I agree: anything by Dostoyevsky (especially Notes from the Underground).
And Proust as well.
Best regards
I agree: anything by Dostoyevsky (especially Notes from the Underground).
And Proust as well.
Best regards
Originally Posted by wokeem
I totally agree with The Stranger and Crime. They were amazing!
The brothers Karamazov is one of the books that inspired me beyond doubts and this book comes up with a new philosophy. Of course there are other great novels, and war and peace is such a book I bet can transform a person. But I have never completed it though I have made a few attempts. Another book I wanted to read, maybe that would have changed me is Ulysses but I find this too backbreaking and as such I could never had the patience to complete the book. Tolstoy' s Resurrection has indeed changed me a bit. But no writers' book changed my mental state the way Dostoevsky did. Of course it is the philosophy of the book that would change us and all novels have no philosophy. Dostoevsky is mindboggling and after every reading I find myself transformed or he would mold my mindset immediately.
“Those who seek to satisfy the mind of man by hampering it with ceremonies and music and affecting charity and devotion have lost their original nature””
“If water derives lucidity from stillness, how much more the faculties of the mind! The mind of the sage, being in repose, becomes the mirror of the universe, the speculum of all creation.
It was 1983 when I read Pirandello's One, No one and One Hundred Thousand and I have not recovered yet; Ballard's novels work on a different ground but they produce a similar long-term effect on your mental state, then I agree with everything you have written about the power of Dostoevsky. As for recent books I'd like to mention Coetzee's Disgrace - my nickname here is David Lurie for a reason - and McEwan's Amsterdam.
The book that really got me almost insane telling myself i wasnt insane was "A Beautiful Mind" by Sylvia Nasar. Its a biography of the famous mathematician John Nash who suffered from schizophrenia. I read the book a long time ago but I still fear to pick it up again.
Borges, particularly in "The Library of Babel" led me to question the notion of what makes a text coherent and what doesn't. His description of men sitting in dark corners of the library throwing dice in order to imitate "the gods" and determine the order of the letters instead of simply writing themselves had a particularly powerful irony for me.
Shakespeare, in almost every work, continuously undermines almost every social relationship available to him. He questions the nature of government, the relationship between master and servant, parent and child, two friends, and lovers, without providing any sort of definitive answer regarding anything.
I forgot about Pirandello's 1, 0 and 100.000, but to me indeed the book was disturbing. Same with Dostojevski's several novels.
Also striking to me at the time of reading: Ellis' Glamorama.
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
I love to see the mention of Dostoevsky so much in this thread. Crime & Punishment was definitely a book that made me question my own psychological health. I found it scary how seemingly logical Raskolnikov makes his actions.
Another book which made me question myself was Iris Murdoch's Under the Net. I felt too many similarities with the novel's protagonist, Jake, in that I rationalise everything and attempt to apply theory almost everywhere.
Naked Lunch made me pretty sick when I read it, although I was only 15 at the time. I need to give it another read now that I'm older, to fully appreciate or denounce Burrough's writing style.
Sometimes the works of Shakespeare, but even moreso the book Cosmos by Witold Gombrowicz was the only novel that I read that had a very noticeable effect on my thought-process... also Gombrowicz's Pornografia to a lesser extent.
I think also if you read a first person narrative many many times and isolate yourself with it, it should have that effect.
In Amelie Nothomb's "Metaphysique des tubes" there was one storyline how during the war lots of people jumped off the rock (made a mass suicide) in the fear of death. This paradox really crashed my brain for a while.
Once I have put the book away 'cause I just couldn't read any more. It was a novel by one Estonian author, where the guy acted really violently and sick with his girlfriend.
When younger I used to read a lot of freaky books, but got some overdose or smth. Now I'm trying to avoid violent and psychologically too disturbing texts.
Female characters with strong presences and dark disturbances always make me feel erratic and self-sabotaging. Anna Karenina, or--another cheer for Dostoevsky--Nastasya Filippovna from The Idiot are the strongest who come to mind. Emma Bovary also left me in a grave shaken fear of my faults for weeks after reading Madame Bovary. I'm reading Sally Cline's biography of Zelda Fitzgerald and I also find it a shaking experience.
Conversely with The Idiot though, Prince Myshkin has a tendency to make me feel like I am stepping into a cool, calm, gentle pool. The antidote to Nastasya! (Although she proves to alter his mental state as well in the end!)
After seeing The Nun's Story with Audrey Hepburn, I experienced such a fantastic alter to my mental state that I purchased the (now out-of-print) novel by Kathryn Hulme--I'm going to start reading it this weekend and am hoping it has the same consuming effect. After Zelda Fitzgerald, I could stand to slip into the mental hold of someone more self-contained! whew
Probably the book that influenced me the most- since it was the first i read in highschool without having to do it for school- was a collection of H.P.Lovecraft's stories.
What impressed me was that i felt fear. I never thought that a string of words could cause such an emotion on me. Instantly, that same night, i decided i wanted to be a writer, and wrote my first story, in 3 hours
I still remember the plot of that story too, perhaps i will re-write it now, more than 13 years later...
I'm a fan of those types of female characters myself. I don't know if you've read the Yellow Wall Paper but I think you might like it.
Sartre's Nausea- now that is a truly terrifying novel and the best description of a breakdown I know. In essence he is describing an altered or mystical state of consciousness from the perspective of a deeply depressed man- the mystical experience gone wrong.
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