Can Veeky Forums please recommend novels about people gradually worn down by disappointing and unfulfilled lives?

madame bovary

The New Testament

my diary desu

The Idiot

Skylark

I don't want to sound like a fag but Oyasumi Punpun (manga) is pretty Veeky Forums

You okay, big guy?

It is strange how people here think that. Stoner's life is 99.9% of the population's life too: not much happens, few people recognize you, things don't go in an ideal way, you probably didn't find a partner who loved you (look at the divorce rates), and then you die. It's funny that people here think that they're beyond mass culture propaganda yet when you examine their expectations of their lives its equally as mythologized.

Fight Club

Plus factor in

Coming Up for Air or Wigan Pier by Orwell
Herzog or Dangling Man by Bellow

>The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy

Tons of the characters are in this situation. It's something that interests him immensely. Particularly the oddities and perversions that arise in these situations.

>Michael Houellebecq

Nearly all of his work has this in it to some extent.

>An Old Wives Tale by Arnold Bennett

One half of this novel is about a woman who stays in her home town and runs a clothing buisness during the turn of the century.

Also

i couldn't help but think this when i was reading that book. the tenured folks are either old profs who got grandfathered in before academia became incredibly overpopulated and competitive or the young superstars who are exceptionally gifted and/or have connections. but stoner was doing it at a time when people didn't masturbate so much over academic prestige.

Robert Walser

Life of Walter Mitty.

I'm very interested in this as well. I need some catarsis

I feel like A Hunger Artist is a good example of this

Mars by Fritz Zorn is an autobiography about a Swiss-German man who becomes a professor but is deeply depressed and alienated from everyone around him. He lives to his mid-30s never having had sex or made any friends. He's prompted to write the book because he contracts cancer, and is convinced that his cancer is caused by his miserable life.

I read the book years ago and I don't think I've related more to a piece of writing before or since.

are you for real?

Not that user, but from a contemporary perspective he's absurdly successful.

Sounds perfect. Anything else like this?

bought it

faggot

Mars by Fritz Zorn. You're welcome.

If I published my diary as a novel with the name changed would people think it was a great work of the analysis of autistic psyche?

damn, you beat me to it

Maybe My Friends by Emmanuel Bove.

Where from? I can't find it anywhere online in English for less than £20.

Original is in German, but any reason I should read the French version over the English one?
A review on Goodreads said that the english one never really caught on, but it was really popular in France

amazon.com/gp/product/0394517555/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

paid 10 bucks (including shipping) for my french edition

top kek at the anglos

french translation reads quite nicely, can't say it seems like a lot is lost in translation or that it was a difficult text to translate

probably never caught on because it's too anti-bourgeois, the english don't respect or understand that kind of sensibility

Is French your first or second language?

Sorrows of young Werther

Yes, but 99.9% of the population lives unfulfilled lives, that is why many relate to him, sure Stoners live was not especially terrible, but that unfulfillment is the norm is the worst thing about it

Hahahahaa

oh boy
why live?

The English-speaking world doesn't like to look at themselves the way Fritz does. He is a defeatist and a cynic, a depressive martyr (not an honorable martyr, mind you). I think for them it's quite tedious and uncomfortable. The New York Post (either them or the NYT) criticized it for being a long book of complaints, being too sad, etc. Incredibly transparent and embarrassing imo. I would say that the Brits are averse to it as well. If they're going to read suffering, they want it to be wrapped in elegant prosody and impeccable form.

The Germans and the French are ok with the ugly/gross/banal authors.

nytimes.com/1982/01/17/books/in-defense-of-illness-as-metaphor.html?pagewanted=all

This review is enough to make one want to take every anglo psychiatrist and hang their balls by a fish hook.

>The Tartar Steppe
I absolutely love that book. You have good taste, user.

This. I think British tastes especially are very much against writing that feels too overtly personal, it’s seen as self-indulgent and clumsy. Alternately, from Montaigne and onwards France has loved exactly that kind of writing, there’s been an obsession with confessional and very open writing. It’s amazing how much difference you can see in cultures just based on the books they like.

The day that lasts more than a hundred years. By Ghengiz Aimatov