Dark, melancholic, philosophical literature?

[HeavyAxe]

Hey there everyone. I've sort of been down in the dumps lately. I seem to have this condition where every so often I get into this 'tortured soul' kinda persona. You know, wear a turtleneck sweater and go feed the ducks...just kidding. But for real, I do for whatever reason enjoy literature dealing with dark and melancholic themes. Philosophical topics are good as well. I'm just wondering if anyone has any recommendations for poetry or other works of literature dealing with things like death, sorrow, internal torture, nature, sadness, sorrow, occultism etc.

Don't worry, I'm not a drag at parties.

 

[48thStreetCustom]

Hey there everyone. I've sort of been down in the dumps lately. I seem to have this condition where every so often I get into this 'tortured soul' kinda persona. You know, wear a turtleneck sweater and go feed the ducks...just kidding. But for real, I do for whatever reason enjoy literature dealing with dark and melancholic themes. Philosophical topics are good as well. I'm just wondering if anyone has any recommendations for poetry or other works of literature dealing with things like death, sorrow, internal torture, nature, sadness, sorrow, occultism etc.

Don't worry, I'm not a drag at parties.

You mean like Kafka, Edgar Allen Poe or Orwell?

 

[sparkyfender2]

Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment."

 

[old spice]

"Nausea" by Jean-Paul Sartre, "Steppenwolf" by Hermann Hesse, "Big Sur" by Jack Kerouac, "The Master and Margarita" by Mikhail Bulgakov.

 

[20db pad]

John Steinbeck's "The Pearl" and "Of Mice and Men" are great stories but very sobering. Kafka's "Metamorphosis" is also of the same vein.

 

[old spice]

Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment."

Excellent suggestion. The Idiot, by the same author, as well.

 

[jmverdugo]

Niebla (mist) by Miguel de Unamuno

The Tunnel by Ernesto Sabato

Perfume by Patrick Suskind

 

[One Drop]

Excellent suggestion. The Idiot, by the same author, as well.

Any Dostoevsky.

In a more recent vein try JG Ballard.

 

[elgecko]

Heart of Darkness

 

[jmattbassplaya]

H.P Lovecraft.

 

[Tom Lane]

Flannery O'Conner

 

[Jim Nazium]

William Gibson. Start with "Neuromancer".

 

[yodedude2]

lots of great suggestions already. i found douglas adams's 'mostly harmless' to be rather bleak. so did the author: "People have said, quite rightly, that Mostly Harmless is a very bleak book."

 

[Dale D Dilly]

Nice list. Always start with Kafka. You won't be able to get out of bed for a day after reading The Trial or The Castle.

Let me add Faulkner to the list. No one has ever done a better job of capturing the complications and surprising turns of human ugliness.

 

[old spice]

"Galapagos" by Kurt Vonnegut

 

[Funky Ghost]

From a completely, not usually associated, genre I would submit the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. It's hard to read at times and the main character is fairly despicable but as the story unfolds you maybe don't like him still, but you have an idea of why he thinks and acts the way he does.

For a short story I would say look for Piers Anthony's (I know!) On the Uses of Torture. Brutal genius. It is in a collected work called Anthonology.

 

[Pilgrim]

Time to watch more 3 Stooges, and to immediately view The Blues Brothers again.

 

[*ToNeS*]

Death in Venice by Thomas Mann.

I'm also big into Haruki Murakami, and some of his stuff has this really beautiful, lonely blueness to it. The novella After Dark springs to mind (and is designed, I think, to be read only after dark).

 

[Muddslide]

There's nothing trite, bright or breezy about this one:

Amazon.com: The Conspiracy against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror (9780984480272): Thomas Ligotti, Ray Brassier: Books

 

[bholder]

Anything by Harlan Ellison or Gardner Dozois. You want bleak, try "Along The Scenic Route" or "I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream".