|
Also apropos Ordinary Men, I decided to go through Eichmann in Jerusalem, since I'd had it on my shelf for a long time and I had known of its thesis only by osmosis and via critical reviews. I wouldn't call it as f#cked up (in terms of graphic detail) as Ordinary Men, though it's also pretty tough to get through. I was pleasantly surprised by the degree to which the book anticipates and discusses some of the points I had heard brought up in the critical reception (e.g., of taking Eichmann at his word, victim blaming, etc.). Eichmann does seem to have regarded the mass murder business much in the same way that professionals in various fields look upon their overall career development, knowingly incriminating himself to his captors all the while complaining about never achieving the rank of colonel and resenting colleagues who he felt did not deserve their elevated rank. I'm not a student of psychology, so I can't really comment as to the degree to which this is "banality" or suggestive of a pathology of one sort or another, but it is clear that (as Arendt puts it) had he chosen any other career path, he might very well have never hurt a fly. Beyond Eichmann, the book goes into detail into the collaboration in numerous countries that enabled the career he did pursue (rather than, say, remaining a vacuum oil salesman), and that's more frightening than any one man.
Sir Mat of Dickie fucked around with this message at 04:13 on Apr 9, 2023 |
#
?
Apr 9, 2023 04:05
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 24, 2024 10:47 |
|
|
On the whole I liked the book, but the bit in Brian Keene’s Earthworm Gods/Conquer Worm where the loving cat oh my loving god dies hosed me up, and just thinking about it makes me run towards my cats and hug them as if my life depends on it. ….I think I know how I’m spending my evening.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2023 05:09
|
|
|
InediblePenguin posted:yeah society as a whole went like
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2023 05:36
|
|
|
Oryx and Crake probably doubled my overall levels of anxiety and depression. I read it during a road trip to a national park in the Canadian Rockies, and the entire week was spent blanketed in orange smoke from the British Columbia wildfires a few hundred kms away. We valiantly spent a ton of time outdoors enjoying our vacation, but gently caress me did the book get inside my head because of that oppressive smoke.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2023 16:20
|
|
|
The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum. I'm really used to Ketchum's brand of blech but I was not prepared for that one. Even though I knew what it was about. Based on a real life incident of child abuse and murder, and told from the point of view of someone who felt powerless to stop it. Just a big testament to the evil of "that's none of my business" and "the grown-ups know best." I've read a bunch of gross splatterpunk and bizarro books but nothing has come close to it.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2023 16:27
|
|
|
A while ago I read The People of the Abyss by Jack London, which is about how he spent some time living in East End London with no money. He talks about how much of the system was designed to punish poor people, not help them.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2023 16:34
|
|
|
Farmer Crack-rear end posted:The Rama sequels written by Gentry Lee & (allegedly) Arthur C. Clarke are possibly the most hosed-up books I've ever read: Everybody probably already knows this, but Clarke almost certainly raped kids. For a long time I thought it was just a smear because he was gay, but people have since described their experiences with him and they are very harrowing and bad.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2023 19:22
|
|
|
I did not know that. As a big fan of Clarke’s work, that’s, uh, really loving awful. Jesus.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2023 20:14
|
|
|
Xenomrph posted:I did not know that. As a big fan of Clarke’s work, that’s, uh, really loving awful. Jesus. There were some really terrible views held by influential people in SF&F in the 60s that, mixed with the nepotism of every industry particularly at that time, has left a real difficult stain on the Western history of the genre.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2023 20:17
|
|
|
I AM GRANDO posted:Everybody probably already knows this, but Clarke almost certainly raped kids. For a long time I thought it was just a smear because he was gay, but people have since described their experiences with him and they are very harrowing and bad. I'd previously heard that was probably the case given the kids he had around him in Sri Lanka, but I hadn't yet heard there were survivors who spoke about their experiences. 
