Re: OT: Poll - Most Disturbing Book You've Read


"Randy Money" <rbmoney@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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kat >^.^< wrote:
"Randy Money" <rbmoney@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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akarim1462@xxxxxxx wrote:

DISTURBING BOOKS - great thread


The Lottery by Shirley Jackson

I'd add _The Haunting of Hill House_. I was young and kept thinking
something would stay Eleanor's trajectory, but it the inevitable happened
and it was tragic and deeply affecting.


Add:
_Perfume_ by Patrick Susskind
_In the Lake of the Woods_ by Tim O'Brien
_The Killer Inside Me_ by Jim Thompson (pulpy but effective)

Randy M.


That reminds me of Camus's L'Estranger, which I read, sort of by
accident, in my rather early teens. As an unsophisticated reader, I
read it at face value. Very disturbing--the first time I'd come
across a character completely devoid of humanity. Well, that was my
take.

The Thompson above would be a variation on the Camus, sort of. Did you
know Camus is supposed to have written _The Stranger_ while under the
influence of James M. Cain's _The Postman Always Rings Twice_.


No, I missed that bit. Oddly, none of the lit classes I've taken have even
mentioned Camus or the Cain. Then again, most of the classes I took didn't
cover modern lit. Except the one with the wacky chipmonk-looking instructor
who sat Budda-like on a front table, whose first word to the class was the
famous "F" word. That was the highlight of his course. He sucked as an
instructor, so I guess that was his version of "Look! A Seagull!"


Ghost Story kept me up to the wee hours reading it, and kept me up til
dawn creeping it over.
The Lottery was only disturbing in that I could see humans getting to
that point. We aren't that far away, sometimes. More disturbing was
Flannery O'Conner's short story about the creep that kills an entire
family (can't think of the name now, don't want to).

The look away, Kat.

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Farther away, Kat.
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"A Good Man is Hard to Find," pretty much the only story by O'Connor that
I've enjoyed.

Randy M.



Heh. Thanks for the warning, but I never could take orders. Yeah, it was
lightly, nay, snidely, written, which was so diametrically opposite of its
subject. The whole point was to cover the arsenic with candy for shock
value. Well done, and I had mixed feelings at first, but I guess it was the
kids part that bothered me (have trouble with violence against kids and
dogs, yaknow).
I wonder what havoc one would wreak if they sicced a class of beginning
writers on this story. Would they all stay with the light effect? Head to
the dark side (In Cold Blood)? Try to write for a news report? Write it
from the detective's pov after its discovery?
kat >^.^<
in Wisconsin


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