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Books that may have damaged your psyche

Started by Dex Sawash, February 06, 2018, 07:19:11 PM

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'A Real Doll' by A.M. Homes still haunts my dreams.  If you haven't had the pleasure, it's about a boy who falls in love with his sister's Barbie doll, and what he does with her is narrated in graphic detail (at least, in my memory it does.  You'll forgive me not refreshing my memory by Googling).  And then he realises that there is also a Ken doll, and that Ken's head comes off leaving a neck orifice, which opens up a whole new world of erotic pleasure.  Deeply icky.  I'd rather re-read American Psycho 100 times than read that again.

Ferris

The Roald Dahl story about plants' voices is another one that impacted me. Think of it all the time I'm walking on grass or kick the fuck out of a daisy or whatever.

purlieu

We had a copy of Naked Lunch in a book spinner in our sixth form, and I had a flick through. Got to the bit with a chap snapping boys necks to make them ejaculate and felt decidedly queasy.

My dad gave me a Rupert annual from when he was a kid, and one of the stories has some princess who demands Rupert accompany her on an adventure, in which they get captured by giants and given to their baby as toys. They manage to escape only to end up caught by witches whose servants were dogs who walked on their hind legs and wore aprons. They weren't anthropomorphised in any other way though, they looked like well drawn dogs.

Quote from: tookish on February 16, 2018, 02:45:22 AM
Robert Swindells
Brother in the Land sparked off my absolute terror of nuclear war. That and nuclear war being terrifying.

I didn't get on well with Threads.

garbed_attic

Quote from: purlieu on April 05, 2018, 04:14:54 PM
Brother in the Land sparked off my absolute terror of nuclear war. That and nuclear war being terrifying.

Stone Cold troubled me even more though is probably responsible for the fact that I'm all but unable to walk by a person who is homeless without stopping to chat to them... (note: not to then murder them as I realise this sentence would otherwise imply).

Neomod

This is the only book that's ever 'fucked me up'.



particularly The Vampire of Croglin Hall which I had just finished when I heard scratching at the bedroom window1.  I basically burst into tears and ran into my parent's bedroom.

28 I was etc.

It was in actual fact our cat chippy wanting to come in from a cold night. The shit.

1. the vampire's modus operandi of entry

Phil_A

Quote from: purlieu on April 05, 2018, 04:14:54 PM
We had a copy of Naked Lunch in a book spinner in our sixth form, and I had a flick through. Got to the bit with a chap snapping boys necks to make them ejaculate and felt decidedly queasy.

My dad gave me a Rupert annual from when he was a kid, and one of the stories has some princess who demands Rupert accompany her on an adventure, in which they get captured by giants and given to their baby as toys. They manage to escape only to end up caught by witches whose servants were dogs who walked on their hind legs and wore aprons. They weren't anthropomorphised in any other way though, they looked like well drawn dogs.

Horror author Ramsey Campbell describes a defining moment of horror from his childhood as an image from a Rupert Annual of a living Christmas Tree: 

"Rupert acquires a magical tree that decamps after the festivities and returns to its home in the woods," remembers Campbell. "Perhaps this was meant as a charming fantasy for children, but the details – the small high voice from the tree, the creaking that Rupert hears in the night, the trail of earth he follows from the tub in his house, above all the prancing silhouette that inclines towards him, the star it has in place of a head – are surely the stuff of adult supernatural fiction. I think I got my start in the field right there, and many of my preoccupations must derive from my early childhood."

Those books were pure nightmare fuel, basically.

BlodwynPig


ASFTSN

Quote from: purlieu on April 05, 2018, 04:14:54 PM
My dad gave me a Rupert annual from when he was a kid....

I remember being a bit disturbed by Rupert's adventures down by the beach where he's hanging out with a bunch of kelp-people too.

ASFTSN

Why did Rupert used to be just a boy with a teddy-bear's head.  What the fuck.


purlieu

He was a white bear through-and-through inside, but those books and annuals always featured him with brown fur and human hands on the cover.

purlieu

Quote from: purlieu on April 05, 2018, 04:14:54 PMMy dad gave me a Rupert annual from when he was a kid, and one of the stories has some princess who demands Rupert accompany her on an adventure, in which they get captured by giants and given to their baby as toys. They manage to escape only to end up caught by witches whose servants were dogs who walked on their hind legs and wore aprons.
Oh Christ


shh

I often have a book of Emil Cioran's aphorisms by my bed for nighttime reading. Not recommended.

