What are some books about people with depression + bad luck + bad life decisions?

Candide

El Tunel

my diary desu

Anything written by an English major

Read this thread, went to take a shit, thought of this low-hanging fruit of a post, then came back to post it only to see I was beaten to the punch. Guess I have to give a real answer now:

No Longer Human
Bright Lights, Big City (similar themes to bojack)
Taipei

Thomas Hardy desu

Notes from the Underground
Schopenhauer

>reee i'm 15 and I just discovered objectivity is a spook

Wew!

Is Bojack actually good or is it muh millennial depression memes like Rick and Morty?

Bojack is much better executed than Rick and Morty because it doesn't try to make him into a funny sociopath meme guy and show him as a sad serious tragic meme guy at the same time. Bojack is more just a depressed asshole with an amusing sense of humour.

Fat City

Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger

By tv standards, it's a very good look at depression and ennui. Because of its a TV show, it sometimes handles the subject manner in a contrived way because it requires a monologue or conversation rather than more nuanced ways literature can handle the same topic. But some arcs and portrayals are very powerful and entertaining.

They kinda dove off the deep end with the SJW shit in the 3rd season but it's still really good unlike Reddit and Morty.

Came here to say this. This guy gets no fucking luck.

Even the sjw stuff I thought they handled well. Dianne spent the whole season coping with the fact she's not the hero she thought she was. She basically couldn't cut it in Cordovia when she had an opportunity to make real change instead of just spouting off. Then she wallowed in despair at bojack and tweeted for princess Caroline most of the 3rd season.

I think the show makes the point time and again that actually doing something that makes a change, rather than mouthing off the ideals, is very difficult.

why does no one here like rick n morty

because it's fun to watch and deep down, people on Veeky Forums hate themselves for enjoying television

Lolita

Laughter in the Dark

Rick and Morty is a pretty funny show when it's just fucked-up Doctor Who, that is, when Rick is doing horrible science shit and we're supposed to laugh at Morty. But too often the show indicates that rather than being Rick's asshole excuse for being a bad person, we're actually intended to sympathize with this cartoon character who kills people for a joke. Compared to Bojack's more realistic asshole hero, who wants to get better but is too terrified of himself to really try, Rick is, well, just a bit of an edgy cunt.

>they don't like a thing I like so it must be because they hate themselves!
>It couldn't possibly be that the show might be objectionably self-important with its armchair baby-nihilism!

I'm sure it's already been cited, but Crime and punishment meets your criteria well.
Anything by Dostoyevsky would probably work.

i let this slide because i get the vibe that rick is aware that everybody is just characters in a show and that he would for the most part just like his life to have some variety in it

the real meaning of life is making fun comments to each other on the internet

i snorted benzos off a library copy of the complete works of Aristotle once

muh morals

Shocked it hasn't been mentioned yet, but pretty much any Murakami book.

3rd Season Downer takes a lot form The Wastelands idea of a heap of broken images in a pretty neat way.

no, the real meaning of life is occluding all contrapuntal thoughts from entering your mind so you can enjoy whatever entertainment you want without having to think about dissenting opinions

H.G Wells - The history of Mr Polly

It's a comic novel but has what you're looking for. Polly is depressed, has bad luck, and keeps making bad life decisions. It could be a tragic novel if not for the lighthearted style Wells used.

Ironweed

The sound and the fury.

Bright Lights Big City is god-tier and I'm under the impression that it is exactly what OP is looking for.

Hunger by Knut Hamsun.

It's a funny show, I like it. But, in my case, I hate how its proposed as somekind of substantial show treating depression and philosophy when it seems mostly a deliberate form of comedy in the show's narrative. In other words, I hate how people try to find deep significance in Rick and Morty when those supposedly "deep" parts are mostly means to get to a punchline. I didn't liked some parts of the second season precisely because Harmon and Roiland are using this cheap sentimental themes as a viewers grabber. But hey! That's just my opinion.

Trash

Bojack is part of a new genre called emotional literacy porn

This

The character didn't suffer from depression. Clinically, he had schizophrenia.

its basically new sincerity

Explain