state of 1984, but it's still a book that can be hard to read stone sober.

 

[AnOminous]

Funny you mention that because in his diary he would say how every time he was in a reform school or group home (which in reality was forced labor with beatings back in those days) or in front of a judge he would lie to them and say he found Jesus and will be a good boy. That's how he'd get leniency.

He also read Schopenhauer. Act surprised.

I forgot this.

Asked by the hangman if he wanted to make a last statement, he snapped, "Yes, hurry it up, you Hoosier bastard! I could hang a dozen men while you're fooling around!"

http://sondralondon.com/tales/panzram/05.htm

 

[Roast Chicken]

The Fog and The Rats by James Herbert. Others is a really good one as well.

The Fog has a lovely scene involving a teacher at the mercy of his young male students, all driven mad by a strange cloud that's creeping across the country.

There's also Slugs by Shaun Hutchinson; very similiar to the Rats but.. with killer slugs. He was the author I latched onto after I'd read all of Herbert's books (RIP, Jim) there's another book by him I read about a dude who starts stealing aborted foetuses from the hospital he works at but I can't remember the name.