BlodwynPig

Quote from: shh on April 15, 2018, 10:51:12 PM
I often have a book of Emil Cioran's aphorisms by my bed for nighttime reading. Not recommended.

Quote from: CioranI don't understand why we must do things in this world, why we must have friends and aspirations, hopes and dreams. Wouldn't it be better to retreat to a faraway corner of the world, where all its noise and complications would be heard no more? Then we could renounce culture and ambitions; we would lose everything and gain nothing; for what is there to be gained from this world?

Quote from: LigottiThe human phenomenon is but the sum
Of densely coiled layers of illusion
Each of which winds itself on the supreme insanity
That there are persons of any kind
When all there can be is mindless mirrors
Laughing and screaming as they parade about
in an endless dream
"

Famous Mortimer

Good ol' liked-the-Nazis-until-two-years-into-WW2 Cioran.


BlodwynPig

Quote from: Famous Mortimer on April 15, 2018, 11:54:43 PM
Good ol' liked-the-Nazis-until-two-years-into-WW2 Cioran.

Only because he reckoned they would end the world.

Isnt Anything

Must be going on 40 years since i read that Roald Dahl screaming plant story and it still shits me up too.

sevendaughters

I read a load of Jim Goad, like the Answer Me anthologies, and became a teen/early 20s edgelord, played in a grindcore band, just pure cringe.

thraxx


On the recommendation of this thread, just finished The Road.

Fucking amazing.  Tore through it in a couple of hours.  Horribly bleak, and I loved the stark prose style, every word carefully weighted and selected.  He chooses his words the way a stingy shopper rummages round the box for the best apples to buy.  How do we reckon the world got the way it did?  Are they really father and son?  Is the ending real or imagined, if real, can the group be trusted?

What other Cormac McCarthy book are any good?

Twit 2

Quote from: shh on April 15, 2018, 10:51:12 PM
I often have a book of Emil Cioran's aphorisms by my bed for nighttime reading. Not recommended.

As a self-proclaimed Cioran expert I would say his books are on the whole uplifting and funny. If nothing else they are fiercely beautiful. Highly recommended!

Quote from: thraxx on April 27, 2018, 08:41:42 PM
What other Cormac McCarthy book are any good?

I reckon 'All the Pretty Horses' is his best.

shh

Yes I was being semi-facetious really. I do sometimes laugh but never sure if it's with or at him.

I've only read Blood Meridian by McCarthy and it does have that quality of epic violence and confusion. I think I was put off reading the Road as the film adaptation looked like a hollywood version of Time of the Wolf. Probably just mindless snobbery on my part.

Ferris

Quote from: thraxx on April 27, 2018, 08:41:42 PM
On the recommendation of this thread, just finished The Road.

Fucking amazing.  Tore through it in a couple of hours.  Horribly bleak, and I loved the stark prose style, every word carefully weighted and selected.  He chooses his words the way a stingy shopper rummages round the box for the best apples to buy.  How do we reckon the world got the way it did?  Are they really father and son?  Is the ending real or imagined, if real, can the group be trusted?

What other Cormac McCarthy book are any good?

I saw the film adaptation before reading the book, but only because I thought it was a film version of Kerouac's On The Road. This is genuinely true, somebody else got the tickets and I went on a whim. Took me about 10 minutes to figure out I'd got it wrong.

Rocket Surgery

Quote from: gout_pony on February 10, 2018, 09:40:46 PM
Trying to read 120 Days of Sodom as a teenager, I reckon.

Never read it, but I did once skim through a non-subtitled copy of the film just to see if it was as bad as everyone made it out to be.

Spoiler alert: it is, and I'm still a bit worried that downloading it has got me on a list of some sort.

Quote from: to infect aside on February 10, 2018, 06:07:41 AM
Read that famous Palahniuk short story in I think The Guardian when I was ~12.

