Depressing Literature

[pigeonweather]

To the flip side of 'humor and literature', the question of what appeals to your dark side, and why. Certainly there are many subjects that are depressing in and of themselves. One can't help but be gloomy even thinking about them (wars, slavery, brutality, oppression). Then there are characters and their stories who bring you down (middle-age sad-sack car salesmen, for example). There are many different motivations for writing these various kinds of things, but I'm more interested (at the moment) in why we read them. What makes you want to read a depressing book? What do you get out of it? What are the most depressing books you've come across, and why?

A related question is simply a matter of aging. I realized recently that some books I would have rated highly in my youth I would not as of now, and vice versa I'm sure, yet I go about making judgments on things and sticking to those opinions throughout, rarely pausing to reconsider. These topics are linked in my mind as I consider that when much younger my attitude towards depressing books was much different than it is today.

One book above all remains too depressing for me to get through, young or older - 'Crime and Punishment'. I've never been able to do it.

[Liam]

I only find those books/films depressing where you don't experience any kind of catharsis at the end. Sad/tragic is not necessarily depressing in my experience. King Lear is both sad and tragic, but not depressing.

Crime & Punishment is not depressing. Raskolnikov rediscovers God at the end, realizes his guilt to the fullest extent and is voluntarily shipped off to Siberia. Sad, but not depressing, for the message is: redemption exists, and the Lord awaits you.

The most depressing novel I've ever read is probably Coetzee's Disgrace. Not a single positive fucking thing happens in that piece-of-shit book. I wonder why the author hasn't hanged himself with a telephone cord at this point.

[Threetrees]

I may agree that Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" in particular produces a sombre impression if not to scoop deeper. The primary idea of his works was to explore a certain (concave) type of man and his erroneous "right for crime", "right to kill", "right to violate the rules of human existence". It's only on one scale. And hatred, and enmity. Very unpleasant things. I don't like to read or hear about them. But they exist within all of us. What wakes them up? When do we come to the "boiling point"? A blunt exposing them in literature (or wherever, e.g. mass-media nowadays or even here) do not lead to perfection. Such matters may only strengthen conflicts within us. Whether Dostoevsky achieved his initially noble aims to alter people but depicting them and events in such a literary manner is a big question. I prefer real beauty and genuine humour which come together to save humanity from rapid degradation.

[Threetrees]

The most dismal and morose writing person in my list is Hemingway. I still can not get what were the reasons to award him with a Nobel Prize. When someone asks me - "Why do you hate him?", I retort - "Why? How can I hate the person if I am not even familiar with him. I am just not fond of his works. That's all. There is no light in them. How can I admire of the person who said 'There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.' (oppressive phrase!). And you know how ended his life?" Every time I read (or pushed to read to say it better) I have a strange feeling of frustration. I am frustrated in the end. And I can't get rid of it. He spoiled the minds of a bulk of generations, visibly and invisibly. Sorry, if I hurt the admirers.

[Heteronym]

I don't seek depressing literature any more than I seek funny literature. I just read the writers I liked in the past, trusting they know what they're writing. Perhaps when I was younger and equated realism or truth with grittiness, perhaps I considered it better, superior. Nowadays a lot of it seems strained and suspicious to me. Some of it seems like the result of following trends rather than channeling something urgent or honest in the writer's spirit.

For me the most depressing thing I've read was Herman Melville's "Bartleby the scrivener," a brilliant short-story. It's very funny in a proto-Kafkaesque way, but the ending is devastating. On the same league I'd include Kafka's The Metamorphosis. The way Gregor Samsa's isolation from his family and human life is described left me very disturbed, as did the miserable way he dies.

[pigeonweather]

There's nothing like a Judgmental Bookseller Ostrich for summing up a thread
ostrich.jpg

[Threetrees]

There can be some other ways to cure e.g. U.S. Depression

(Warning: you should see non-verbal appearance of it. If you have the signs - you are depressed and don't even try to write anything in this hard period - you may contaminate others. Call Dr. Humour)

tshirtdepression.jpgnonverbalsigns.jpg

[Hamlet]

It's strange but personally I've never seen Crime & Punishment as a depressing book. It's one of my favourite novels of all time, and in a sense, I see it as optimistic. Raskolinikov's descent into crime is marked by fever and confusion, his friends, R- in particular mark him out as a ferociously intellectual and previously good natured man. This comes over clearly from his past, it's gleaned in scenes with his family and hwo his old student friends treat him. You see what he 'was' before he sets out on a disastrous course, beset by obsessions and the unexplainable, indefinable quirks of the human psyche. Even the detective admires him, Porfiry Pet- ,we may see this as cynical game-playing in order to catch him, but I don't think so, and the Christian and redemptive aspects, the honest-prostitute character of Sonia, the comic characters throughout, yes --- the latter especially, reminds me that it is a very funny book. It's bursting with energy, humanity, soul, tortured characters, the great, the twisted and the moral, all set against the 'yellow' city of a teaming St Petersburg and its canals in a stinkingly hot and stultifying summer.

What more could you want, oh.... and it's a pretty good detective novel too!

[Hamlet]

I don't seek depressing literature any more than I seek funny literature. I just read the writers I liked in the past, trusting they know what they're writing. Perhaps when I was younger and equated realism or truth with grittiness, perhaps I considered it better, superior. Nowadays a lot of it seems strained and suspicious to me. Some of it seems like the result of following trends rather than channeling something urgent or honest in the writer's spirit

"strained and suspicious" -- this is the impression I sometimes pick up on with certain authors or even whole genres in modern fiction. Will they last/stand the test of time?

