Book Recommendations

[Cyril Tourneur]

I've thought about creating a thread about books I'd like to recommend; my first thought was that a social group would be more suitable but there would have been the lack of public acess, so here's my first one...hopefully other members will also contribute

Adrian Ross: The Hole of the Pit

This novel throws you straight into the centre of the English Civil War, that fought between the King and Parliament in the 17th Century. Ross paints a detailed backdrop to the action, told from the perspective of a narrator who has remained neutral through the conflict, and finds himself enlisted by a village to act as their ambassador to his cousin. His cousin, who fights for the king, has been forced by Cromwell's Roundheads to flee to his ancestral home sited at the centre of a mist enshrouded marsh. From there he has ravaged the surrounding countryside, especially the nearby village of Marsham.

The marsh itself is one with a history, one dominated by stories of an ancient evil that dwells beneath it in a pit. The narrator's ancestors built the house, a keep, after several failed attempts at building on the marsh. It is with knowledge of all these stories that he goes to parly with his cousin, only to be taken prisoner. It isn't long before the mystery of the marsh starts impinging on the lives of the narrator and his captors, an oppressive atmosphere hangs over the whole novel, one which becomes more oppressive as time goes on and tragedy increasingly overwhelms them. It is a brilliant work of psychological horror, one where the horror strikes seemingly at random. The sense of claustrophobia increases as those waiting to be besieged by Cromwell's forces find themselves instead beseiged by something altogether different. The conflicts within the walls of the keep only heighten the effect of the horror coming from without, and as the novel builds towards its doom-laiden conclusion, it becomes very difficult to see a light at the end of the tunnel. An early classic of supernatural horror that definately deserves to be rescued from obscurity.

 

[Cyril Tourneur]

"In this world we spent our time killing or adoring, or both together. 'I hate you! I adore you!' We keep going, we fuel and refuel, we pass on our life to a biped of the next century, with frenzy, or any cost, as if it were the greatest of pleasures to perpetuate ourselves, as if, when all's said and done, it would make us immortal. One way or another, kissing is as indispensable as scratching." (from Journey to the End of Night)

"Andre Gide hailed the book as an instant classic, while Leon Trotsky wrote that Celine 'had walked into the pantheon of great literature like walking into his own house.' No less than the stern figure of George Orwell, who described JOURNEY as 'a cry of unbearable disgust, a voice from the cesspool,' still judged it to be one of the best books he had ever read....The simple reason for this is that JOURNEY TO THE END OF THE NIGHT is shocking, powerful, funny, moving and, above all, a great story well told. It is also a journey into the horrors of the 20th century....Reading JOURNEY is a challenge and a threat on every moral, political or philosophical front. It is this aspect of the novel that can make you feel sick, sad and despairing all at the same time. But in the end, it is Celine's language that takes the novel to a higher place, where poetry and vision meet the idiom of the street....And this is what makes Celine--even more than his despised enemy Marcel Proust--the most necessary author of the French 20th century."

 

[Cyril Tourneur]

Only Georges Bataille could write, of an eyeball removed from a corpse, that "the caress of the eye over the skin is so utterly, so extraordinarily gentle, and the sensation is so bizarre that it has something of a rooster's horrible crowing." Bataille has been called a "metaphysician of evil," specializing in blasphemy, profanation, and horror. Story of the Eye, written in 1928, is his best-known work; it is unashamedly surrealistic, both disgusting and fascinating, and packed with seemingly endless violations. It's something of an underground classic, rediscovered by each new generation.

In 1928, Georges Bataille published this first novel under a pseudonym, a legendary shocker that uncovers the dark side of the erotic by means of forbidden obsessive fantasies of excess and sexual extremes. A classic of pornographic literature, Story of the Eye finds the parallels in Sade and Nietzsche and in the investigations of contemporary psychology; it also forecasts Bataille's own theories of ecstasy, death and transgression which he developed in later work.

