#additionally when reading artaud there has been a tendency in the past to romanticise/ demonise/ fetishise/ vilify his schizophrenia

[jawnkeets]

I need some book recommendations, please! Anything intense and dark. I want them to take my mind on a crazy ride. xx

hi! ok so the following is a selection of my fav works of literature (or works that i have found particularly thought-provoking) relating to intensity and darkness, delving into the bizarre, perverse, grimly humorous, subversive, illuminating, horrifying, unsettling, and just plain weird:

the pit and the pendulum and the mask of the red death, edgar allan poe (torture and plague!) 

the theatre and its double, antonin artaud and biography antonin artaud: blows and bombs, stephen barber (desperately intense and original. massively underrated in the english-speaking world imo despite exerting a huge influence on contemporary theatre and the arts more generally)  

the strange case of dr jekyll and mr hyde and the body snatchers, robert louis stevenson (stevenson bringing good old victorian repression/ secrecy/ duality/ cover-of-darkness criminality etc to the table, we all love it) 

on evil, terry eagleton (if ur interested in a critical approach/ perspective)

the metamorphosis and the trial, franz kafka (the word kafkaesque may often be pretentiously sprinkled into conversation but his work is actually rly good lol) 

the rime of the ancient mariner and kubla khan, samuel taylor coleridge (context surrounding kubla khan as a drug-fuelled vision and its fragmentary nature is v interesting - see debate surrounding the ‘person from porlock’)

stone animals, kelly link (kindly recommended to me by @karmictard! i loved this short story it was so insidiously unsettling) 

bacchae, euripides (bit of dionysian irrationality, it’s a classic)

the waste land, t. s. eliot (turning up the unreality dial to max)

waiting for godot, samuel beckett (so funny in a despair-inducing kind of way)

king lear, hamlet and titus andronicus, william shakespeare (gruesome/ dark in places, the comedy/ foolery rly adds to the plays also and makes u rethink its relationship to the tragic/ serious, particularly in hamlet. additionally othello is fascinating and fits your criteria of intense and dark when examined with issues of godhood, free will and the self in mind - disturbing questions are raised…)

jerusalem, jez butterworth (if ur interested in topsvy turvy stuff and the interplay between crudeness and profundity, wildness and bathos, this darkly comic anarchic drama may be for you. it’s my fav 21st cent work of literature like honestly it’s amazing)

i am waiting for the right time to read the great god pan as well (and more of arthur machen’s stories) - so whilst i can’t recommend this just yet, i will report back.

hope this helps!!