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Scenes in books that made you sick

Started by fucking ponderous, June 30, 2021, 07:13:27 PM

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fucking ponderous

Inspired by the many many threads about scenes in movies or television that made you sick. It's possible for a moving image to make me ill, but books are an entirely different prospect as their only weapon is language - sure I've read disgusting disturbing things, but the only passage in a book that truly physically revolted me to the point where I thought I need to put this down, was the rhinoplasty scene in Pynchon's V. I've never had a rhinoplasty but it felt like I was having one. Felt the same sensation you get at the dentist when they numb you and you feel that slight aching tingle at the back of your nose.

What of you all

EDIT: oh and Stanley's boat trip near the end of The Recognitions, though that was more a slow deep seated nauseous illness than an immediate one.

buttgammon

That scene in The Recognitions came to my mind too, funnily enough.

The worst Pynchon one is the coprophagy in Gravity's Rainbow. Brilliant book, but it makes me apprehensive about reading it again.

Egyptian Feast

Quote from: buttgammon on June 30, 2021, 08:35:53 PM
The worst Pynchon one is the coprophagy in Gravity's Rainbow. Brilliant book, but it makes me apprehensive about reading it again.

The 'great' thing about the Brigadier having his Pudding is that if you've made it two hundred or so pages into Gravity's Rainbow, you will have had to adjust to Pynchon's style, which I've always found makes me visualise the descriptions of things more vividly, possibly because I'm working harder to understand the text. That sequence is so descriptive in sensual terms, you can visualise the textures and...eurrghh, I'll stop there.

My addition to this thread would, not coincidentally, be the book I read directly after Gravity's Rainbow, James Herbert's The Rats. After 900 pages of Pynchon, Herbert's simple prose was so clear and vivid the whole book was a traumatic experience.

shagatha crustie

That bit in the Wasp Factory.

I realise there are about three or four things that could qualify here, but that bit.

chveik

loads of scenes in journey to the end of the night and other céline books

shagatha crustie

And when Hermione got turned into a cat in The Chamber of Secrets.

Magnum Valentino

I swore off Irvine Welsh after finishing Glue. Read eight or nine books, I've had enough, I thought. Got a copy of A Decent Ride in the pound shop and thought I'd take a punt in a moment of weakness, confusing a bargain for an excuse.

Actually tore the book in half upon getting to the section where
Spoiler alert
the disabled guy has sex with his dead girlfriend and the corpse burps.
[close]
.

Didn't just chuck it, destroyed it too, and it was worth that petty grasp at control.

Wet Blanket

Quote from: chveik on June 30, 2021, 11:06:21 PM
loads of scenes in journey to the end of the night and other céline books

There's a bit in Death on Credit where an
Spoiler alert
apparently mentally ill guy roots around in the wound of another guy who has blown his own brains out
[close]
that left me feeling horrified for about three days

jobotic

I'm not thinking about Pan Horror short story The Clinic ever again and you can't make me.

Mobius

The description of a 'snakebit horse' in Blood Meridian is pretty nasty

"They had but two animals and one of these had been snakebit in the desert and this thing now stood in the compound with its head enormously swollen and grotesque like some fabled equine ideation out of an Attic tragedy. It had been bitten on the nose and its eyes bulged out of the shapeless head in a horror of agony and it tottered moaning toward the clustered horses of the company with its misshapen muzzle swinging and drooling and its breath wheezing in the throttled pipes of its throat. The skin had split open along the bridge of its nose and the bone shone through pinkish white and its small ears looked like paper spills twisted into either side of a hairy loaf of dough. The American horses began to mill and separate along the wall at its approach and it swung after them blindly. There was a flurry of thumps and kicks and the horses began to circle the compound. A small mottled stallion belonging to one of the Delawares came out of the remuda and struck at the thing twice and then turned and buried its teeth in its neck. Out of the mad horse's throat came a sound that brought men to the door"

And the dead babies scene obviously...

Pink Gregory

There's a rather vivid description of a bayonetting or bayonetting technique in the Wind Up Bird Chronicle, something about 'jumbling up the organs' that made me wince, without all that much gore.

kalowski

Quote from: shagatha crustie on June 30, 2021, 10:56:43 PM
That bit in the Wasp Factory.

