Hey everyone! Two months ago, I have been working towards making this chart, along with the help of a lot of you. I've seen this chart popping up often, which I'm really happy with. I've also heard a number of criticisms, most of which were targeted at the inclusion of Haunted, and sometimes towards Babyfucker. I'm willing to change the current chart and create a version 2.9 if it improves on 2.8. Should these books be removed from this chart, and what should be added to replace them?
This is the previous list of possible inclusions:
>Books on the previous list no one has talked about (in depth): should they stay or do they have to go, and why? Slavenka Draculic - The Taste of a Man J T LeRoy - The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things Natsuo Kirino - Grotesque
>Books that are recommended to be added to the list, but only by one person: should they be added, or not, and why? John Hawkes - Second Skin / The Lime Twig Sorokin - The Day of Oprichnik Jachym Topol - The Devil's Workshop Kenzaburo Oe - Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness Charles Maclean - The Watcher Steven Barber - Caligula: Divine Carnage Frederick Exley - A Fan's Notes Andrea Dworkin - Mercy Kate Millet - The Basement Flannery O'Connor - The Complete Stories Gabriel García Márquez - The Autumn of the Patriarch Jose Saramago - Blindness Edward Lee - The Pig
I haven't read either of them, but enough people found them good enough to be on this list, if that means anything. Cows is very bizarre from what I've heard.
Levi Powell
lol grow up
Austin Carter
Bump!
Aiden Morris
No one has any recommendations? I would love to just remove Haunted since a lot of people were against it, but I am not going to leave an empty space.
Evan Jackson
I'm pretty sure I am the reason why The Devil's Workshop and The Lime Twig are on that list. I will say they aren't the most gory books ever but some pretty fucked up shit does happen. The Devil's Workshop covers a lot of information on people being killed in Eastern Europe during the Holocaust with many descriptions of massacres and an important scene where you are introduced to a bunch of taxidermized human corpses. The Lime Twig has an amazing scene written in second person where a woman is raped and beaten to death, amongst other violent acts.
Brayden Davis
I mentioned 'I spit on your graves' in an old thread, and browsing through goodreads convinced me that most people find it disturbing enough. However we've got more than enough french authors in this chart and i'm not sure if an english translation is easy to find. Anyway, no need to hurry, it takes time for people to use the chart, read some of the featured books and give opinions on how legit they are.
Gabriel Morales
I've read Cows. It's more disgusting than disturbing. There are VERY detailed descriptions of shit eating that kinda made me sick but otherwise it's an ok book.
Julian Wright
in the miso soup is good imo i liked piercing even more by the same guy but both are good
Logan Watson
I'd second Blindness by Saramago. Maybe not that disturbing overall, but it definitely has a very bleak look on humanity, and when it all goes south it's gets pretty fucking dark. I had to put it down at one part because it made me feel so sick.
One person in the previous thread has vouched for Blindness as well (saying it has a "memorable sense of despair"), and I myself has read it as well. I think it is a pretty good contender for this chart, I've just been hesitating because I don't know if it's dark enough. It is, however, dark and disturbing, and if no one objects to it I will swap Haunted for it. I will also wait for more comments; no need to hurry, like said.
This is really helpful! I've been looking for a long time to try to find an English version, and I will definitely add this to version 2.9. Thanks again!
Owen Fisher
Has anyone here read the fantastic M.Gira? His work The Consumer is a deeply terror inducing collection.
Ayden Russell
If you're interested, people from the previous threads have said:
The thing that fucks me up about The Consumer, that I think contributes mostly to the way it disturbs and makes the reader feel almost unclean is how he doesn't isolate the narrator from the reader as some inhuman creature you can just detach yourself from, he always has these little threads of humanity that force empathy from the reader in a way that is almost violating when you have to reconcile parts of these characters within yourself
The Consumer is "good writing" in the sense that it's extremely physical, which is what you would expect from Michael Gira, but it's also at times too nightmarish for me.
The consumer is interesting, it is not disturbing in the usual sense. While it deals with the usual topics of depravity, he tends gives a point of connection or empathy to the people doing the horrible things. It is odd, in most books dealing with such topics the person is nuts and the only thing the reader has in common is species, Gira tends to give parallels that anyone can connect with and often what you end up being disturbed by is your own sympathy.
The Consumer I've read a couple times, I was lucky enough to find a copy online that didn't run me hundreds of dollars (though if you want to read it you can find PDFs pretty easily). Gira is really skilled at just steeping every story in this disgusting, heavy, wet, breathing atmosphere that makes you feel unclean. Definitely the book that's given me the most visceral discomfort from reading though you definitely get desensitized to it after awhile, I will admit once you've gone through like 200 pages of the stuff it does get a little tiresome but it's still enjoyable.
