Literature fans: What classics would you recommend a person read if they’re in a hopeless situation that may never improve?

[Weebster]

When I was at the polyclinic, there were books and one guy was reading Dostoevsky. A doctor came up and said that Dostoevsky was not the best reading for a depressed person. Dostoevsky is very cool, but gloomy. Read Chekhov.

Dostoevsky helped me in my 20s

Yes, this story is scary. But the rest of the stories have humor, ridicule the vices of people. I recently discovered the writer Veresaev, he is also a good writer, doctor. In general, of course, Russian classics are all gloomy.

Read The Death of Ivan Ilych by Tolstoy. It's short

 

[houseofleaves]

Nabokov's «Invitation to a Beheading». I'm actually sure that this can help with fear of dying.

 

[Weebster]

Nabokov's «Invitation to a Beheading». I'm actually sure that this can help with fear of dying.

Hp lovecraft Ex Oblivione helps too

 

[houseofleaves]

Hp lovecraft Ex Oblivione helps too

oh, thank you actually! gonna read it right now

 

[Weebster]

oh, thank you actually! gonna read it right now

The closing lines make me want to cry.

 

[lili]

No longer human by Osamu Dazai definetly.

Woman in the Dunes

Marianela

 

[jandek]

Ok. Are proust's books good?

I like Proust, although the first book can be a chore at times. 2nd book is my favorite. After the first three, Proust wasn't able to edit the other volumes to his satisfaction, although they are quite good too. Anyone who finishes the 3rd book usually reads to the end of the series anyway.

 

[UnwantedUnlovable85]

I'd try the books of blood by Clive barker, the it's a wildly inventive collection of horror stories where the ending is always morbidly optimistic

 

[jandek]

Yukio Mishima - "The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea," "The Temple of the Golden Pavilion," "The Sea of Fertility" series
Yasunari Kawabata - "The Lake"
Osamu Dazai - "No Longer Human"
Kobo Abe - "The Face of Another"

Some of Thomas Mann's short stories are especially brutal: "Little Herr Friedemann," "The Joker" (Der Bajazzo), "Tristan"

I like Dostoevsky's "Idiot," although it seems overlong.

My favorite H.P. Lovecraft stories are probably these:
"The Dreams in the Witch House"
"The Shadow Out of Time"
"The Rats in the Walls"
"At the Mountains of Madness"

 

[AnnyMyr]

My favorite writer is Remarque. But also not for the depressed.

 

[whatevs]

The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Tolstói. I actually cried with this book. I found it very touching as it reveals an empiric understanding of disease, defeat, death and finally, peaceful release and acceptance.

Oh, since you have read that one, have you read Tolstói's Confessions? The conclusion is anticlimactic (Christianity), but he really captured existentialism in those pages he wrote narrating his struggle finding something worthwhile in life.

Camus' L'etranger is a good shout as well

Also Man in rebellion (similar title) is worth the time spent reading it.

No longer human by Osamu Dazai definetly.

Woman in the Dunes

Marianela

Big shout out to our suicidal boi Osamu Dazai and his monumental book, "Disqualified from being a human being" ("Indigno de ser humano").

 

[Weebster]

I like Proust, although the first book can be a chore at times. 2nd book is my favorite. After the first three, Proust wasn't able to edit the other volumes to his satisfaction, although they are quite good too. Anyone who finishes the 3rd book usually reads to the end of the series anyway.

Ultimately what are his books about?

 

[jandek]

Ultimately what are his books about?

Monty Python actually has a sketch poking fun at how impossible it is "summarize" Proust, but I'd say his books are about imagination above all, and the role it plays in art, love, and our social lives. In very broad thematic way, one could say it's about the relationship between truth and illusion. There is a shortish book called "Days of Reading" that contains essays by Proust that make a digestible introduction to the style and thoughts of "In Search of Lost Time."

It's hard to nail down the meandering plot, but it focuses primarily on a sensitive and sickly protagonist, not unlike Proust himself, and his infatuations and movements through "high society." This is interspersed with ruminations on art and love and time and whatever. Proust had an amateur interest in philosophy, like Kant and Schopenhauer, so he engages with some pretty heady stuff at times.

 

[The Disinherited]

When I was at the polyclinic, there were books and one guy was reading Dostoevsky. A doctor came up and said that Dostoevsky was not the best reading for a depressed person. Dostoevsky is very cool, but gloomy. Read Chekhov.

Wtf, did he recommend ward no.6 lol?

Monty Python actually has a sketch poking fun at how impossible it is "summarize" Proust, but I'd say his books are about imagination above all, and the role it plays in art, love, and our social lives. In very broad thematic way, one could say it's about the relationship between truth and illusion. There is a shortish book called "Days of Reading" that contains essays by Proust that make a digestible introduction to the style and thoughts of "In Search of Lost Time."

It's hard to nail down the meandering plot, but it focuses primarily on a sensitive and sickly protagonist, not unlike Proust himself, and his infatuations and movements through "high society." This is interspersed with ruminations on art and love and time and whatever. Proust had an amateur interest in philosophy, like Kant and Schopenhauer, so he engages with some pretty heady stuff at times.

I second Proust for the depressive, he wouldn't send anyone overboard, you forgot to mention the most important theme....Memory. Hence the other translation to "In search of lost time"... "Remembrance of things past". I think Dostoyevsky and Proust are connected as the two greatest writers (I should say in my opinion but nah not tonight) resulting from their books containing two of the most popular philosophical subjects of the past 150 years or so (for Dostoyevsky it's existentialism and for Proust it's phenomenology), Dostoyevsky will always be a favourite to the people whilst Proust is more high brow, a writer's writer or critic's writer.

 

[onlyanimalsaregood]

Osho's books.

 

[Bigpink]

War and peace

Brothers Karamazov