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Not a book, but a webcomic: https://elan.school/
Be careful what you wish for OP, this is THE WILDEST shit you will ever read (at least top 5, guaranteed) and the worst/best part is that it’s all true.
Also, its VERY addictive so clear your schedule.
You’ve been warned.
You’ve ALL been warned.
I remember reading through the entire thing in one sitting… it is LONG. You can’t look away
Yup, I started reading out of curiosity from a suggestion on a thread just like this one, then found myself 10 hours later feeling like I’d come down from an acid trip.
I’m jealous of the people who can take that ride now, but also glad my ride with it is over. If that makes any sense.
You know I’d rather not read about that “school” again.
Exactly, but not knowing it exist is even worse.
Yeah, i found it here a while ago, read about 60 chapter. And then just decided tot preorder the 3 physical books. A fantastic but also horrifying read.
No it’s NOT all true. It begins true, like the first couple chapters, then it spirals into 100% creative fiction. Please do not trouble your brain & emotions over fiction.
The best fiction can be quite troubling, the trick is knowing the difference and/but allowing the troubles. Good art can move you. Great art compells you to move yourself.
What years were you in Elan, since you are the obvious expert? And even if the Elan part was creative fiction, are you saying that I shouldn’t care about the children who really went through that? Should I watch Saving Private Ryan and not “trouble my brains and emotions” about war because “Tom Hanks wasn’t really a soldier”?
You sound like a sociopath.
The Metamorphosis of a Prime Intellect.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is an obvious but nonetheless relevant answer. What a ride.
Also Infinite Jest.
Philip K Dick - The three stigmata of palmer eldritch.
It’s like a dream, where you forget where you came from, but at the same time there are powerful themes that are personally and emotionally affecting. Like an acid trip or religious experience, you aren’t the same person after you’ve finished it, whatever lesson you got from it.
Pearl by Josh Malerman (Bird Box).
It’s about a pig on a small farm that can seep into your mind and make you do and see terrible things. I picked it up after reading Bird Box and a few other books of his, which I enjoyed. I expected to give up on it based on the silly 80s horror movie premise, but the book is truly demented and creepy and I felt existentially weird after reading it
China Miéville - The City & the City is one that I don’t think I’ll ever forget. Wild because as far out as it feels, it’s also a pretty accurate portrayal of how we’ve trained ourselves to intentionally not see. I find myself thinking of the book often.
Infinite Jest - just the part about video conferencing is wild and is even mire wild when you realize it was written in the 90’s before video conferencing really existed:
“Good old traditional audio-only phone conversations allowed you to presume that the person on the other end was paying complete attention to you while also permitting you not to have to pay anything even close to complete attention to her. A traditional aural-only conversation […] let you enter a kind of highway-hypnotic semi-attentive fugue: while conversing, you could look around the room, doodle, fine-groom, peel tiny bits of dead skin away from your cuticles, compose phone-pad haiku, stir things on the stove; you could even carry on a whole separate additional sign-language-and-exaggerated-facial-expression type of conversation with people right there in the room with you, all while seeming to be right there attending closely to the voice on the phone. And yet — and this was the retrospectively marvelous part — even as you were dividing your attention between the phone call and all sorts of other idle little fuguelike activities, you were somehow never haunted by the suspicion that the person on the other end’s attention might be similarly divided.”
Naked Lunch. It’s a dark strange read but it suck with me.
Perdido Street Station by China Mieville. I into it blind.
Chuck Palahniuk’s Haunted is the first thing which popped into my head.
It’s a ‘diegetic’ anthology, the context is reminiscent of Sartre’s No Exit in many ways, but taken to Palahniuk’s particular style of extreme.
There’s one short story in it which caused furor back in the day, but I honestly found the meta-context to be even more philosophically gruesome.
Edit: may be biased, I got the book as a gift from a girl I used to like a lot, but she… well, let’s just say she was living that book at the time.
I’m gonna try that! Not really a book, but guts by him is also grotesquely integuing.
Hope you enjoy, Guts is part of Haunted, the one which caused the furor!
NOFX: The Hepatitis Bathtub. Wildest because it’s an autobiography, and they spill it all.
Edit: find the audiobook if you canI gift this one out SO many times!
Wildest as in…?
I finished reading Maldita Guerra, which is the current de facto book detailing the Paraguay War (1864-1870). Francisco Solano López, Paraguay’s dictator at the time, is possibly the worst thing to have happened to the country. The fucking psycho established a cult of personality (saint figures in churches were removed to put photos of him), the only newspaper allowed to print was always cheering on how great and perfect he was, plus a secret police to ensure nobody would dare rise up against him. Oh, and the population was incentivized to denounce anyone that didn’t show enough love for the president.
To make matters worse, there was no real justice system. If you were accused of treason or conspiracy, you were as good as dead, no recourse. Oh, and López’ head was deep inside his own ass, any war reports that showed difficulties or stated losses from the Paraguayan army were rebuked and the person could end up dead for giving the bad news. The fucking asshole willfully ignored facts while giving orders to his army. He could’ve wiped the Triple Alliance’s forces when they began the counterattack, but his “strategic genius” was composed of himself and nobody else.
Jitterbug perfume was out there.
Diaspora by Greg Egan, it’s one of the best thought out take on what a post human society could look like. Lots of amazing ideas in the book.
Currently reading The Illuminatus trilogy. It is a trippy, psychedelic thriller, which assumes many conspiracy theories, both well-known and obscure to be true.
