You don’t get out much, do you? 
Heh. Right? “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” doesn’t even register, compared to toddler rape, people’s intestines being sucked outside their bodies, women being literally fucked with chainsaws, etc., all of which have featured in other works mentioned in this thread. In IHNMAIMS, what’s really that disgusting? The chick having consensual sex with all of the dudes in the story including the one that got turned into some kind of weird ape-man?
(I’m now wondering how many people in this thread, on reading that synopsis, are thinking, “Heeeeey, I need to read that story.”)
I personally found IHNM pretty disturbing. Sometimes it’s the quality of the writing that makes works stick with you longer or affect you more.
Disturbing, yes. Disgusting, not so much. IMO, of course.
I remember reading it as a young teen myself, actually. I thought it was creepy but hardly the most disturbing thing ever. Though I guess that’s really subjective. We’re never going to find a universally reviled book.
It’s also interesting how adults think certain books are really inappropriate for kids/young teens, when actually I think that kids and teens tend to be pretty insensitive on some level. Not that they can’t be smart but a lot of this violence and disturbing stuff really doesn’t register for them because they don’t think anything bad is ever going to happen to them. I was a pretty smart, advanced kid, and I remember being pretty cold/insensitive towards characters dying and now I’ll reread stuff I read as a kid and think, “Wow…kids read that? I read that?! Was that okay?” I think the reality is that children don’t really process things in the same way we do which is why restrictions on books/movies often don’t make sense to them.
Concur. I was recently debating whether or not to let Whatsit Jr. (age 8) start reading the Harry Potter series, because it gets pretty heavy towards the final few books. Then I thought back and remembered that when I was 9, I read IT by Stephen King, which is a fuck of a lot heavier than anything J.K. Rowling has come up with. I found it scary and disturbing, but certainly not traumatic or scarring or whatever. So I told Whatsit Jr. to go for it.
After a while, the value of someone attempting to shock with sex, sadism and gore sorta wears off. It becomes like a Chinese menu of shock. From column A, another pedophile rape; from column B, a side order of corpophagy and chainsaw sodomy - ho hum.
Not speaking of IHNMAIMS specifically, but in general, the better the authour is able to actually immerse the person in the story and engage their sympathies, and then twist the surprise into them, the more profoundly disturbing it can be - even if the actual content isn’t about sucking fetuses through a straw from a screaming live mother.
I know from my 4 year old that what bothers him is not death and gore - he simply shrugs that off, and has no real understanding of it - but people being mean to each other, in ways he can understand.
For example, in Toy Story, he hated the scene where the cowboy and the space-man start to fight each other.
Definitely. In fact, even though we’ve been talking about how kids often aren’t scarred, my first reaction was, “You read that at 9?!” But again, I don’t think a kid would process It the same way I’m thinking of it. For one thing, in my head as a child and even as a teen, even though I objectively knew death was the end, in my head it was kind of like a video game reset button. A character died? Well, another character would come along–in that book or another book. And now when I read about death or kidnapping or torture, I can’t help thinking, “That could be me. That could be someone I know.” And it just seems like a bigger deal.
As others have mentioned, there is a major difference between fantasizing about something and enacting it. Acts of pedophilia, rape, torture and murder are not normal in our current society, nor should they be, although they have been in other societies at other times. However, fantasizing about such activities is not uncommon. And as Lumpy mentioned, a large part of deSade’s philosophical point (and there’s at least as much philosophy in his books as smut) is that humans are natural creatures, and thus our perversions cannot be condemned as “unnatural.”
That’s a very good analogy, thank you. I may use it in the future.
Or the same way I sometimes killed my Sims by sealing them up in rooms without food or making them swim till they collapsed and drowned. Sealing people up in rooms IRL? Totally a turn off.
The Marquis De Sade enacted it in real life.
And it’s “not uncommon” for people to fantasize about raping and murdering toddlers? That’s normal? Are you kidding me? Sorry, but I beg to differ. That’s not normal at all.
Likely not, but I’ll wager that pedophilic fantasies in general are relatively common. As are rape fantasies, torture fantasies, etc. Just because you don’t understand it and/or find it personally disgusting doesn’t make it uncommon.
Look, are we talking about the Marquis’ writings or his actions? Those are two different arguments. I have read some of his writings and am somewhat prepared to defend them, but I am not very familiar with his life and I am not prepared to defend or condemn him on a personal level. But frankly, a lot of writers and artists whose work I admire were complete assholes. (See Roman Polanski, for one modern example.)
And I never said anything about “raping and murdering toddlers” specifically. The criteria were pedophilia, rape, torture and murder as general subjects. No, I don’t think many people fantasize about all four at once.
The most disgusting book ever written is not translated into English (and I don’t think it could be done). It’s a Swedish book called Äldreomsorgen i Övre Kågedalen (Care of the elderly in the Upper Kåge valley) and contains incest, pedophilia, homosexual orgies, torture, murder, philosophical conversations and other niceties, written in an extremely provincial dialect from Northern Sweden. However, it is very well written and was an instant success in literary circles.
When it was first published under the pseudonym Nikanor Teratologen it instantly became much debated and more or less all established writers from that region were accused of being the author until it turned out to be an unknown young university student. An aunt of mine commented when his name was revealed “Was it him? He is the best student of the Swedish language I have ever had in my class”.
Speak for yourself.
which of these things is not like the others?
I found it to be erotic in the latter sense.
Hey, it’s not like I’m a Furrie or anything.
couldn’t reread this book for decades after he finished it.
Hubert Selby Jr.'s The Room