#i rly need to read waiting for godot

[brechtian]

do any of u guys read plays. would it be fun to ask for play recs

[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!! 

[cosmic-irrelevance]

the 451 dystopia/paradoxes of conviction

i've just finished reading ray bradbury's fahrenheit 451. it's a book that stroke nothing in me when i finished reading it. no scene actually made me feel anything- not when clarisse died, or montag killed beatty. shock, maybe. emotional stirring? no. but it's impact truly came after i read the book and let it simmer. it came the moment i decided that i was "done with thinking for the day" and stopped learning, favouring listening to a generic pop track instead (work from home by 5h, it works when i rly don't wanna think about anything). then it hit me. that the 451 dystopia is, in actual fact not very far from me at all. all my life, i've done good without thinking. i read my first real book outside my syllabus at 17. and i didn't even read alot until i got to university. life was fine. it was fine without thought. i liked watching tv, listening to music. in fact, when i'm tired after getting overloaded with information after school, that's all i want to do. not think. engage in more sensory experiences. 451 really shocked me otherwise. there is value in knowledge. i can't even articulate what the consequences of a superficial life is, but i know it. ive seen it before. they are in people all around me. mildred knows it. she attempted suicide. she suppresses it. i've grown more aware in the past few months, but this feels like the catalyst, the catalyst to me abhorring ignorance. ignorance destroys the garden of earth- nature and thought and relationships and empathy. ignorance brings me to the next point is kind of, the myriad of viewpoints i've been bombarded with in the past week. it kinda sheds light on something i've been wondering for a really long time, that is, why those people would vote for trump. we did a reading today on refugees and exile, and while i can't say i fully comprehend the whole reading, part of what the author (david morley) was saying is that the way people define ourselves is through excluding others. we belong here, and we do because there are people who don't. and i guess trump played on this-not sure if i can call it- basal instinct in people to want some place they can protect as their homes that he managed to garner support from the white masses. the opposing view ive heard though is from lauren's talk at the urban outfitter's event. i share the same stand as her, but i've never really thought about why. it's just, when you look at people and their individual stories and sufferings, it's just not possible for me to not want to help them. it's out of my moral compass to look at these vulnerable groups, with all due innocence, seeking a place they can hide and recover from all the trauma of having their homes destroyed, only to deny them of an asylum. i'm doing a course on human rights now, and the thing about human rights is that if you believe in it, there's no reason to deny these people the right to meet their needs with dignity. it's their rights, their rights they have on the sole basis that they are human. nothing else. and if you disagree with me that all humans deserve rights, how would you like if someone treated you like a slave? and if you think that can't happen, what do you have in you that makes you superior to these refugees? lauren's view though, is that all of these stem from self love. if you love yourself, this love spreads to others. because they are human too. they are genetically coded the same way we are. they are our brothers. they are our sisters. i 100% stand by that, but my mind will take a little while to pry open. and on human rights and activism, there's something else. lexicon seems like a line of weakness of every activist- language is, afterall the cornerstone of thought. all around activists are trying to stop us from using labels- thordis elva goes as far as to say that using the term “rapist” to describe the entity who had committed that act doesn't help in solving the problem. i don't deny that. we think, therefore, we are. but here, i guess i'm going back to the 451 dystopia. ray bradbury actually had letters written to him getting him to remove the racism (one of the MINOR antagonists in the book which montag gets back at is called Black, i'm pretty sure intentionally) and portrayal of women (mildred and her friends). to which he smartly says that that's the first step towards burning books. because people cannot tolerate other's opinions. montag could jolly well be gay, and mildred be his gay husband, and there'll be outcry saying bradbury targets the homosexual community. and if he changes his stand, that'll be akin to writing to please. and writing to please is too troublesome, too hard, he might as well not write anyway. i don't know how to reconcile these polarising stands. maybe i'll write again, when i do. i've a copy of milk and honey in my bag now, which i'm totally stoked to pull out and read for the sole reason that i haven't read poetry in a while. but i guess it's the 451 dystopia again, reminding me of something. i'm starting to be freaked at its penetration In my life. basically there's this guy, faber. an old university professor. he says that books alone aren't enough to change the world, to score beneath the surface. there must be books, leisure time to understand their meanings, and the freedom to act upon them. so i guess that's what i'm doing now. was just reading about the paradox of conviction. it's interesting, but it would've hit me harder if i actually had something i was brought up to believe. it's not to say i wasn't brought up to believe anything, there are certain things my parents believe in. my dad, for one, is devoutly anti government. it's just that i don't share their views. they weren't inserted into me before i was washed over by social studies, before i knew how to think. but i guess it gives me reason to think that things might've been different if my dad preached all of these to me earlier. bear with me i'm just rehashing the argument here: so i guess i shall go with the example that i was brought up to think that there are multiple gods (i'm buddhist, though not as devout a follower as my dad). say i have a friend. my friend is monotheistic (she's christian). just because she believes the way she does, and i do the way i do, doesn't mean that i think i have better grounds for believing the way i do. that is, i don't have evidence that there are indeed, more than one gods, which makes her belief less reliable. it's just the way things are. or rather, it's the way our upbringings are. she was raised christian, i'm buddhist. if you see where i'm going, yeah there's actually no reason for me to believe that my beliefs in buddhism are rational. and being the rational being i am, i should actually not believe in buddhism. i also know i've checkmated myself because no one says religion is rational, but what if i was raised to think otherwise? for example, that the earth was flat? i don't know what to think of this argument because firstly, i do not hold to a lot of thoughts i was raised to believe. my family doesn't communicate all that much, so most of my thoughts come from books and the media. secondly, there can be empirical data proving some beliefs better than the others. that doesn't mean either party should give up on their beliefs though. not everything has to appeal to reason. to the chagrin of every rational brain is the actor of the heart, the existence of emotions. it's like how vladimir and estragon continue, irrationally, waiting by the tree for godot. not because they believe they have strong grounds to do so (they have, indeed, no grounds at all), but because it brings them feelings of hope and purpose. i feel a tad better now that i've got my thoughts out. it's hard thinking in your brain.