 

[Cyril Tourneur]

The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges ... - Google Buchsuche


A sociologist, philosopher, literary theorist and fiction writer, who referred to himself as "a saint, perhaps a madman," George Bataille made a habit of exploding the categories which we use to order our business of everyday life. This strange yet lucidly written book is not so much an interpretation of his style of thought and ideas, but rather, a no-holds barred attempt to pursue Bataille's ideas to their conclusion. The result is an analysis of Bataille through the application of his style of thought and ideas rather than through more conventional methods of academic argument. Addressing such deviance, political and legal theory, the history of religion or poetry, Land proves that to write discursively about Bataille it is sufficient to be a scholar, but to spread the virulent horror of his writings, it is necessary to be an uncompromising devotee of Bataille's thought.

 

[Cyril Tourneur]

Posthuman departs from the usual art books because it isn't about representation of an artist's work - it's a work of art in itself or, perhaps more accurately, an exhibition of art. A lot of the pictures or collages probably don't 'exist' outside the book, and unconventional close-ups are used to highlight details. Many people must view Joachim Luetke's sculptures and pictures as nightmarish or obscene, but to me they represent true beauty. Machines become human, humans become machines, visits to the western lands, Egyptian mythology creeping in through the grey room. I can see echoes of Wiener Aktionismus and NSK in Joachim Luetke's art. Luetke shares with the former a fascination with death and katharis, and with the latter the use of metal blades and imagery from the Third Reich. He has, however, created his own universe. For instance 'Dark Karma' is a sculpture of small children holding their chicken claws together as hands looking like mummies from the future, wholly on top of a TV with a cutting blade as a gloria. At the same time the children have an eerie beauty to them, a stillness that transcends any definition of time or space. Joachim Luetke's art has been a revelation to me because he has managed to combine so many elements that fascinate me: darkness, innocence, medicine, machines...I urge everyone who is interested in the subject matter at least to check out his web site and get a copy of Posthuman.

 

[Cyril Tourneur]

ok...now two classics which are a must have...

H.R. Giger's work has, in my opinion, the distinction of being the most disturbing art embraced by the public since that of Hieronymous Bosch. Here is a great introduction (if you don't mind the price tag) to the work of such an artist.

This book is not for the young or the easily disturbed. The world of Giger is quite intentionally the world of nightmares, with Freudian symbolism, decay, and perverse sexuality abounding. But there is also a beauty behind it all, in the metallic shine of his futuristic nymphs or the strange landscapes of endless babies' faces which make us realize the strangeness inherent in the everyday. Instead of using art to try and transcend reality, Giger pulls us down into the darkest parts of what we see around us, and refuses to let us go. In this way he shows us that perhaps that darkness is not so terrifying as it may seem, and he accustoms us to facing that in ourselves. Not only is such confrontation healthy, it may very well be essential, and Giger is a skilled tour guide when it comes to areas of the mind and psyche that not many artists have dared to explore.

The second Necronomicon volume is a worthy companion to this one, but if you must have only one Giger book this is the one I recommend.

 

[Ilsa]

Oh...There are SO MANY books i would reccomend, but i'll start with two titles which are pretty bizarre and controversial:

-Apocalypse culture
-Apocalypse cultures II (both edited by Adam Parfrey)

There's also the "search inside" option, so you can get an idea of the contents

http://www.amazon.com/Apocalypse-Culture-Adam-Parfrey/dp/0922915059/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221051354&sr=8-1

From Wiki (sorry!! )
Apocalypse Culture is a book edited by Adam Parfrey. It is a collection of texts showcasing a variety of examples of, and reactions to, eschatological madness, extreme perversion, "conspiracy theories", and aesthetic nihilism.
First published by Amok Press in 1987 (ISBN 0-941693-02-3), an Expanded & Revised Edition was published by Feral House (2) in 1990 as a paperback (ISBN 0-922915-05-9).
It features a cover painting by Joe Coleman.

Apocalypse Culture was awarded Best Nonfiction Work of the Year by Readercon in 1987.
A sequel to it, titled Apocalypse Culture II (3), was published in 2000 (ISBN 0-922915-57-1).

 

[Cyril Tourneur]

Djuna Barnes: Nightwood
(wikipedia)

Barnes's reputation as a writer was made when Nightwood was published in England in 1936 in an expensive edition by Faber and Faber, and in America in 1937 by Harcourt, Brace and Company, with an added introduction by T. S. Eliot.