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2023 20:21
|
|
|
Farmer Crack-rear end posted:I'd previously heard that was probably the case given the kids he had around him in Sri Lanka, but I hadn't yet heard there were survivors who spoke about their experiences. I can’t find it now, but there’s an article where a British guy describes living with his parents in Sri Lanka as a kid and how his parents told him never to go near this one fellow British expat house where a famous person lived, and how one day when the parents were away and his grandfather was watching the kid, the famous neighbor came by and tried to get the kid to take his shirt off so he could paint a portrait of him. While this was going on, the parents came back and chased the man away. He doesn’t name the famous person, but it’s pretty clear it was Clarke and it’s pretty clear the parents knew he was bad news.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2023 20:37
|
|
|
I AM GRANDO posted:I can’t find it now, but there’s an article where a British guy describes living with his parents in Sri Lanka as a kid and how his parents told him never to go near this one fellow British expat house where a famous person lived, and how one day when the parents were away and his grandfather was watching the kid, the famous neighbor came by and tried to get the kid to take his shirt off so he could paint a portrait of him. While this was going on, the parents came back and chased the man away. He doesn’t name the famous person, but it’s pretty clear it was Clarke and it’s pretty clear the parents knew he was bad news. https://www.vice.com/en/article/bjxp5m/we-asked-people-what-childhood-moment-shaped-them-the-most
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2023 20:45
|
|
|
Finished Moby Dick last night (this morning) at work. I think I burned through it in like three and a half shifts. It was excellent, great climax. I think the coolest part was everything from Ahab forging his new harpoon and tempering it with 'savage blood' instead of water, and then the typhoon a chapter or two later when they see St. Elmo's Fire on the masts of the Pequod, and then his harpoon starts glowing with fire too, and everybody (especially Starbuck) freaks the gently caress out about it.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2023 21:47
|
|
|
There's been some interesting suggestions in this thread, but it's pretty disappointing that it's mostly devolved into trash genre sci-fi/fantasy discussion like every other goon book thread.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2023 02:46
|
|
|
Science fiction and fantasy have the highest concentration of authors putting their weird, obsessive fetishes, sexual and otherwise, into their work. Like, genre fiction is a haven for perverts and fascists. Pulp and crime fiction are probably the same way, but they didn’t really survive past the 50s.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2023 02:50
|
|
|
Wizard Master posted:There's been some interesting suggestions in this thread, but it's pretty disappointing that it's mostly devolved into trash genre sci-fi/fantasy discussion like every other goon book thread. Wizard Master
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2023 02:57
|
|
|
Harry Crews - The Biography of a Place Harry Crews wrote about growing up in the South in the 1940s. Just page after page of crippling poverty and cruelty. Let's do a quote. quote:
It's an autobiography
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2023 04:30
|
|
|
I AM GRANDO posted:Science fiction and fantasy have the highest concentration of authors putting their weird, obsessive fetishes, sexual and otherwise, into their work. Like, genre fiction is a haven for perverts and fascists. Pulp and crime fiction are probably the same way, but they didn’t really survive past the 50s. This reminds of me a book that doesn’t cross the most hosed up threshold but which did shock me a bit. Grifter’s Game by Lawrence Block. From what I recall it’s a pretty standard noir with a petty criminal and a hot lady who is actually trying to play him. They steal some heroin and kill some guy she’s banging, or something. The shocking part is at the end where our viewpoint character forceably turns the girl into a heroin addict so she can stay under his thumb / with him.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2023 04:56
|
|
|
Easily American Psycho. I had to read parts of it lying down because I felt like I was going to black out.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2023 07:15
|
|
|
Buck Turgidson posted:Easily American Psycho. I had to read parts of it lying down because I felt like I was going to black out. Glamorama is way more hosed up than America Psycho, I stopped half way through and never read another book by Brett Easton Ellis again.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2023 08:03
|
|
|
Buck Turgidson posted:Easily American Psycho. I had to read parts of it lying down because I felt like I was going to black out. Oh yeah! Forgot about this one! Yeah, it's insanely graphic in its sadism.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2023 08:04
|
|
|
I AM GRANDO posted:Science fiction and fantasy have the highest concentration of authors putting their weird, obsessive fetishes, sexual and otherwise, into their work. Like, genre fiction is a haven for perverts and fascists. Pulp and crime fiction are probably the same way, but they didn’t really survive past the 50s. It's this, I've read a lot of novels that I'd consider hosed up that are just plain old fiction, either for classes or on my own, but genre fiction is on a different level. I certainly wouldn't recommend what I posted earlier. I'm sure you can find a lot of insane stuff dredging through Amazon self published things these days, but it's not stuff I'd personally read.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2023 12:46
|
|
|
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2023 13:06
|
|
|
I've read The Handmaid's Tale and The Road and the latter reads like a work of Christian Existentialism compared to the former, imo. There's some hope for society in the latter.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2023 13:32
|
|
|
tadashi posted:I've read The Handmaid's Tale and The Road and the latter reads like a work of Christian Existentialism compared to the former, imo. There's some hope for society in the latter. yeah the road is an anti-nihilist work. ends with deliverance and salvation despite the naysayers. hosed me up for a while but it was beautiful in the Cormac Mccarthy way. hard to believe I got it through my mom because Oprah recommended it lol
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2023 15:10
|
|
|
PainterofCrap posted:I'm a late boomer born in the early 60s. Scholastic had some weird books sometimes. I ordered "Freaked", the novelization of an bizarre, intensely 90s movie by Alex Winter. I got in 4th grade. Freaked: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxtoMckx9-Q
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2023 16:12
|
|
|
Tumble posted:Scholastic had some weird books sometimes. I ordered "Freaked", the novelization of an bizarre, intensely 90s movie by Alex Winter. I got in 4th grade.  I didn't even know this existed until this very moment but now I have to own it.I can't imagine how something like that even came to be, that movie's not exactly a kids' movie (even though I saw it when I was like 11 and it's one of my favorite movies).
