Disturbing Literature

Out of boredom and because I thought I might get some interesting results I began to do a Google search on most disturbing cartoons but you know how Google likes to predict what you are looking for? So most disturbing books popped up in the search list and that caught my attention. I looked through some of the online lists and it was interesting seeing what different people classify as disturbing. There were some predictable books, some books I was not familliar with which sounded interesting, a few books that I thought were surprisingly absent, and a few books I woukd not deem particularly disturbing.

This made me currious

What are some of the most disturbing books you have read?

I am interested in your own perceptions of what disturbing is so I am not looking for any particular type of book.

I read a novel by Muriel Spark titled The Driving Seat. It suggested more that Spark was disturbed. Crash is disturbing in the same way.

The Driver's Seat as an interesting book.

Are speaking of the Crash by J.G. Ballard? I am on the fence with myself it I want to tackle that one.

I tend to find non-fiction more disturbing than fiction, for example anything by Richard Dawkins or The Revenge of Gaia by James Lovelock. I also found the Bible pretty disturbing. There was a bit in Acts of the Apostles when some financial donors were struck dead because they had not given everything, which chilled me. In non-fiction, I cannot be very original, but Kazuo Ishiguro does a line in disturbing literature. The Remains of the Day made me reflect on my missed opportunities and made me wonder whether I was deluding myself or wasting my life. His latest, The Buried Giant is disturbing as it implies we are here because our ancestors committed genocide. I found the subject matter and the cover of Never Let Me Go so disturbing I resolved not to read it.

The Story of the Eye by Bataille. I couldn't eat eggs for months after that one.

Based on the reviews I have read, I am grotesquely intrigued by it.

I thought it was good, disturbing but good. Also The Night of Lead by Hans Henny Jahnn is weird and dark, maybe not exactly disturbing but odd in a dark way... if that makes sense

It sounds interesting

I would not advise reading the Bataille book unless you want to become a nyphomaniacal sadist with necrophilic and bestial tendencies. You would in effect be flogging a dead horse to read such stuff

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Originally Posted by ennison

I would not advise reading the Bataille book unless you want to become a nyphomaniacal sadist with necrophilic and bestial tendencies.

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And how do you know I am not already one? :ihih:

Sorry just could not resist

Both The Driver's Seat and Crash are great books. Crash I think is pretty polarising - it could be perceived as brilliant or cheap dodgy porn. Personally I found the obsession quality quite mesmerising.

Jerzy Kosinski's The Painted Bird was so disturbing I couldn't finish reading it. It just seemed to get more and more depraved and grotesque. Perhaps a truer representation of the horrors of war than are seen in most books. Similarly Ryu Murakami's In the Miso Soup is pretty depraved.

I wonder if it's as interesting how people interpret the idea of 'disturbing' literature. When I thought about this initially I thought about books that were oppressive or violent, but then I also thought of some books which have, I suppose, mentally disturbed me in some way like Catch 22 (Heller) and Hunger (Hamsun) both of which I had to put aside because they were making me feel crazy. Kobo Abe's fiction - The Woman in the Dunes, The Kangaroo Notebook & The Box Man - are disturbing in a different way, mainly in their representation of obsessional or oppressive elements of human nature. And then I thought about Mills and Boon books and Fifty Shades of Grey which are disturbing in other ways (I'm thinking writing quality & inexplicable popularity here!). Would be interested in other people's thoughts.

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Originally Posted by TheFifthElement

Both The Driver's Seat and Crash are great books. Crash I think is pretty polarising - it could be perceived as brilliant or cheap dodgy porn. Personally I found the obsession quality quite mesmerising.

Jerzy Kosinski's The Painted Bird was so disturbing I couldn't finish reading it. It just seemed to get more and more depraved and grotesque. Perhaps a truer representation of the horrors of war than are seen in most books. Similarly Ryu Murakami's In the Miso Soup is pretty depraved.

I wonder if it's as interesting how people interpret the idea of 'disturbing' literature. When I thought about this initially I thought about books that were oppressive or violent, but then I also thought of some books which have, I suppose, mentally disturbed me in some way like Catch 22 (Heller) and Hunger (Hamsun) both of which I had to put aside because they were making me feel crazy. Kobo Abe's fiction - The Woman in the Dunes, The Kangaroo Notebook & The Box Man - are disturbing in a different way, mainly in their representation of obsessional or oppressive elements of human nature. And then I thought about Mills and Boon books and Fifty Shades of Grey which are disturbing in other ways (I'm thinking writing quality & inexplicable popularity here!). Would be interested in other people's thoughts.

