Best fucked up books -

[BrunoMattei]

I keep meaning to get around to reading the sequel, which was described to me as a frank portrayal of how Hollywood eats people and spits out the gristle.

Don't. It's dog shit.

 

[Fromtheblackdepths]

Don't. It's dog shit.

How so?

 

[BrunoMattei]

How so?

It honestly opens pretty well but it devolves into a gory whodunnit that is both uninteresting and shockingly short.

 

[Kornula]

Most people don't know this book but it is actually more fucked up than American Psycho, just not in a way that got media attention.

I'm willing to bet the less than stellar movie adaptation of "Less than Zero" has a lot to do with the public and the media ignoring the horrific shit in that book still go unnoticed.

 

[AnOminous]

I'm willing to bet the less than stellar movie adaptation of "Less than Zero" has a lot to do with the public and the media ignoring the horrific shit in that book still go unnoticed.

The same is true about the American Psycho movie. Really, the only good thing about that was Christian Bale's performance.

 

[kaien]

To be fair, so much of the book's experience is about having your brain beaten into submission by wave after wave of awful shit that I don't think it's possible to adapt it at theatrical length. At a certain point I started skimming a lot of it. "Okay, this latest horrible torture goes on for the next five-six pages, lemme move on to the next bit where something else happens."

 

[AnOminous]

To be fair, so much of the book's experience is about having your brain beaten into submission by wave after wave of awful shit that I don't think it's possible to adapt it at theatrical length. At a certain point I started skimming a lot of it. "Okay, this latest horrible torture goes on for the next five-six pages, lemme move on to the next bit where something else happens."

I realized this book was just fucking with me at the point Patrick Bateman was lecturing us about how Phil Collins was vastly superior to Peter Gabriel in their respective solo careers. At some point in the book, you realize you're just being fucked with, with absolute idiocy, and Bateman is either a complete cunt or is just fucking with you.

Only an absolute moron would choose Phil Collins in a Collins vs. Gabriel deathmatch.

 

[Kornula]

"Less than Zero" the movie version focuses on Robert Downy Jr's character - which really isn't the focus of the book. Plus, they do manage to either minimize or leave out the truly horrific stuff from the book... and the performances didn't help.

 

[Mnutu]

I realized this book was just fucking with me at the point Patrick Bateman was lecturing us about how Phil Collins was vastly superior to Peter Gabriel in their respective solo careers. At some point in the book, you realize you're just being fucked with, with absolute idiocy, and Bateman is either a complete cunt or is just fucking with you.

Only an absolute moron would choose Phil Collins in a Collins vs. Gabriel deathmatch.

Truly horrifying; someone finds Peter Gabriel good.

 

[BrunoMattei]

The same is true about the American Psycho movie. Really, the only good thing about that was Christian Bale's performance.

Aside from the extremely toned down violence I thought it was an excellent adaptation. The violence that remained I would still consider effective.

 

[AnOminous]

Aside from the extremely toned down violence I thought it was an excellent adaptation. The violence that remained I would still consider effective.

I was very disappointed at everything other than Bale's amazing performance. It rescued a failed movie.

 

[BrunoMattei]

I was very disappointed at everything other than Bale's amazing performance. It rescued a failed movie.

Bale is great. I agree with that. But I think it was truthful to the book with very few omissions. I loved how it incorporated the music review chapters in a very smart way. The one flaw you can throw at the movie is that Bateman's mental illness isn't made as clear. In the book, he has hallucinations like seeing a giant peanut (I think it was a peanut) host a talk show. Not to mention the melt down he has where he crashes a car and calls a waitress a kike in a kosher restaurant.

 

[AnOminous]

Not to mention the melt down he has where he crashes a car and calls a waitress a kike in a kosher restaurant.

I loved "cool it with the anti-Semitic remarks" when he had so many atrocities to his credit. There are reasons this movie is so meme-worthy despite its numerous deficiencies.

 

[BrunoMattei]

I loved "cool it with the anti-Semitic remarks" when he had so many atrocities to his credit. There are reasons this movie is so meme-worthy despite its numerous deficiencies.

