What are some good books about despair? Or themes where things seem hopeless, the boundaries of reality closing tightly around the protagonist and suffocating them? Not looking for emo, angst stuff but I guess I'd still look into it.
Tried reading the killer inside me but it wasn't what I was expecting so maybe I had a bias going into it. Worth a second read?
Also, tess of d'urbervilles. A little melancholic but glad I read it.
Die leiden des Jungen Werthers - Goethe
Notes From The Underground - Dosty
The Trouble With Being Born - Cioran
The Philosophy of Redemption - Mainlander
thanks but these are all memes that only impress adolescents, if at all
You are pathetic
Homer's works
Then what would you recommend? I'm not looking for books about death, doom and destruction. I have this urge to read about people hanging on by their finger tips, struggling to get themselves back on the ledge.
Also, I tried reading notes from the underground years ago and I'm afraid to say I barely understood it. Perhaps it was too abstract for me at the time.
I just remember a lot "Gentlemen!"
stop embarrassing yourself, kid
try something like death of a salesman
the bible
>Why kid ourselves, people have nothing to say to one another, they all talk about their own troubles and nothing else. Each man for himself, the earth for us all. They try to unload their unhappiness on someone else when making love, they do their damnedest, but it doesn't work, they keep it all, and then they start all over again, trying to find a place for it. "Your pretty, Mademoiselle," they say. And life takes hold of them again until the next time, and then they try the same little gimmick. "You're very pretty, Mademoiselle..."
>And in between they boast that they've succeeded in getting rid of their unhappiness, but everyone knows it's not true and they've simply kept it all to themselves. Since at the little game you get uglier and more repulsive as you grow older, you can't hope to hide your unhappiness, your bankruptcy, any longer. In the end your features are marked with that hideous grimace that takes twenty, thrity years or more to climb form your belly to your face. That's all a man is good for, that and no more, a grimace that he takes a whole lifetime to compose. The grimace a man would need to express his true soul without losing any of it is so heavy and complicated that he doesn't always succeed in completing it.”
>Hopeless, suffocating boundaries
The Grapes of Wrath
A Farewell to Arms
All Quiet on the Western Front
>Despair: an analysis
The Sickness Unto Death
Fuck, maybe I *should* write that autobiography.
Reading anything by Ayn Rand causes me despair, so I suppose you could find some there.
In all seriousness, though, Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews is pretty full of despair if you're up to reading it.
Beckett's Trilogy
>Flowers in the Attic
Oh! Someone recommend that awhile ago but I completely forgot about it. They said I'd like it but refused to say anything about it, they were acting like it was extremely heavy hearted. I'll start with that, thanks for the reminder.
Death Of A Salesman is a dull piece of shit.
Which is appropriate because Willy Loman is precisely that.
Blindness by Saramago is one of the most despairing books I've read.
Also The book of Disquiet by Pessoa.
I'm not even portuguese, but there must be something about that country that breeds depression apparently, the top 2 books I could think of come from there.
Under the Volcano
No Longer Human, by Osamu Dazai. Serious vomit-inducing despair.
No problem, and you're completely right about everything. I can say now, it's defiantly not traditional and comes with a few trigger warnings, but fuck it, you can probably just look it up if you need to know. I don't want to spoil anything, but you're in for a ride, and possibly a treat.
The newspaper I guess
...
>Implying the purpose of reading is to impress people