Yeah, you might want to put “The Poster formerly known as Curtis LeMay” in your sig for awhile.
Well, maybe it isn’t The Very Most Disgusting, but it does give you a run for your money. So under the circumstances, check out Su Tong’s My Life as Emperor.
The review doesn’t really reveal what a great author Su Tong is; or how clever this post is.
Are you sure you actually read the worst of it? Because some of it is fairly mundane S&M stuff, not that shocking, but his most depraved stuff is so extreme and so far beyind the pale that if it doesn’t shock you, I can’t imagine what would. I mean if the rape, torture and murders of toddlers isn’t shocking then what the hell is?
De Sade, at his worst, pushed things to the most extreme levels possible. I read quite a bit of him in college (a friend of mine had a complete works which he was morbidly fascinated with), and it seemed like he progressively was trying to outdo himself by making things more and more extreme and shocking – like he had to work more and more to give himself the stimulation that he wanted.
There is stuff just as bad (if more poorly written) on the internet, but there is a base level that it’s hard to get beneath.
The odd thing is that De Sade’s work was not utterly valueless. He wrote some philosophical (non-pornographic) pieces that are fairly interesting and rationally sound.
Incidentally, there is currently a movie going around called A Serbian Film which might well be the answer to the OP’s question if asked about movies. The wiki description alone will scar your brain.
Wow.
Now that’s a movie!
Which brings me to a book I own but can’t bring myself to read…
THE TRIAL OF GILLES DE RAIS.
I win.
I own and I’ve read it. But I read it years after I went through a great deal of Sade’s work so I think I am rather numb to it and to the Marquis. Bataille (the author of the Gilles de Rais book) does a great job of chronicling the trial and all the related documents. In some ways, Helter Skelter was more shocking to me.
I haven’t been around this forum long enough to know what topics may or may not be discussed, but this is a fairly powerful film which is an allegory to an indictment of the Serbian government. Its just that most people can’t beyond the horrific violence (justifiably so).
Having seen too many shock films, this is just another in a long line… Not as bad as Irreversible, IMHO
I like the way his daughter sings. . .
Don’t; you’re too young. Both legally and physically. Seriously. You’re 15 now, yes? You’re most unlikely to have yet developed the maturity to deal with such stuff.
I knew someone would say this, and it’s not quite fair. For one thing the Bible is not the work of a single author and was not composed at a single time; for another it’s quite variable. The pure genocidal sadism of Yahweh of the first five books, in particular, does not hold throughout the entire canon.
It reemerges, to a degree, in Revelation, albeit with Jersus doing the slaughtering.
The Bible is far from the worst book ever. It’s a compendium of all kinds of ancient literature and reflects a lot of archaic cultural attitudes which no longer hold any water 2000 years later, but it also expresses some sublime, timeless wisdom full of heart, soul and compassion. The Bible contains both the best and worst that humans have to offer because it was produced by a people, not a person.
The last time someone recommended a book to you, the whole board imploded, and **Argent Towers **was cast into the outer darkness - so now we get no Renaissance armour pictures. Maybe you should try Podkayne of Mars.
Looks good - Thanks. *Bakin’ without Eggs *is really good, if you’re egg-allergic
Brings a whole new context to Smooth Operator.
I know, Dio. I didn’t mean that the character of Yahweh gets less violent the further you go into the Bible. Clearly it does not. Exodus and Joshua have a God far worse than that in Genesis, and God of Jonah is largely a trickster who goes out of his way to avoid killing anybody. It goes up and down.
Everyone Poops
I don’t think Qin is too young legally to read de Sade.
Yawn. “I can’t be arsed to read it for myself, but I ‘heard about it’ somewhere else and it’s bad, mmmmmm’k?”
Oh, come on. I know you guys are just having some fun with The Poster Formerly Known as Curtis, but the Bible? Seriously? Offensive, fine, but “disgusting”? No. The Bible is tame.
I haven’t actually read any of de Sade, although it sounds like his stuff might be a prime contender. For recent lit, I’ll vote for Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho, which in addition to being totally revolting, was devoid of literary merit and is IMO the worst book I have ever read.
As soon as I saw the title of this thread I thought of 120 Days of Sodom. I have read about half of it…way back when when it was easier to get a copy and I didn’t always know what was good for me.
But the thing is, while the acts are immoral and horrifying and degenerate, the book itself is…less so. It’s almost like reading A Clockwork Orange…it’s so over the top after a while it all blends together and begins to look like a horrid comedy. Not a funny one, it’s hard to explain…but it’s so ridiculously over the top and so impossible in some situations it’s hard to remember that it’s not all just one big joke.