Earth-shatteringly, groin-churningly depressing books!

double the hate?

or is it one of those double negatives?

Money can't solve everything.

It helps, though.

well the world is more than black and white. agreed. i just have issue with the fact that poor folks like me and you and whoever else here won't be remembered like the money man. i don't hate him necessarily, just the context of the book. i think that's what i mean. we are remembering him he was published because he was rich. we wouldn't be having this discussion if he'd been my dad in the same situation because likely no one would have given him a read.

I come from a wealthy family and I still get suicidally depressed, psychotic, or just unhappy the way anyone else does. I still have to deal with dying loved ones, physical pain, social worries and the future.

Seriously, would you want to be "remembered like the money man" or would you want to be able to run around and do stuff? Would you rather be crippled and rich, and be remembered for a misery-memoir book?

i'm happy for you're rich.
i'm glad you get happy sometimes too:)
i'm sorry you get sad.
sincerely
(and you probably won't be remembered like Money Man either. so i'm ok with you. we're in the same boat.)

i'm not sure you understood what i meant by "money man." but maybe then again i just didn't understand you. but i will try. i said "money man" in the place of his actual name. the fact that he is remember at all AGAIN. rephrase/edit:

"i just have issue with the fact that poor folks like me and you and whoever else here won't be remembered."

didn't he have enough of a run bossing bitches like me around most of his professional career? inner dialogue, like rhetorical: please sir. tell me how to dress. please tell me who is beautiful. please tell me how much i need to spend. you've told me how to dress and who is beautiful for most of my life. now tell me your sadness. tell me how your brain explodes when you're taking a curve too fast in your million dollar ride. what is it like after that? because all the time you were living it up i didn't know what it was like to go without. now i need you to tell me what it's like to be sad. yours sir is a true sadness. let us remember him. AGAIN.

ps:
"Seriously, would you want to be "remembered like the money man" or would you want to be able to run around and do stuff?"
i can't run around and do much because i care for my crippled poor boy who can do even less than me.

"Would you rather be crippled and rich, and be remembered for a misery-memoir book?"
we're already crippled so the money would make it so that we could do things. my son would like water therapy everyday the rest of his life.

i like your phrase: misery-memoir.

It seems that you have a weird idea of what rich people are like. Money makes life easier. Nobody will deny that. But it doesn't lessen anyone's pain. It doesn't give meaning to life. It doesn't make the unendurable any more endurable. And it's not a reason to hold people with contempt.

You seem perfectly friendly, and your situation with your son is sad; but for that very reason, I'm surprised you can't hold someone with more empathy.

chewandswallow wrote:
i'm happy for you're rich.
i'm glad you get happy sometimes too:)
i'm sorry you get sad.
sincerely
(and you probably won't be remembered like Money Man either. so i'm ok with you. we're in the same boat.)
"But whether I'm rich or not should be irrelevant, at least in this discussion. It seems to me like you're making a lot of assumptions that don't really have any bearing on the matter at hand. So WHAT if he's rich? So WHAT if I won't be remembered like Money Man? What does that have to do with anything? He wrote a book. He couldn't move. He was rich. These are facts, not calls for judgment."

me, assumptions? probably. Money Man assumed i would kiss his ass and cry because he had a coupla rough years then died. he assumed i'd be enlightened by his suffering, i guess. but it's been so many years since i read that book i don't rememeber a much about it except he was french, and when i finished it i felt the way i'm saying now. for that i am glad.

what is the matter at hand? by now i don't know anymore because i have lost the point. i guess it went something like, i did not like this book. i cannot relate to this man.

"It seems that you have a weird idea of what rich people are like. Money makes life easier. Nobody will deny that. But it doesn't lessen anyone's pain. It doesn't give meaning to life. It doesn't make the unendurable any more endurable. And it's not a reason to hold people with contempt."
i would not deny any weird feelings i have. i almost live in a vaccum. i have contempt for the living memory of this man through his book when so many other people will be forgotten. he had time to shine before this book. i just wish he would die anonymously like the rest of us, but i'm an old girl and should know better by now.

"You seem perfectly friendly, and your situation with your son is sad; but for that very reason, I'm surprised you can't hold someone with more empathy."

i am sorta friendly but nowhere near perfectly anything. our situation is sad, but who gives a shit. by now i am not even sad for the man. i'm just tired of this.

thank you for fighting with me.
because grief unites us,
like the locked antlers of moose
who die on their knees in pairs.