The novel, set in Paris in the 1920s, revolves around the lives of five characters, two of whom are based on Barnes and Wood, and it reflects the circumstances surrounding the ending of their relationship. In his introduction, Eliot praises Barnes' style, which while having "prose rhythm that is prose style, and the musical pattern which is not that of verse, is so good a novel that only sensibilities trained on poetry can wholly appreciate it."

Due to concerns about censorship, Eliot edited Nightwood to soften some language relating to sexuality and religion. An edition restoring these changes, edited by Cheryl J. Plumb, was published by Dalkey Archive Press in 1995.

Dylan Thomas described Nightwood as "one of the three great prose books ever written by a woman," while William Burroughs called it "one of the great books of the twentieth century." It was number 12 on a list of the top 100 gay books compiled by The Publishing Triangle in 1999.

 

[Cyril Tourneur]

“The universe appears to me like an immense, inexorable torture-garden…Passions, greed, hatred, and lies; social institutions, justice, love, glory, heroism, and religion: these are its monstrous flowers and its hideous instruments of eternal human suffering.”


Octave Mirbeau: The Torture Garden

Following the twin trails of desire and depravity to a shocking, sadistic paradise - a garden in China where torture is practiced as an art form - a dissolute Frenchman discovers the true depths of degradation beyond his prior bourgeois imaginings. Entranced by a resolute Englishwoman whose capacity for debauchery knows no bounds, he capitulates to her every whim amid an ecstatic yet tormenting incursion of visions, scents, caresses, pleasures, horrors, and fantastic atrocities. The Torture Garden is exceptional for its detailed descriptions of sexual euphoria and exquisite torture, its political critique of government corruption and bureaucracy, and its revolutionary portrait of a woman - which challenges even contemporary models of feminine authority. This is one of the most truly original works ever imagined. Beyond providing richly poetic experience, it will stimulate anyone interested in the always-contemporary problem of the limits of experience and sensation. As part of the continuing struggle against censorship and especially self-censorship, it will remain a landmark in the fight against all that would suppress the creation of a far freer world. Written in 1899, this fabulously rare novel was once described as "the most sickening work of art of the 19th century."

 

[1kgGehacktesBitte]

Very nice books you are presenting here. I know most of them, especially the Necronomicon books and The story of the eye by Bataille. I can remember that the story of the eyes had such a dusturbing impact on me, when I read it in younger days, and the affiliation of death and sexuality has something to do with religious experience I think.
But the first time I read it, it was like having an alternative for a pornographic movie.

Here is a book I´d like to recommend

Hermann Hesse -Steppenwolf

A paperback edition from the 1960s begins with a brief note from the author, dated 1961. In this note, Hesse states that Steppenwolf was "more often and more violently misunderstood" than any of his other books. Hesse felt that his readers focused only on the suffering and despair that are depicted in Harry Haller's life, thereby missing the possibility of transcendence and healing. This might be due to the fact that most Western readers at that time were not very familiar with Buddhist philosophy. The notion of a human being consisting of myriad fragments of different souls completely contradicts Judeo-Christian theologies. Also in the novel, the character Pablo instructs the protagonist Harry Haller to relinquish his personality--at least for the duration of his journey through the corridors of the Magic Theater. Harry needs to learn to use laughter to overcome the tight grip of his personality, to literally laugh at his personality until it falls away into many small pieces. Again, this concept runs counter to the ego-based culture of the West.

This book is also one of my greatest litarary discovery. Hesse himself was much diffenrent than his contemporaries and had to duffer under this circumstances. This book belongs to those, that showed me the way I think in an more versed language, the same way Ligotti did.

 

[Ilsa]

This book is hilarious! I don't agree with her "thesis" but reading the manifesto is an experience (and very funny)
plus the italian edition is aesthetically appealing

SCUM Manifesto (Society For Cutting Up Men) is a tract written in 1968 by Valerie Solanas that calls for a violent revolution to create an all-female society by KILLING ALL MEN.

Solanas advocating the elimination of males:

"Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex."

Assertion that males are inherently inferior to females, and her account of genetic differences between males and females:

"Retaining the male has not even the dubious purpose of reproduction. The male is a biological accident: the y(male) chromosome is an incomplete x(female) chromosome, that is, has an incomplete set of chromosomes. In other words, the male is an incomplete female, a walking abortion, aborted at the gene stage. To be male is to be deficient, emotionally limited; maleness is a deficiency disease and males are emotional cripples."