Me too, although that seemed so determinedly overboard with the gross stuff that it didn't bother me in the slightest.

Quote from: RedRevolver on February 20, 2018, 03:01:10 PM
Every Roald Dahl book. I mean, they're great, and I love Roald, but he was a very stable man pretending to be a complete psychopath.

I think The Twits is brilliant but I'm not entirely sure I should have been reading at that age.

Quote from: bushwick on February 09, 2018, 01:49:54 PM
Peter Sotos

Yeah, fuck that.

Dr Syntax Head

Quote from: FerriswheelBueller on April 28, 2018, 03:59:25 PM
I saw the film adaptation before reading the book, but only because I thought it was a film version of Kerouac's On The Road. This is genuinely true, somebody else got the tickets and I went on a whim. Took me about 10 minutes to figure out I'd got it wrong.

The actual film version of on the road is trash

At age nine, I read Killer Crabs by Guy N Smith, about giant crabs that overrun a Pacific island and mutilate victims with their huge pincers.  It also includes a couple of very hard-core sex scenes.  Months later, when I was just coming up for, or just past, my tenth birthday, I read The Incredible Melting Man, an adaption of a current film about a man infected with a disease that makes his flesh progressively decay and turns him into a cannibalistic psychotic.  The book includes an account of several extremely gory and brutal deaths.

saltysnacks

Reading Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground as a 14-year ended my childhood. The particular section that sticks in my mind is where he describes the successful people around him, who he knew at school, and his utter contempt for them. As my own experiences began to match those of The Underground Man, the effect strengthened, helped by my reading it every year until I turned 20. It was this book which made me realise I suffer from something similar to borderlines personality disorder and sociopathy. I don't trust people and also feel like I am not a person myself, and that people are going to find this out. To say it ended my childhood does not mean it altered me, rather that it enabled me to understand something about myself.

saltysnacks

Quote from: Rocket Surgery on April 29, 2018, 12:31:10 AM
Never read it, but I did once skim through a non-subtitled copy of the film just to see if it was as bad as everyone made it out to be.

Spoiler alert: it is, and I'm still a bit worried that downloading it has got me on a list of some sort.

It is a work of art, Pasolini was a genius.

Cloud

Reading Hitch Hikers Guide as a socially awkward child and being taught from Ford's perspective that small talk is ridiculous (which made me terrified of saying something "obvious" like talking about the weather so I'd often struggle for something to say), probably didn't do much for my social skills.

bushwick

Quote from: sevendaughters on April 22, 2018, 07:33:26 PM
I read a load of Jim Goad, like the Answer Me anthologies, and became a teen/early 20s edgelord, played in a grindcore band, just pure cringe.

Yeah I'm fucking ashamed to say I used to like him and all that Feral House/Apocalypse Culture stuff. Kinda realised a few years ago how fucked up all that shit was/had become. Goad writes absolute filth over at Taki Mag, one of the most horrible websites around. Seen a former friend and collaborator become fash from this stuff mixed with a little Boyd Rice, NSBM and god knows what else. All coinciding with the rise of the alt right and all in the name of "pissing off the PC dickheads".

sevendaughters

Quote from: bushwick on May 04, 2018, 02:17:57 PM
Yeah I'm fucking ashamed to say I used to like him and all that Feral House/Apocalypse Culture stuff. Kinda realised a few years ago how fucked up all that shit was/had become. Goad writes absolute filth over at Taki Mag, one of the most horrible websites around. Seen a former friend and collaborator become fash from this stuff mixed with a little Boyd Rice, NSBM and god knows what else. All coinciding with the rise of the alt right and all in the name of "pissing off the PC dickheads".

almost synchronous, Adam Parfrey of Feral House just died.

manticore

I just entered this thread to say that Martha Gellhorn's essay 'Justice at Night', an eye-witness account of a lynching in Mississippi, is something that has left a permanent scar on my consciousness for the past twenty-five years or so and which I fervently wish I'd never read. So I just googled it to check the details and it turns out it was completely fucking made up.

http://www.wallflowerdispatches.com/?p=405#more-405

This doesn't lessen the horror of the fact that actual lynchings actually did happen of course, but still this thread has indirectly done me a great service, for which I thank it most sincerely.