I realise there are about three or four things that could qualify here, but that bit.
My first thought too.

jamiefairlie

I read Trainspotting on the train commuting to work when it first came out and I had to regularly put it aside and do some deep breathing to avoid fainting/being sick at the drug stuff. 

Mr Farenheit

No blood and gore but the part in The Getaway where they hide in a coffin-sized cave for a couple of days really made me queasy.

shagatha crustie

Quote from: Pink Gregory on July 01, 2021, 06:06:39 AM
There's a rather vivid description of a bayonetting or bayonetting technique in the Wind Up Bird Chronicle, something about 'jumbling up the organs' that made me wince, without all that much gore.

Oh Christ, you've just reminded me, what was that Murakami book where someone gets flayed alive? Think it might be in Kafka on the Shore?

ASFTSN

That fucking bit The Tin Drum with the horses head and the eels.

13 schoolyards

The end of Glamorama where there's the plane crash and it goes on for pages and pages about the way that every single person on board is torn to shreds

Pink Gregory

Quote from: shagatha crustie on July 01, 2021, 08:24:51 AM
Oh Christ, you've just reminded me, what was that Murakami book where someone gets flayed alive? Think it might be in Kafka on the Shore?

I have a feeling that that is also the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, what with the whole Boris the Manskinner business.

holyzombiejesus

There's a bit in Paul Kingsnorth's Beast about a man trying to walk on a broken leg and it made me/ contributed to me fainting on the train.

Small Man Big Horse

I'm surprised no one's mentioned
Spoiler alert
the rat in the vagina bit
[close]
in American Psycho, when I was 17 it caused me to stop reading it, though I did manage to finish myself it off in my twenties.

I also remember as a very young teenager reading a Clive Barker short story involving a car (or perhaps a lorry) crash and the two drivers crawling out of the wreckage covered in blood and then having vigorous gay sex, which was a bit much for my confused teenage mind, but after a quick google I cant find any mention of it so perhaps it was just a particularly erotic dream.

kalowski

Quote from: Small Man Big Horse on July 03, 2021, 02:26:16 PM
I also remember as a very young teenager reading a Clive Barker short story involving a car (or perhaps a lorry) crash and the two drivers crawling out of the wreckage covered in blood and then having vigorous gay sex, which was a bit much for my confused teenage mind, but after a quick google I cant find any mention of it so perhaps it was just a particularly erotic dream.
Could have been James Herbert. Most of his books had something like that. Like The Fog has the PE class going crazy and the boys cutting off the teacher's erect cock with a pair of garden shears.

Egyptian Feast

The bit in the Dr Benway chapter in Naked Lunch where the inmates escape and run amok. One fella delivers a monologue while having it off with someone's eye socket, including the observation 'this brain atrophy already and dry as a grandmother's cunt'. Yuk.

There's loads of bits in James Ellroy books that stick with me, like the fate of Ward Liddell's girlfriend in the Underworld USA trilogy, which is revealed quite off-handedly in a between-chapter telephone transcript of two minor characters bullshitting,
Spoiler alert
one of them casually mentions he was present when she was tortured so badly she bit her tongue off and therefore was of no further use, so they just shot her.
[close]
He doesn't ever go into extreme detail, but gives you just enough to paint a messy picture.

On re-reading his major novels, one thing that struck me was the amount of times somebody finds or plants a 'shit-caked' dildo in an apartment they've broken into. It raises so many questions. Why would you leave a dildo lying around your gaff with shit all over it? It's super unhygienic. As for the corrupt dicks and pigs that plant them, where do they get them from? I doubt it's the kind of thing you can pick up on the black market, so are these thugs buying up dildos from wherever you can get sex toys in 1950s and then smearing them in their own shit? It's either that or using them for their intended purpose, which you think would be against these tough guy's beliefs. Very odd behaviour.

jobotic

Ha! Me and friend who both like reading Ellroy are always mentioning shit-caked dildos like a couple of giggling schoolboys.

I really must a fuck pad.

Can't remember who Ward's girlfriend is.