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Yes I think that is an interesting question, and one of the reasons why I posted here, I wanted to see why kind of variety I would get in what different people consider distributing. A lot of people do have a tendency it go for the depraved and grotesque but when I was contemplating this topic one of the books which popped up into my mind was Notes From Underground. I absolutely loved that book, but I do think it is disturbing on a more psychological/mental level.

I will have to look up some of those books you mentioned. I have Addicted Personality Disorder and as part that a tendency to become very obsessive so the topic of obsession in various different art forms fascinates me.

As a teeager I read Dostoyevsky's The Devils (aka The Possessed or more recently Demons) and I was deeply disturbed by this passage:

“What she means is that, for instance, we know that the superstition about God arose from thunder and lightning,” said the girl student… “It’s well known fact that primitive man, terrified by thunder and lightning, deified the invisible enemy, being aware of his own weakness before iit. But how did the superstition about the family arise?? How did the family itself arise?”

The Devils Part 2 Chapter 7 tr. David Magarshack 1953


At that moment, beyond my window in the seaside resort which was my home town stretched an infinite meaningless space of such immensity there could be no possible value in my life. Any mundane life was irretrievably trivial.

I've just re-read the book and found it curiously profoundly consoling. There is more to life and I can only express that adequately in terms of God and God's gift to us.

"God is necessary to me if only because he is the only being one can love eternally" as the hopeless pseud Verkovensky says on his deathbed.

I have a novel called baby****er. The title is exactly whats it about.

I have a sensitive spot when it comes to domination especially involving brainwashing so a couple i found strangely disturbing were
The Magician by Somerset Maugham
The Beetle by Richard Marsh, purely a personal thing i imagine for those two quite old books.
Also Stepford Wives.

The Beetle sounds intersting. I want to read The Magician. I am a fan of Maugham.

It may be that I've led a sheltered life, but I find books like Tess of the D'urbervilles and Crime and Punishment disturbing. Fictional depravity, goryness or horror doesn't bother me much, but show me unfairness or injustice or grinding, hopeless poverty and it really gets to me. However the characters affected must be well drawn and believable.

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Originally Posted by Dark Muse

The Beetle sounds intersting. I want to read The Magician. I am a fan of Maugham.

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I have read it twice even though the supernatural wasn't Maugham's forte. It's based on the life of Aleister Crowley and is a pot boiler way beyond Maugham's normal output. The short stories 'The Taipan' and 'Lord Mountdrago' deal with the unfathomable and are more disturbing to my mind.

I forgot to mention my own novel The Fateful Circle that is currently undergoing a rewrite. Here's a brief description of the story line:

When a hen-pecked civil servant is driven to murder his wife, the normally mild-mannered Michael Butler thinks he has committed the perfect crime but is unable to foresee the astonishing effect the killing will have. Subjected to terrifying dreams and haunted by an unknown woman, he flees abroad, where his re-marriage and the people it brings him into contact with draw him into a series of events that threaten his sanity.
Trapped in a world where time seems to have lost continuity, he can do nothing but play his predestined part in a scenario that will end in his destruction as the story unfolds to its strange but logical conclusion.

the Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski, and there are some very disturbing passages in Gunter Grass's The Tin Drum. The Horla by Guy De Maussupant is a story worthy of Poe.

The Prince by Machiavelli is the most disturbing book I have ever read; and I read it 3 or 4 times.

Demons has a vicious obscurantism running through it, don't you think???

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Originally Posted by Jackson Richardson

As a teeager I read Dostoyevsky's The Devils (aka The Possessed or more recently Demons) and I was deeply disturbed by this passage:

“What she means is that, for instance, we know that the superstition about God arose from thunder and lightning,” said the girl student… “It’s well known fact that primitive man, terrified by thunder and lightning, deified the invisible enemy, being aware of his own weakness before iit. But how did the superstition about the family arise?? How did the family itself arise?”

The Devils Part 2 Chapter 7 tr. David Magarshack 1953


At that moment, beyond my window in the seaside resort which was my home town stretched an infinite meaningless space of such immensity there could be no possible value in my life. Any mundane life was irretrievably trivial.

I've just re-read the book and found it curiously profoundly consoling. There is more to life and I can only express that adequately in terms of God and God's gift to us.

"God is necessary to me if only because he is the only being one can love eternally" as the hopeless pseud Verkovensky says on his deathbed.

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