 

[kaien]

The one flaw you can throw at the movie is that Bateman's mental illness isn't made as clear. In the book, he has hallucinations like seeing a giant peanut (I think it was a peanut) host a talk show. Not to mention the melt down he has where he crashes a car and calls a waitress a kike in a kosher restaurant.

The book, as pointed out above, eventually makes it clear that Bateman is the least reliable narrator and everything we're reading could be a tall tale or a fever dream. The movie I think is deliberately trying to suggest that possibility without coming down firm either way. I've never really been able to decide whether I like that aspect of it or not.

 

[BrunoMattei]

The book, as pointed out above, eventually makes it clear that Bateman is the least reliable narrator and everything we're reading could be a tall tale or a fever dream. The movie I think is deliberately trying to suggest that possibility without coming down firm either way. I've never really been able to decide whether I like that aspect of it or not.

The book makes it a little more obvious with the hallucinations, him meeting Tom Cruise in his building (and mistaking him for Kevin Bacon), keeping a severed head outside his apartment as a Jack O'Lantern, etc. I like that the movie made it more vague.

 

[Compulsory Games]

Almost forgot this one. I have an extremely high threshold for awful, but this is probably the most unpleasant book I've read in my life. The author is an unrepentant pedoshielding sociopath who seems to derive real pleasure from his patients' suffering. There's a sense of glee in his tone as he describes a Fore woman wiping poop from her dead child's body, another woman's flyblown prolapsed uterus dragging in the dirt, and watching kids beat their dog to death so they can eat it. Ostensibly in PNG to study kuru, Zigas prefers to trick the villagers into believing vaseline will cure their symptoms so he can spend his time banging illiterate teens and taming pythons (?!) because the tribespeople are just so poor and stupid and gross, why bother.

The cover is pretty great, though.

 

[need shoeonhead nudes]

TRANCEformation of America - Cathy O'Brien
I felt this deserved a mention as several users mentioned the ubiquitous Sov Cit genre. Cathy is a woman who alleges that she was a part of an MK Ultra-like experiment called Project Monarch. She claims to have been programmed as a spy, a sex slave, and a sacrificial lamb--- All for the "elites". That is, yknow, the Bushes, the Rockefellers, Dick Cheney, and a bunch of country music stars (like Johnny Paycheck). We're treated to a dizzying, psychotic narrative that is somewhat hard to read in structure, but nauseatingly descriptive. She does her best to explain how 'mind control' and psy-ops work, the network of evil Freemason Pedophile Jews that Run the World, and just how big Cheney's rapetastic cock is. Plenty of insight to a symptom known as 'loose associations' (which she interprets as commands). Bonus scene of Hilary Clinton mutilating her vagina to look like a witch face. [whatthefuckamireading.jpg]
the truth is out there

This one sounds really interesting, reminds me of the book Programmed to Kill
Which covers topics like satanic panic, and how a lot of the serial killers of yore grew up similarly, and have similar strange connections, like going to the same specialty military schools.
Be warned this book is straight up horrific, it's not for everyone. Descriptions of child rape locations, torture, etc.

 

[kaien]

There was a popular TV crime drama in the 90s called Cracker, penned Jimmy Mcgovern, that drew superficially on the dark and unpleasant tone of Raymond's novels. Warren Ellis also appeared to be strongly influenced by them during his short-lived run on Hellblazer. It's a great shame that no attempt has been made to dramatise the books themselves. If they were filmed by someone who was sympathetic to the nuances of the material, they would make for very haunting television.

Getting my replies out of order because I didn't see this post at first. Yes, Ellis liberally cribbed from Raymond all across his career. Batman's Grave has a lot of the Raymond style of procedural in it.

The best anecdote about the Factory novels is that Raymond had to find a new publisher after submitting the manuscript to "I Was Dora Suarez," a story containing feats of body horror that are difficult to concisely describe. The draft allegedly caused Raymond's editor to vomit across his desk.

Terrific books, anyway. They make London in the early 80s seem like one of the nastier circles of Dante's Hell.

 

[I__quit]

R. D. Ronald's The Zombie Room.