Thomas Anderson
Bump
Charles Kelly
Do remove Haunted. It's a reddit book by a reddir author. And anything else you mentioned.
Christopher Wright
A story in Haunted has a guy stick wax up his dickhole because he was told that’s how Arabs jerk off. It deserves its spot.
Brody Long
That's disgusting, not disturbing. Merely one step above fart jokes.
Kevin Torres
Both The Autumn of the Patriarch and Blindness arent really all that "disturbing". At least I dont think they are nowhere near as disturbing as the ones from the chart I that Ive read.
Blake James
maybe "dark", though. But I dont know, if every somewhat dark book was to be put in this chart, it would be endless.
Oliver Cook
Does anyone have a working link to Artaud's Heliogabalus? I can't find it.
Wyatt Williams
I'm the guy who wrote both the first and the last excerpts you listed. I don't really have anything to add that hasn't already been written, I just assumed whatever I wrote here was kind of just tossed into the void, but I forget sometimes how Yea Forums is kind of one of the tighter knit boards and the fact that things I put here have any sort of weight at all reminds me why I like this board so much.
Chase Wood
Which ones on the chart have you read? And I will note that you are not in favour of adding Blindness.
I kept close track of what everyone said about every book, so that I could see whether to add or remove them. I also, for this post have gone to the archive and searched for all comments on The Consumer. I really like all the input I have gotten in the three weeks (!) that it took me to create chart version 2.8.
Brody Green
Bump! Has anyone read any of these books and think they should be on the chart?
John Hawkes - Second Skin / The Lime Twig Sorokin - The Day of Oprichnik Jachym Topol - The Devil's Workshop Kenzaburo Oe - Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness Charles Maclean - The Watcher Steven Barber - Caligula: Divine Carnage Frederick Exley - A Fan's Notes Andrea Dworkin - Mercy Kate Millet - The Basement Flannery O'Connor - The Complete Stories Gabriel García Márquez - The Autumn of the Patriarch Jose Saramago - Blindness Edward Lee - The Pig
William Martinez
O'Connor, southern gothic... not disturbing.
Camden Parker
I expected more people to have read Kenzaburo Oe. Even the user who suggested it was surprised he isn't discussed more often.
Parker Stewart
I liked "In The Miso Soup" very much. Was a quick read though, not sure if that bothers you.
Christopher Perez
i've read blindness and it was ok. it's pretty dark
the main thing i liked about it was the way it referred to each character by their profession rather than their name which made them all kinda archetypal and the way it didn't use any quotation marks which i'm not sure if this is just a portuguese thing because another less edgy portuguese book i read did the same thing but i imagine none of this is helpful
Gavin Bell
>No Huysmans
Wyatt Garcia
The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell is one of the darkest and most disturbing novel I've read.
Liam White
No, the length of the work does not mater, as long as it has some quality and is dark/disturbing. Glad you enjoyed it, I'll remember that for my future reading!
It is useful, don't worry! A lot of people are saying it's dark, and one person saying it shouldn't be on the list. I might swap it with Haunted if no other suggestions come up. And I liked how every person is named after a visual aspect rather than a name.
There's been a really long discussion on Huysmans, you might want to check out the previous threads. What's your opinion on his works?
Austin Kelly
I really liked La Bas, but for some reason the thing I remember most was all the bits about bell's rather than disturbing material of the book.
Cooper Jackson
Anyone recall the name of a short novel about an evil adopted child? They're extremely disgusting and odious, eventually the foster goes to an asylum that's full of grotesques.
Josiah Allen
I'm working on version 2.9 right now!
>Planned changes so far: - Fixed a spelling error - Added the pdf of Petrolio to the link in the chart - Changed Haunted with Blindness
Jaxson Evans
Here's the new chart! The changes are exactly as stated in the post above. What do you guys think? I know it's only small changes, but I'm still happy with the result. I've also seen that the previous .txt file, with all the downloads and pdf's has been downloaded 45 times! It makes me happy to know that so many people have used this chart and wanted to look at the digital works that I collected.
Other people in the previous threads have talked briefly about it:
Edgy and shocking works rely heavily on melodrama or challenging social norms for the sake of challenging them. I'd actually place Babyfucker in this category and am a little disappointed it's in the chart.
Babyfucker has been called Beckettian, and I would agree; it ponders in that exhaustive style on the situation of the isolated protag fucking babies, or rather, on the proposition "I fuck babies"; it's more conceptual and doesn't get too explicit (apart from some imagery) but it's definitely weird and "disturbing".
I love the book but it is more shocking than disturbing. It could be named Rock Eater and still be great. The story is more surreal and weird than disturbing. Sure it's Beckettian in style with all the repetitions but it's nowhere near the pessimism of Beckett.