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2023 01:41
|
|
|
King Vidiot posted:
It’s so good
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2023 01:43
|
|
|
Assuming twenty something me knew anything at least its been a while since I rewatched
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2023 01:44
|
|
|
Grassy Knowles posted:Assuming twenty something me knew anything at least its been a while since I rewatched it is in fact, so good I might watch tonight it to wind down after the shrooms begin to wear off King Vidiot posted:
it was EXTREMELY my poo poo in 4th grade, it even had pictures from the movie! I should have stolen that VHS from the rental store, Freaked is very much out of print these days, or at least it was for a while maybe it got a re-release
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2023 01:51
|
|
|
I don't read a lot of hosed up books - just doesn't happen often. I really didn't like Naked Lunch but I don't think the style appealed to me in the first place. There was a book that I remember unsettled me somewhat, The Roaches Have No King. It was pretty gross - it's from the POV of a NY roach that has somehow found out how to be racist. It's a 1980s book that goes for edgy comedy. There's a scene where the roach goes exploring in a woman's pubes, which I think was unpleasant to read but in a way I found more annoying and tedious than hosed up. I read it on recommendation of a friend and the only reason it interested me remotely was because I don't go looking for this kind of stuff. Sometimes you're punished for trying new things.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2023 02:16
|
|
|
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2023 03:00
|
|
|
Bible is kink.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2023 03:03
|
|
|
Tumble posted:Scholastic had some weird books sometimes. I ordered "Freaked", the novelization of an bizarre, intensely 90s movie by Alex Winter. I got in 4th grade. That movie had everything (except shoes)
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2023 05:32
|
|
|
What the gently caress book is this from?
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2023 13:43
|
|
|
Tumble posted:it is in fact, so good Freaked got a DVD release in the 2000s from Anchor Bay with a ton of extras, including a second disc that was just the table read. Long out-of-print now. And it was supposed to get a Blu-ray, but then Disney bought Fox and...  loving love Freaked. I remember the cover story from Film Threat and seeing it during the very brief theatrical run it had. Then when it came out on VHS I would show it to my friends and spread the good word. Still have my figurine of Ortiz the Dawg Boy somewhere. (I really should have gotten the ErneeJulee and Rick ones too when I had the chance.) Somehow I never knew it got a novelization so yeah, I gotta get my hands on a copy too.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2023 15:13
|
|
|
I think I recommended it to too many people in the horror thread but I'm again mentioning Negative Space as a really hosed up witchcraft allegory for the rust belt opoid crisis and teen suicide epidemics, viewed through a 4chan like board. really hit home as someone who survived 2004-2010 but saw a lot of friends and acquitances and classmates not make it. e. oh and shoutout to derp who got me the passion of gh which was the most beautiful novel about eating a cockroach and finding god I've ever read. I think I need to reread it annually. Famethrowa fucked around with this message at 19:19 on Apr 11, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2023 19:10
|
|
|
Mr. Sunshine posted:What the gently caress book is this from? Reluctantly googled the strange phrase "pensile outpouchings" and hit this https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3728926&userid=37260
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2023 19:20
|
|
|
Famethrowa posted:yeah the road is an anti-nihilist work. ends with deliverance and salvation despite the naysayers. hosed me up for a while but it was beautiful in the Cormac Mccarthy way. I have read few books that I would classify as "hosed up" in the sense of the thread--maybe a few of Clive Barker's Books of Blood stories? But in terms of grabbing me by the collar and shaking me until I paid proper attention, I would have to list Blood Meridian. The brutality contrasted by the lovingly described landscapes so that it created a perfect mental backdrop, and then the esoteric nods were like catnip to me. It was one of the most effective books in that it forced me to contemplate it for weeks to wrest meaning from it. I have never been so singularly captivated by a book like that to the exclusion of most else for weeks. But for disturbing books, it is more like others have described, the confluence of my own state of mind meeting a book of the right tone. For me it was making the mistake of trying, in the midst of a period of extreme anxiety, to read Valis. Reading PK Dick's anxiety mapped over mine was way too much, and I set the book aside for years before finally reading it (and not understanding why I reacted so viscerally to it previously)
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2023 05:49
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 24, 2024 10:47 |
|
|
I made it about a third of the way through the 120 Days of Sodom. Review: de Sade thought being shocking and offensive is the same thing as being entertaining. That works to some extent for a while but it gets old quickly.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2023 23:12
|
|
