What is the darkest book in existence.

>>7414731
Your mother's diary.

>>7414731
Dankest book is IJ tbqh fami

Catcher in the Rye

Incestuous pedophilic rape? Doesn't get much more edgy than that

>>7414792
Why do you have to spoil the fucking book, nigger?

>>7414731
I'm reading Sade's Justine atm and it's disgustingly dark. Céline isn't that dark desu, just bleak af

>>7414731
I'd say gravity's rainbow. Mainly for the ending.

Fahrenheit 451

>>7414802

how is sade dark, thats not what I see in it

the journey to the end night is the darkest book on a metaphysical level because it consists in a deconstruction of everything you might believe in to give your life meaning (in the night of non-meaning), successively it is patriotism,glory in war,religion,art,everything that the narrator goes through and fails to find meaning in....Th journey to the end of the night or The voyage as we say in french, is the utmost nihilistic book,to the extent that it even makes fun of that general non-meaning instead of staring in despair. It goes so much further that normal nihilistic complaint at the world

Pick up any American or world history textbook. :)

>>7414802

if you read french then read ""L'écriture l'expérience des limites" by philippe sellers I think ,not sure of the author.It really sheds light on Sade

>>7414815
Well Sade is depicting the worst possible treatments that one can suffer; despite Justine's unquenchable thirst for virtue she is still going to suffer the most evil things from the most evil people. There's also a big critic of religion thrown in there which I'd like to call nihilistic in its own way (and epoch). But then again dark isn't the best fitting word to describe that.

Le Voyage is just really bleak... Bardamu is a very sensible human. You see him putting hope in people repeatedly then losing it. Yes by the end he has destroyed most symbols of life, but he doesn't do it just for the hell of it. He'd rather live in a world of love; see Molly and all his afterthoughts about her. But same conclusion here, dark is a weak word to describe an entire book

>>7414820
Merci de la suggestion anon, je dois aussi lire ce que Barthes a écrit sur Sade je pense. Je prends note.

>>7414731
I'm not the most well-read, but the darkest for me is Mark Twain's The Mysterious Stranger. Gotta read it all the way to the end to get the full effect, though.

>>7414845

>You see him putting hope in people repeatedly then losing it
Yes that's what is dark about it, Bardamu wants to give his life meaning but everything he tries to cling onto fails him : patriotism, love, travelling, everything fails to give meaning....
Bardamu is idealistic but he faces the true order of things : utter nihilism.He can't find anywhere the meaning he's looking for. It's not Bardamu who is destroying symbols,it's the symbols that are destroying him and the universe does it for the hell of it (no apparent reason in all of Bardamu's misadventures)
One of those things he looks for is a world of love,but love fails him. When he leaves Molly for no apparent reason for example, it makes him happy to live in a world of love but he leaves because he's restless, like all of us.It's like Schopenhauer said : if your desires are fulfilled you're bored and unhappy,it you can't fulfill them you're frustrated and unhappy. Therefore you can't he happy ,also this makes you restless and even more unable to reach happiness. Actually the book by céline refers to this philosophical paradox. Bardamu will never find what he is looking for.

>>7414894
Good insights there. I havent read Schopenhauer but I see what you're saying.

Have you read Céline's pamphlets? I'm probably going to gift myself Bagatelles for Christmas (the Hades éditions version... not the €200 on abebooks)

>>7414941

I've read Bagatelles for a massacre , when I got interested in Céline's work I noticed quickly he was considered as antisemitic, collaborationist and all so I wanted to check his most controversial work to see how bad it is. It is bad. But as Henri Godard (literary critique) who wrote about Céline said it all might be just some kind of joke , like a parody. He thinks it might be just on purpose ; and indeed it sounds so anti semitic it is almost caricatural

But I'm a student in literature in France so I could talk about Céline for hours on end...Have you noticed how he uses the three dots constantly to break the order of syntax and attain something closer to actual oral speech ?

A Scanner Darkly is not very dark overall, but the ending is pretty dark

>>7414731

I thought I read Dankest, the thread seems boring now