On the role of the individual in society:

"A true community consists of individuals - not mere species members, not couples - respecting each other's individuality and privacy, at the same time interacting with each other mentally and emotionally - free spirits in free relation to each other and co-operating with each other to achieve common ends. Traditionalists say the basic unit of "society" is the family; "hippies" say the tribe; no-one says the individual."

Describing her vision of a coming revolution:

"SCUM will keep on destroying, looting, fucking-up and killing until the money-work system no longer exists and automation is completely instituted or until enough women co-operate with SCUM to make violence unnecessary to achieve these goals."

"The sick, irrational men, those who attempt to defend themselves against their disgustingness, when they see SCUM barreling down on them, will cling in terror to Big Mama with her Big Bouncy Boobies, but Boobies won't protect them against SCUM; Big Mama will be clinging to Big Daddy, who will be in the corner shitting in his forceful, dynamic pants. Men who are rational, however, won't kick or struggle or raise a distressing fuss, but will just sit back, relax, enjoy the show and ride the waves to their demise."

On sexuality:

"Sex is not part of a relationship: on the contrary, it is a solitary experience, non-creative, a gross waste of time. The female can easily -- far more easily than she may think -- condition away her sex drive, leaving her completely cool and cerebral and free to pursue truly worthy relationships and activities; but the male, who seems to dig women sexually and who seeks out constantly to arouse them, stimulates the highly sexed female to frenzies of lust, throwing her into a sex bag from which few women ever escape. The lecherous male excited the lustful female; he has to -- when the female transcends her body, rises above animalism, the male, whose ego consists of his penis, will disappear."

Describing her understanding of medicine and mortality:

"All diseases are curable, and the aging process and death are due to disease; it is possible, therefore, never to age and to live forever. In fact the problems of aging and death could be solved within a few years, if an all-out, massive scientific assault were made upon the problem. This, however, will not occur with the male establishment"

Asserting that all 'un-creative' labor in society could become easily automated, despite the then non-existence of sophisticated computers:

"A completely automated society can be accomplished very simply and quickly once there is a public demand for it. The blueprints for it are already in existence, and its construction will take only a few weeks with millions of people working on it. Even though off the money system, everyone will be most happy to pitch in and get the automated society built; it will mark the beginning of a fantastic new era, and there will be a celebration atmosphere accompanying the construction."

Her predictions regarding the economic basis of male-power, potential simplicity of scientific education, and the ultimate decline in heterosexuality:

"After the elimination of money there will be no further need to kill men; they will be stripped of the only power they have over psychologically independent females. They will be able to impose themselves only on the doormats, who like to be imposed on. The rest of the women will be busy solving the few remaining unsolved problems before planning their agenda for eternity and Utopia -- completely revamping educational programs so that millions of women can be trained within a few months for high level intellectual work that now requires years of training (this can be done very easily once our educational goal is to educate and not perpetuate an academic and intellectual elite); solving the problems of disease and old age and death and completely redesigning our cities and living quarters. Many women will for a while continue to think they dig men, but as they become accustomed to female society and as they become absorbed in their projects, they will eventually come to see the utter uselessness and banality of the male."

 

[Cyril Tourneur]

"The edge of a colossal jungle, so dark-green as to be almost black, fringed with white surf, ran straight, like a ruled line, far, far away along a blue sea whose glitter was blurred by a creeping mist. The sun was fierce, the land seemed to glisten and rip with steam."

Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, written in 1899 is a seminal work about the ills of colonialism, as well as a postmodern look at the subject of mankind. Conrad's book had a crucial influence on five important works of the twentieth century: J. G. Frazier's book The Golden Bough. Jessie L. Weston's book From Ritual to Romance, T. S. Elliott's poem the Waste Land and Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces.

Just a taste of the plot reels you in! Marlow, the narrator of Heart of Darkness and Conrad's alter ego, is hired by an ivory-trading company to sail a steamboat up an unnamed river whose shape on the map resembles "an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country and its tail lost in the depths of the land" (8). His destination is a post where the company's brilliant, ambitious star agent, Mr. Kurtz, is stationed. Kurtz has collected legendary quantities of ivory, but, Marlow learns along the way, is also rumored to have sunk into unspecified savagery. Marlow's steamer survives an attack by blacks and picks up a load of ivory and the ill Kurtz; Kurtz, talking of his grandiose plans, dies on board as they travel, downstream.

