What are some books that reflect the author's despair?

Kafka and Kierkegaard

very accurate

dazai
plath

Hamsun's Hunger
More than half of Dostoyevsky

my twisted world

and very obvious. could be argued someone's mistaking anxiety for despair, however.
the letters of emily dickinson

at the heights of despair is heavily and explicitly about anxiety my man

Yeah, dickinson isnt obvious at all..

>could be argued someone's mistaking anxiety for despair

One transitions to the other. With Kafka at least The Trial and Metamorphosis are certainly novels of despair and Kierkegaard, my God if there was ever a philosopher that knew despair.

Related. A reading of Kierkegaard on the Sickness unto death
m.youtube.com/watch?v=SaE9cB6iHks

what differences would you note in a text that show despair vs a text that shows anxiety?

seems to me that both coexist, and you cannot have one without the other

Another thing to point out is how this "despair" is presented. Schopenhauer may be bleak sometimes, but he hold his views believing the pessimist would be better suited for life.

Kafka might not be as dark as Schopenhauer, but the world he present is bleak, and one for which there is no escape regardless of the individual's position - one cannot fight the system in which is in.

The difference is someone in a state of despair has lost practically all hope or willingness to escape his suffering. Someone in anxiety is uncertain what his fate will be or if there is anything he should do

My diary desu

The Sickness is ABOUT despair, granted. But true despair (I believe) is more wildly (despairingly) perhaps more ingeniously put together. Both Kafka and Kierkegaard are TOO ordered, too put together and too calculatingly so to get my vote for authenticity. Dickinson and Exley on the other hand pack that devil-may-care 'ignorance' (read: ignore) of the proprieties that feel far more real to me, and therefore far more reflective of actual despair. Just an opinion, and perhaps a wrong one.