Without naming authors.

[Daniel del Real]

The most depressing novel I've ever read is probably Coetzee's Disgrace. Not a single positive fucking thing happens in that piece-of-shit book. I wonder why the author hasn't hanged himself with a telephone cord at this point.

Hard to type this words, but I think I actually agree with you. Disgrace it's just terribly depressing and the same goes for The Age of Iron. Both are tremendously suffocating to the reader and leave you with a feeling of emptiness deep down inside.

Another novel that left me with a sort of grief was Goncalo M. Tavares' Jerusalem. It it is such a horrific view of human existence in one single night that you finish the book like if someone had just punched your stomach.

[miobrien]

I tend to like "depressing" literature. Not because I enjoy reading about suffering and violence, etc. But I find something rewarding in reading about serious subjects -- when things are life-or-death and nothing less than that there is a special urgency. Maybe I'm weird but I find depressing books therapeutic and consolatory. I think in order to write a successful depressing book one has to have empathy for his or her characters so that the reader can empathize with them as well. I live a rather non-depressing life -- I go to school in Boston and grew up in a New York suburb. I consider depressing fiction a gateway to understanding the rest of the world.

I have a guess, though, that depressing art appeals to youths. As we age, we probably seek out less depressing works -- whether they're thrilling or comedic, etc.

I find Faulkner's universe rather dark and depressing.

Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian is violent and, as a result, depressing.

Sections of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest are disturbing but I find them crucial to the success of the novel.

Nabokov, to an extent, is depressing.

Bolano's 2666 is violent and depressing.

I also find "American" writers like Roth, Carver and Cheever to be pretty depressing. Maybe that's because the subjects about which they write are things to which I can relate.

The most depressing novel I've ever read is probably Coetzee's Disgrace. Not a single positive fucking thing happens in that piece-of-shit book. I wonder why the author hasn't hanged himself with a telephone cord at this point.

Really? I know it's bleak and gritty. But I really really like Disgrace. Besides finding it depressing, you really think it's a POS? It's one of my favorite novels.

[Stiffelio]

I also like some of the books and authors the miobrien mentions. I see his point: those are depressing books of a "good" sort because their authors have empathy for their characters. Other depressing writers I've come across that I thoroughly enjoyed reading were Thomas Mann (The Magic Mountain, Death in Venice), Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment), Kenzaburo Oe (The Silent Cry), D.H.Lawrence (depressing only to a certain extent, e.g. Women in Love), Joseph Roth (The Emperor's Tomb, The Radetzky March). In some instances I've found great books to be depressing in an annoying way; that is when the author seems to purposedly hate his own characters and makes them hurt themselves or take silly decisions. Tolstoy's Anna Karenina comes to mind. It's a masterpiece but on many occasions I was tempted to throw the book out of the window becaus I couldn't bear Anna being so idiotic. Another character hater is Anita Brookner: she's a fine writer but all her characters are depressingly pitiful.

[Liam]

^^Fine, wallow in misery, why should I care? As A. S. Byatt once said, Young girls find sadness empowering.

So, power to you.

[Eric]

It seems a strange mentality to me, picking out depressing novels. I suppose that most of us stray across a depressing novel now and again, rather than actually aiming to get suicidal by reading them one after the other. Readers are, to a large extent, themselves responsible for what reading matter they pick and therefore for the effect it has on them.

[Stevie B]

When it comes to music, I generally avoid country songs because country lyrics often strike me as cheesy in their simplicity or their overt flag-waving. When it comes to fiction, I also tend to avoid certain kinds of books. Perhaps since I have a gloomier view of the world, I'm more drawn to depressing books because, in my mind, they better reflect a truer and more honest reality. That's not to suggest I only read depressing literature. It simply has a more natural allure for me.

[Eric]

À chacun son goût... Real life is not all bliss or all misery. So I don't feel the urge to restrict myself when reading, not least because most good novels tend to have a balance between the two. There has been a "miserabilist" school of writing which, I think, includes such authors as Émile Zola and Louis Paul Boon. These authors tended towards the "oh, it's all going wrong" way of looking at life.

I prefer things that blend the two states of mind. There's nothing noble about being depressed. It's merely a state of mind that some are more susceptible than others. And it is also possible to misconstrue an author by shutting out the comic or tragic parts of their writing. There is plenty of misery in Kafka, but he does have his comic moments. And Mann's "Magic Mountain" is set in a tuberculosis clinic where people keep dying off, but there are plenty of comic moments there too.

[Hamlet]

I've just finished Coetzee's DISGRACE, and yes -- it was brutal and depressing, but I read it in two evenings. I couldn't put it down, my life would be a better place for having not reading it, and the protag, and those damn musings on his own death; the bleak, nihilistic, existential, fatalistic and others adjectives you should avoid, the whole take in fact left you feeling pretty depressed and shocked, stunned even. So I looked up Coetzee and read up on the criticism, nothing to report, no insight on his motives, and was left wondering if he'd not spared us on purpose, was it all just "overcooked" for effect, and "shock" sells books as we know. I'm thinking here specifically of Steinbeck shock... Grapes of Wrath shock...

All that aside, he now lives in Australia.

However... I have a sneaking suspicion it was in fact very good, in the same way that I was once tortured.... I mean, once lectured to on Philip Larkin's Poetry and found his meanderings around churches and musings on his own life annoying, but -- I had that same damn sneaking suspicion back then!