Sketched with only a few bold strokes, Kurtz's image has nonetheless remained in the memories of millions of readers: the lone white agent far up the great river, with his dreams of grandeur,his great store of precious ivory, and his fiefdom carved out of the African jungle. Perhaps more than anything, we remember Marlow, on the steamboat, looking through binoculars at what he thinks are ornamental knobs atop the fence posts in front of Kurtz's house and then finding that each is "black, dried, sunken, with closed eyelids-a head that seemed to sleep at the top of that pole, and with the shrunken dry lips showing a narrow white line of the teeth"

 

[Cyril Tourneur]

Notes From The Underground is Dostoevsky's grand look at the human condition from the perspective of a man living on the fringes of society. The short novel provides the key to much of the author's later and more fleshed out novels.

Presented in two parts the novel tells the story of the unnamed Undergound Man who is forced into a life of inaction by the reason driven society that he finds himself in.

Part I of the novel is a long monologue to an invisible audience which explains how the Underground Man came into existence. It is a masterpiece of Existentialist fiction and has been the cornerstone for many later writers including Freud and Camus. The ideas expressed in this part of the novel deal with the character's interactions with himself. This is also the mother of all anti-hero literature. Through the Underground Man's speech we identify him as an over sensitive man of great intelligence. We begin to identify with the character and understand him. While this part of the novel is idea laden it presents one of the great characters of modern fiction.

Part II of the novel is much more accessible to today's reader. This part of the novel deals with the Underground Man's interactions with the society around him. It is in this section that we see that he incapable of reacting in a normal way with the persons that he comes into contact with. He is not the rational man of Part I but a person driven to inaction by his own personal circumstances. He is spiteful, mean spirited and incapable of giving or receiving love to or from others.

 

[Ilsa]

Tobias recomended Céline's Journey to the end of the night
I also recomend the more controversial

(Trifles for a massacre)
Céline was accused of antisemitism during the Nazi period and subsequently lived in exile for a number of years. While he did not collaborate with the Nazis in any fashion[13], the climate of blame in the aftermath of World War II led to his imprisonment in Denmark for eighteen months from 1945-1947 with the Danes even refusing an extradition request from France citing insufficient proof that he actively collaborated with the Nazis.[14][15] During the rise of Nazi Germany, he wrote three typically cynical and misanthropic pamphlets interpreted to be antisemitic: Bagatelles pour un massacre (Trifles for a Massacre) (1937), L'École des cadavres (School of Corpses) (1938) and Les Beaux draps (The Fine Mess) (1941), the last one published during the occupation of France. These led to the widespread blame and hatred encountered and even predicted by Celine in the postwar years.[16]
The massacre that Céline had in mind when he entitled his first overtly antisemitic pamphlet Bagatelles pour un massacre was that of the "goïms," or Gentiles, who he thought would be led in slaughter once again in another great war.[17] Céline had been mobilized during the First World War where he received a serious arm injury[18] in the course of a mission for which he had volunteered. In later years he was to claim that he had undergone trepanation at the hands of army surgeons in 1915. This claim is complicated because the fictional character Robinson claims to have undergone this procedure in Journey to the End of the Night. This was a false claim invented for reasons that grew out of Céline's desire to picture himself as an unjustly persecuted loner.[19] Records from the Paul Brousse Hospital in Villejuif on the outskirts of Paris tell us that only his arm was operated on.[20]
Although Céline's political ideals here appeared to have commonalities with the Nazis, he was publicly critical of Adolf Hitler, whom he called a "Jew", and of "Aryan baloney".[21][22] His fascist views are evident in L'Ecole des cadavres where he calls for a Franco-German alliance in order to counter the alliance between British intelligence and "the international Jewish conspiracy"[23]
Céline was a friend of the German-French sculptor Arno Breker. He visited Breker last time in Germany in 1943 at Brekers Castle Jaeckelsbruch near Berlin. After the Vichy regime fell in 1944, Céline escaped judgment by fleeing to Sigmaringen, Germany, accompanying the Vichy Chief of State, Henri Phillipe Pétain, and President, Pierre Laval. For a brief time Céline acted as Laval's personal physician. A fictional account of this period can be found in Céline’s novel "D'un château l'autre" (Castle to Castle), published in 1960.
After the fall of the Nazi government Céline subsequently fled to Denmark (1945). Branded a collaborator, he was convicted in absentia (1950) in France to one year of imprisonment and declared a national disgrace. He was subsequently granted amnesty and returned to France in 1951.

(Thanks again Wiki)

 

[bendk]

Great thread! I love book recommendations. I am familiar with most of the books. I have even read a few of them.

 

[Neurospaston]

Ilsa, an original 1938 copy of Bagatelles pour un massacre lies here in my library together with Voyage au bout de la nuit but I hesitate to read them as Céline's writing is famous for its use of "argot" making it hard to understand even for French people... I think it's worth trying reading it in French though...
In my turn I recommend:
Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima

 

[trieffiewiles]

Thank you Neurospaston, I was beginning to wonder if anyone else here liked Mishima.

 

[Cyril Tourneur]

The story concerns young and intelligent Oxford graduate Nicholas Urfe, who takes up with Alison Kelly, an Australian girl he meets at a party in London. In order to get away from an increasingly serious relationship with her, Nicholas accepts a post teaching English at the Lord Byron School in the Greek island of Phraxos. This provides a convenient "escape" for Nicholas as the affair with Alison gets more serious than he had hoped for. Bored, depressed, disillusioned, and overwhelmed by the Mediterranean island, Nicholas contemplates suicide, then takes to long solitary walks. On one of these walks he stumbles upon the wealthy Greek recluse Maurice Conchis, who may or may not have collaborated with the Nazis during the Second World War and apparently lives alone on his island estate.

Nicholas is gradually drawn into Conchis's psychological games, his paradoxical views on life, his mysterious persona, and his eccentric masques. At first these various aspects of what the novel terms the "godgame" seem to Nicholas to be a joke, but as they grow more elaborate and intense, Nicholas's ability to determine what is real and what is not vanishes. Against his will and knowledge he becomes a performer in the godgame, and realizes that the enactments of the Nazi occupation, the absurd playlets after de Sade, and the obscene parodies of Greek myths are not about Conchis's life, but his own.

The novel presents an extraordinary series of descriptions of both places and events, and paints an unusually vivid picture of the surroundings in which the action takes place.

 

[trieffiewiles]

'The Blind Owl' by Sadegh Hedayat is an overlooked classic of madness. Since my peers of age (early 20's) are quickly becoming incapable of reading anything but text messages, the only way for it to become recognized, if this is at all important, would be to have it serialized, it being such a slim novel that its every aspect is important, by a talented director like Lynch, or Polanski, or Fincher. Also seeing as how people are capable of being frightened by off-the-wall 'torture porn' as David Cronenberg refers to it (another possible candidate), like SAW or Hostel, this book being faithfully adapted by one of the mentioned artists of vision would, and could only, cause mass hysteria . . . but this will never happen.

It basically revolves around a solitary artist-by-trade who harbors an absolutely fatalistic opium addiction, and world view for that matter. In the depths of his reflections, events occuring in the present are interwoven with those of his actual, or feverishly imagined past, as he is repeatedly visited by a man enshrouded 'neath shawls and turbin, whose visible features are unmoving and mask-like, who at unprecedented moments breaks the silence with a sinister, elemental sounding laugh that seems to issue not from his lips but somewhere deep within his body. Also and angelic archetype of feminine perfection who either dies or disappears when he reaches her, an wanted wife who is both revered and despised in equal measure, and some other more so surreal and blackly humorous characters populate this book.

Anyway, Mr. Hedayat, a Persian of aristocratic birth I believe, eventually ended his life while staying in some European city, probably Paris, I just don't want to say 'I believe again, -woops never mind. By the time one finishes the book, he or she probably wouldn't be surprised. Cheers

 

[trieffiewiles]

You put 'Magus' up as I was writing the last one, and though mine was good, 'The Magus' is much better. That's a great cover as well.