Egyptian Feast

Quote from: jobotic on July 03, 2021, 06:48:08 PM
Ha! Me and friend who both like reading Ellroy are always mentioning shit-caked dildos like a couple of giggling schoolboys.

I really must a fuck pad.

Can't remember who Ward's girlfriend is.

I'm glad I'm not the only Ellroy fan who finds that funny. Somebody should ask him about it when he tours the next one.

I've always wanted a fuck pad in 1950s L.A. If I had one and some bastard broke in, any dildos they found would have been thoroughly wiped clean since the last use.

She's in The Cold Six Thousand and then her death is briefly mentioned in Blood's A Rover. I'm hazy beyond that, it's been a while since I read them, but that bit stuck with me.

Quote from: kalowski on July 03, 2021, 04:34:01 PM
Could have been James Herbert. Most of his books had something like that. Like The Fog has the PE class going crazy and the boys cutting off the teacher's erect cock with a pair of garden shears.

Herbert's The Rats, The Fog and The Dark are three of the most nihilistic books I've ever read.  The first of those starts with that potted history of the former white collar worker who gets into a relationship with the young co-worker.  He ends up sacked, then drinking heavily, then going downhill till he's homeless.  It's at the point where he wakes up after a drunken binge in a blind alley that he gets graphically torn to pieces by the rats.  Arguably it's rather homophobic in the way it seems to imply this man has got his just comeuppance for being actively gay.

Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: kalowski on July 03, 2021, 04:34:01 PM
Could have been James Herbert. Most of his books had something like that. Like The Fog has the PE class going crazy and the boys cutting off the teacher's erect cock with a pair of garden shears.

Ah, that's interesting, I was a massive horror fan back then and read a sod load of authors including Herbert, so I might have just got them mixed up.

That section in a Chuck Palahniuk book with the self-inflicted prolapse in a swimming pool.  Not a pleasant read.

non capisco

Quote from: Mobius on July 01, 2021, 12:58:04 AM
The description of a 'snakebit horse' in Blood Meridian is pretty nasty

"They had but two animals and one of these had been snakebit in the desert and this thing now stood in the compound with its head enormously swollen and grotesque like some fabled equine ideation out of an Attic tragedy. It had been bitten on the nose and its eyes bulged out of the shapeless head in a horror of agony and it tottered moaning toward the clustered horses of the company with its misshapen muzzle swinging and drooling and its breath wheezing in the throttled pipes of its throat. The skin had split open along the bridge of its nose and the bone shone through pinkish white and its small ears looked like paper spills twisted into either side of a hairy loaf of dough. The American horses began to mill and separate along the wall at its approach and it swung after them blindly. There was a flurry of thumps and kicks and the horses began to circle the compound. A small mottled stallion belonging to one of the Delawares came out of the remuda and struck at the thing twice and then turned and buried its teeth in its neck. Out of the mad horse's throat came a sound that brought men to the door"

That is some dynamite prose. I need to reread that book.

Mr Farenheit

Quote from: Egyptian Feast on July 03, 2021, 07:13:41 PM
I'm glad I'm not the only Ellroy fan who finds that funny. Somebody should ask him about it when he tours the next one.

I've always wanted a fuck pad in 1950s L.A. If I had one and some bastard broke in, any dildos they found would have been thoroughly wiped clean since the last use.

She's in The Cold Six Thousand and then her death is briefly mentioned in Blood's A Rover. I'm hazy beyond that, it's been a while since I read them, but that bit stuck with me.

Another fan of shit caked dildos and fuck pads here!
I'd like like to think my fuck pad would have dildos that are cleaned after use but maybe if my diet was solely whikey and bennies I wouldn't care.

Egyptian Feast

LOL, that probably explains it.

It's a horrible place, but I would love to spend a little time in the world of James Ellroy, though I'd try to give the racist pigs and mobsters a wide berth. I have not achieved many of the things I set out to do in life, but one thing nobody can take away from me is that he greeted me with "Hey, Daddy-O!" at a book signing. I wouldn't have minded if he didn't bother signing my book after that (and it disappointingly wasn't as barking as some of his inscriptions I've seen, but he was distracted by telling me he felt David Peace lacked courage).