In the Cemetery Where Al Joson Is Buried
reasons to live

the movie version of the story based on his book is more brutal than the one with ellen page, which is based on court transcripts of the case.

Yes, Jack Ketchum. That was one of the few books I had to put down after the graphic scenes to regain my composure.

I had to read Jude in university. I called it Jude the Obtuse, spent the entire novel wanting to smack the stupid out of him.

Read the Grapes of Wrath, and for whatever reason, did not have the same reaction. It was like reading about a family of dinosaurs walking into the tar pit.

The all-time most depressing book: The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein.

keri hulme - the bone people
milan kundera - the unbearable lightness of being

wally lamb books are pretty depressing, also

That book was built up for me so much before I read it. Honestly I was disappointed because I myself suffer from a like illness and it was more like talking to somebody who had the same problems.

The insulin treatment thing got me though. I'm so happy they don't do that anymore.
Now it's electro convulsive therapy they use in serious cases. But the bright side is that you are completely sedated when they do it.

Unlike poor Esther... I couldn't of gone through that without being put out like she did.
Damn people were tough back then!!!

I remember reading a few books and crying during certain parts but for the love of me I can't remember their names!!!

Does anyone know of a good book that isn't a romance or some sort of old school literary tale that is tear inducing?

I know there are a lot of sad books on here but I want one where I fall in love with the characters and they just get their life torn to shit!
I mean like a modern novel though. Fairly recent if possible (I have no qualms with popular fiction and the mainstream by the way.)

uuuuuhmmmm... the last two pages of books mentioned?

I'm not sure if i have stated this elsewhere, even in this thread, but The Road made me cry. not heaps, but i did tear up. in the last ten pages. and it sort of just creeped up on me.

it's the only books so far thathas made me taste salt in my mouth. a few other have made we well up a bit, or get almost there, but not all the way.

She didn't say she hated him she just said she couldn't relate. And if you're poor it's a fact that you cannot relate to someone like that unless you were once that way before yourself.

You can empathize with anyone but to relate to them you have to have walked in their shoes.

God I hate that cliche metaphor but nothing else comes to mind...

god, Pete. we're like literary soulmates or something.

/no homo, of course.

This is true. It's SCIENCE.

PENIS

penis

PENIS makes more sense than penis.

What is wrong with you? I never said that I couldn't finish reading The Bell Jar. I think it's offensive and rude to edit my post to what you wanted it to say.

I couldn't find where he got that quote...

I'm sorry... That may of been someone else saying that but it was in a long assed post. I may of given you credit for someone else's post. I'm sorry. :-\

Actually Bug wrote that:

It was actually bug that wrote that. I'm sorry. I must of gotten a case of dyslexia when posting that.

Problem solved, then. But going off that, I did finish The Bell Jar and loved it.

SURE, CAITLIN, YOU COULDN'T FINISH IT BECAUSE YOU WERE TOO BUSY CRYINGGGGGGGGGGGG!

That was the one book I didn't cry during. And that's rare. Everything else I'm like a newly widowed-woman.

Anyone here like Dennis Lehane? 'Cause if you thought Gone, Baby, Gone was depressing...

Absolutely miserable.

This is probably not what most would think of as "depressing", but I found Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago to be incredibly bleak, brutal, and overwhelmingly sad.

I would also add Haing Ngor's A Cambodian Odyssey. It's a survivors account of the Pol Pot regime. The film The Killing Fields was based off of it, but the book was far more horrific and violent than the movie could portray.

well i read Sterling Grey's Swimming to Cambodia. that's about as close as i can get to that, which is not very...

Upton Sinclair's The Jungle was one hell of a depressing read. If you want the kind of book where one bad thing happens after another and there's a lot of anger at human nature and the way society is run, this is the book for you.

I'm glad a few people have mentioned The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum. That's a painful, disturbing book.

I recently picked up The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake. It's rather bleak. I would also recommend Thomas Ligotti (start with Teatro Grottesco), The Trouble with Being Born (or anything else by E.M. Cioran), and Autumn Sonata by Georg Trakl.

Pretty much anything from Dostoevsky will do the trick. His novelas esspecially, but just be sure to stay away from some of his religious works, because sometimes they have a small glimmer of hope embedded in them. My all time favorite is "Notes from the Underground". It should litteraly be used as a textbook example of existenialism.

Read his Dream of a Ridiculous Man. It always leaves me hopeful.