The Silence Of The Lambs, arguably more disturbing than the film as you know more of what the characters are thinking.
Red Dragon too for the same reason. The way he writes really gets you into the characters mind. I still get chills thinking about the part with the reporter in wheelchair. He describes the victim thought process as he’s dropped off outside his office building. Even after all the killer did to him, he starts thinking he’ll be set free, and you start to think that too, ::: spoiler spoiler just moments before he is set on fire and rolled down the hill. :::
Another one that really distributed me was when he describes the killer just watching a family in their house. They are completely unaware that he has been watching them and that they’ll be his next victims.
I read that book 25 years ago and I still remember vivid details of it.
Another I haven’t actually read this comment but this post reminded me of The Turner Diaries and Thought Slime’s video about it.
If you’ve come across the short story Guts at some point, it’s apparently part of the book Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk. I haven’t read the whole book so not sure what the other stories are like but this story is really trying to be both gross and fucked up.
I read Guts for the first time in an issue of playboy when I was in my early teens… I still vividly remember reading the titular bit at the end. And also how it affects his family…
Goddamn.
That’s one of my favourite books. If you take it in the sort of gory comedy horror genre (thinking evil dead), it’s actually pretty great and has more depth to it than just horror stories.
Some of his later books get much worse, more gory, and far less interesting. He’s really just going for shock value in a lot of them. I stopped reading after the pink sock in Pygmy (couldn’t even finish the book).
I looked it up again when writing this comment and even though most reviews are negative they do make it sound pretty interesting. I’ve put it in a maaaybe list.
If you want to start with another less horrifying book by him (that isn’t fight club), I’d highly recommend Rant or invisible monsters
Rant was fantastic, and I also agree wholeheartedly with everything everyone says about Guts.
I’m currently rereading A Clockwork Orange and yep, it’s pretty fucked up.
The Phoenix Project
The only Phoenix Project I can find is about IT and business.
May be relevant - that book was super difficult to understand what it’s trying to recommend
As a fan of transgressive fiction, I’ve read quite a lot of fucked up books. Here’s what I came up with off the top of my head - sorry, it’s quite a long list!
Some different types of fucked up here (horrible fucked up and fun fucked up):
Cows by Matthew Stoke (not very well written, but very fucked up, a sick classic)
Anything by Carlton Mellick III, but especially Aspeshit, which is like Evil Dead on acid (semi literally). But he’s definitely ‘fun fucked up’ not grotesquely nasty without humour. All Bizarro is fucked up and worth checking out.
Apocalypse Culture I and II are both intentionally fucked up compendiums of short pieces and art that will make you sick and angry, but also make you think about a lot of different things. Feral House have plenty of fucked up books that are worth reading.
Atrocity Exhibition by JG Ballard - experimental writing unlike most other Ballard books, but significantly more fucked up in parts. All Ballard is great and fucked up at some point; High Rise has one of the best opening paragraphs of any book, ever. Crash is probably second to Atrocity Exhibition in fucked-up-ness.
Marquis de Sade - Justine, 100 Days of Sodom. Juliette: (mentioned elsewhere) horrible imagination-run-wild in the worst way, but aimed at antagonising people against the aristocracy and satirising the extreme cruelty and nastiness of those in power, probably including himself.
UK publisher Creation books (and imprint Attack!) did “anti-books” as they called them - some fucked up stuff of all kinds there: from fun stupidity like Raiders of the Low Forehead to some really horrible stuff by Peter Sotos that was unreadable (even to me).
The Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices by Brenda Love tells you all you need to know about human beings and a lot you never needed to know (eyeball licking fetishism is a thing, apparently).
Nick Cave’s ‘And The Ass Saw The Angel’ is a wonderful pieces of fucked-up-ness and the reason for my username: a mute hillbilly recounts his sordid, psychotic life while drowning in quicksand, with biblical imagery and references, poetic ‘Deep South’ language, and lots of unpleasantness, especially from his parents. Kind of an ugly sibling to 'The Wasp Factory’s.
Clive Barker’s works can be pretty fucked up - Books of Blood is still his best work, in my opinion.
Supervert’s ‘Extraterrestrial Sex Fetish’ was disappointing, badly written, and fucked up in boring but nasty ways. I’d avoid it, but it’s a long time since I read it, so maybe I forgot a lot about it. I remember being bored and irritated, and little else.
Most Will Self books are pretty to very fucked up, particularly his early stuff.
Harry Crews was a wonderful writer, with some pretty fucked up stuff in Feast of Snakes and A Childhood - The Biography of a Place.
Chuck Palahniuk, Irvine Welsh, and William Burroughs all have lots of great fucked up work.
House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski is fucked up in terms of layout and typesetting as well as storyline. Some really effective parts, some get a little bogged down in their own cleverness. But very much worth reading. Not fucked up in terms of gore or sex, as far as I remember!
Patrick Suskind’s Perfume is brilliant and fucked up, and possibly the only book that can change your sense of smell.
James Joyce - Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake are fucked up in terms of experimental style and language, and are wonderful pieces of writing, despite being notoriously ‘difficult’.
Alejandro Jodorowsky’s biographical books are wonderful and fucked up. ‘The Spiritual Journey’ is one of the best still.
That’s enough for now - I’m sure I’m missing a lot!
“Mangez le si vous voulez” (Eat him of you wish)
A book relating events that happened in 1870 in a French village. From a misunderstanding one guy is beaten, released, tortured and ultimately burned alive with people bridging toast to collect the fat that was dripping from the fire.
All the events happened in a single day that goes from mundane to horror.
Naked Lunch.
“The boy looks into Mugwump eyes blank as obsidian mirrors, pools of black blood, glory holes in a toilet wall closing on the Last Erection.”
I mean thats definitely not the worst part. Dr Benway’s medical experiments, the old people smother party, some horrific overdoses…
We need to leave then some surprises.
Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z. Brite is an experience.
My Advanced English class in High School made me read the stort story Bloodchild.
That was pretty WTF for me at the time.
Probably not as fucked up as other entries, but I read Geek Love in grade school. The original meaning of geek, which was someone who bit the head off a chicken. Bunch of weird shit about a messed up carnie family. Not a terrible read I guess but holy shit was I not prepared.
I read Hunter S Thompson’s book about the Hells Angels when i was in high school and i regret it, i also really fucking hate bikers. Just rolling packs of rapists.
I’ve heard of Bikers Against Child Abuse that plays upon the stereotype to guard kids against their abusers and provide a protective presence as the kids testify in court 🤔
Good for them. But i’ve also heard of public relations so i don’t trust these things. Im sure priests also offer support services for victims of child abuse.
Well, there are bikers and then there are bikers.
Also sexual predators are often victims themselves. It is not far fetched that some would try to help people is a similar situation. But it is also not far fetched to think that some become perpetrators of similar actions.
Don’t know if a VN counts as a book, but Song of Saya
Wish by Peter Goldsworthy. J.J. has always been more at home in Sign language than in spoken English. Recently divorced, he returns to school to teach Sign. His pupils include the foster parents of a beautiful and highly intelligent ape named Eliza.
I think it was called “Welcome to Night Vale”. After painfully reading page after page of absurd drivel that was probably “written” by a drunk AI, I finally gave up. It really reads like the output of a low-quality Markov chain. My daughter insists it isn’t, but then they managed to simulate that very, very well (I have worked with Markov chains before, so I have a bit of experience how that looks like).
It is very rare that I give up on a book, maybe one in several thousands. But this one was a perfect waste of paper and ink, worse than some books we had to read in school, which is probably the harshest criticism I can offer.
