The Literature of Cruelty.

[Doctor Dugald Eldritch]

Hello. I have found myself becoming interested in fiction where an author is not afraid to be as cruel as possible to his characters, be it physical pain or psychological. While I am not a complete sadist- I cannot stand animals, infants and children in peril, sadism and cruelty in literature is beginning to attract me. One of the most perverse books I know of is Jerzy Kosinski's The Painted Bird, which shews the horrors of the Second World War and the Holocaust through the eyes of a child. I believe Kurt Vonnegut also said a similar thing pertaining to sadism in fiction though I have quite forgotten. If anyone on this forum knows books where an authors cruelty and sadism is taking to the limits then I would be grateful. But please do not think me a madman who takes delight in suffering, I have only a passing interest in this forbidden and nameless form of para-literature.

[luciferfell]

Read some de Sade and some Jean Genet. Also Comte de Lautreamont's Songs of Maldoror. Georges Bataille pretty much any of his fiction. J.G. Ballard's Crash.

[vapidleopard]

THE CONSUMER by Michael Gira.
Hard to find cheap but I assure you the tone is unremittingly cruel and void of even a shred of dignity.

One I haven't got to myself yet is TODDLER HUNTING AND OTHER STORIES by Kono Taeko, which I believe is rife with cruelty.
Different from THE PAINTED BIRD but equally shattering are Kosinski's COCKPIT and STEPS. Don't come back whimpering that you didn't ask for this ;)

[ramonoski]

I thought of Sergio Pitol's Infierno de Todos (roughly translated: "this hell for everyone") but apparently it's never been translated into English. Bummer. It's almost exactly what you're asking for: a collection of short-stories where its various protagonists end up sick or deranged or emotionally crippled. In the foreword to a recent re-edition Pitol says something along the lines of "best case scenario, my characters died." The physical or emotional trauma is not so much the point of the stories, but their framework. For instance, one story, "Victorio Ferri tells a tale", the eponymous character is a bed-ridden child and he's talking about the rumors surrounding his family: some believe his father, a cruel and vicious landowner, is the devil; there's word of an apparent incestuous relationship between the father and one of Victorio's sisters. And that's more or less the story: this kid who is dying of some terrible disease painting the bleak landscape of the little world he knows. It's a good read, but sadly out of reach for non-Spanish speakers. Bummer.

edited to add: apparently at least the one story I mentioned has been translated into English, under the same literal title I used. There's a preview here http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/1...nalCode=rrev20 but I'm afraid the full text is only available for subscribers to this particular journal.

Other than that, I'm thinking of Hedayat's The Blind Owl.

[Druidic]

A lot of good recommendations. For my part--
Guy Endore's The Werewolf of Paris. An unremittingly brutal book where all the characters come to cruel ends. I'm a little surprised it hasn't been mentioned yet. In time, it would. Because of its artistry, it makes De Sade seem clownish. (He was anyway).
It's also the only werewolf novel I know of that deserves to be called classic. As many have pointed out, it's the Dracula of Lycanthropic horror. But, by God, it is unpleasant.
I bought the paperback when I was ten. You shouldn't have a problem finding a reasonably priced copy.

[shivering]

Very good suggestions.

Some of the aforementioned titles can be found as pdf files, if one does a quick Google search. At least one can then get a taste of the works mentioned and decide if a purchase is needed.

Interesting thread, thank you.

[Jeff Coleman]

Dennis Cooper and Peter Sotos may be of interest.

Also, Matthew Stokoe.

[MTC]

RE addiction literature don't forget Geza Csath's Opium and Other Stories. Which also happens to be relevant to the topic of fictive cruelty. And I can recommend Georges Bataille's Literature of Evil.

[Coa]

Cruelty and Sadism in literature is a very interesting topic, I believe that even most simple examples - almost complete mannerism, could still be good for your imagination from time to time.
It really doesn't get any better than Marquis de Sade, I rate him among those like Shakespeare and Po and I would even say one day they will be forgotten and Marquis will still be considered modern, almost everything pales compared to him, but sadly most dismiss him as simple pornographer which is of course bull####.
It would be interesting to see some further discussion on cruelty on other mediums - like internet of course, in recent years great rise of popularity of Snuff genre which is getting more and more exposed, sites that contain videos of torture from some random war-zones across world, "leaked" mortuary video shows or blogs that mainly focus on pictures of car crash victims for example... There is whole scene now and its getting wider, for better or worse. There is some kinda of addiction behind all this when you just cant look away, those who know better speak speak of some kind of healing process behind all this, which is kinda hard to believe, but there is certainly something special behind all of that, not just dead-end pathology.

[MTC]

I won't post any images in order not to offend anyone, but contemporary visual artists such as Thomas Hirschhorn engage this problematics very explicitly. Particularly in his collage works.