Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie

Transgressive Literature...

Options
  • 08-01-2010 11:38pm
    #1
    diddlybit
    Registered Users Posts: 1,026 ✭✭✭


    ...is a special interest of mine. I enjoy texts that push a reader to the limits of what she/he is comfortable with. There 's very little that I cannot digest easily but there are a couple of instances in which I've had to read books with one eye shut or had to put them down for a break.

    In particular:

    A. M. Homes- The End of Alice
    Marquis de Sade- The 120 Days of Sodom
    Bret Easton Ellis- American Psycho
    Chuck Palahniuk- Haunted

    For a variety of reasons there were scenes in these books that forced me to leave them down for a short time and I learnt what taboos make me truly uncomfortable.

    Have any books had the same effect on anyone else?


Comments

  • Options
    #2
    randomguy
    Registered Users Posts: 285 ✭✭randomguy


    You should try this, I remember reading it with one eye closed it ws so repulsive in places...
    Exquisite Corpse


  • Options
    #3
    Morzadec
    Registered Users Posts: 5,952 ✭✭✭Morzadec


    You'll struggle to find anything more transgressive than David Peace's Red Riding Quartet (1974, 1977, 1980 and 1983). I'd recommend them, a bit different but well worth a read.


  • Options
    #4
    HalloweenJack
    Registered Users Posts: 7,220 ✭✭✭HalloweenJack


    I was going to say American Psycho. There are times when it get s a bit too graphic.

    Any of the LA Quartet by James Ellroy. They all have graphic depictions of sexual violence and disturbing inter-human relationships.


  • Options
    #5
    Coriolanus
    Registered Users Posts: 4,879 ✭✭✭Coriolanus


    diddlybit wrote: »
    Bret Easton Ellis- American Psycho
    About the only book I've read that disturbed me like American Psycho was the Wasp Factory.
    Quite short too, which is a blessing really. :pac:


  • Options
    #6
    ZorbaTehZ
    Registered Users Posts: 2,149 ✭✭✭ZorbaTehZ


    Crash - JG Ballard

    Extremely sexually explicit in many scenes, some of the imagery was really disgusting.


  • Advertisement
  • Options
    #7
    jimmymal
    Registered Users Posts: 228 ✭✭jimmymal


    naked lunch and cities of the red night- william s. burroughs
    found them quite difficult to swallow so to speak. i think a lot of his work is like that though apart from junkie perhaps which is more autobiographical i believe.

    concrete island from jg ballard also is tough going in that you become claustrophobic.


  • Options
    #8
    baalthor
    Registered Users Posts: 1,241 ✭✭✭baalthor


    randomguy wrote: »
    You should try this, I remember reading it with one eye closed it ws so repulsive in places...
    Exquisite Corpse
    Indeed ...
    The fridge scene was the worst bit ...
    HalloweenJack wrote: »
    Any of the LA Quartet by James Ellroy. They all have graphic depictions of sexual violence and disturbing inter-human relationships.

    American Tabloid (not part of the LA quartet) had one passage that really disturbed me when I read it; it's where one of the characters covertly observes the making of a porn movie.

    A not so obvious choice might be the first installment in the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. I can't think of many fantasy novels where the central character
    rapes a girl at the start


Advertisement