I'm looking for a deeply melancholic novel, one dealing with nostalgia, yearning for the past, and the stagnation of modern life that leaves one feeling hopeless. Could be realistic, or of a fantasy/sci-fi/weird/horror bent, I'm not too picky.
>>25277899The Recognitions.I want to say Gravity's Rainbow, but it's more grotesque than melancholic (even if Pynchon is very sentimental and clearly yearning for the past) and it's more "we're getting fucked in the ass by corporations and governments alike" than "stagnation". Maybe he toned it down in Mason & Dixon and Against the Day, but I haven't read those two yet.
>>25277899Nostalgia is cope. The past is gone. All you have and all you can influence is the present moment
>>25277899The Road
>>25277899>muh emotionsFuck off woman
>>25278011Was going to suggest this
>>25278018It’s a good suggestion hits every beat in the OP
>>25278023Thanks Anon, I'll take a look.>>25278004I know, and what's more I want to wallow in it for a bit. >>25278014I hope you recover from being dead inside.
>>25277899Maybe Houellebecq. Most of his characters are old and melancholic for the time when their dick was still working and their wife loved them. Serotonin and Map and Territory would probably fit the most. Thomas Bernhard. Woodcutting is about a guy hating on everybody at a meeting with older colleagues. In there he thinks about the past he had with all the people. But that is about it. Nothing happens in that book. He just sits in a chair. A wing chair btw. Old Mastes is about a guy hating on everything too. A portion of it is about the memories of him and his wife. Thomas Bernhard is pretty buch just old people hating. And a part of that is always how better their past was.
>>25278028also check this one out
>>25277899LotR
>>25278028>I hope you recover from being dead insideI'm not dead inside, I'm intellectually inclined.
>>25277899A Canticle for Leibowitz,you won't get it,then,when you're really ready for it,Lord of the World
>>25277899I want a melancholic book that deals of tragedy and things going wrong. Throw in some trauma as well
>>25277899Genuinely My Diary Desu
>>25278004>pope endorsed by nike
>>25277899In Search of Lost Time
>>25278287Very good call Anon, it shall be next.
>>25277899A Canticle For Liebowitz, kind of. And there are some elements of what you're looking for in Zweig's autobiography, especially if you take a critical (not in the marxoid sense) view of his celebration of sexual liberation and modern life. He saw the end of western civilization and didn't understand what it meant. Even he says that pre WW1 Europe had a kind of freedom and joy that was lost forever. >We, who have been hounded through all the rapids of life, we who have been torn loose from all roots that held us, we, always beginning anew when we have been driven to the end, we, victims and yet willing servants of unknown, mystic forces, we, for whom comfort has become a saga and security a childhood dream, we have felt the tension from pole to pole and the eternal dread of the eternal new in every fibre of our being. Every hour of our years was bound up with the world’s destiny. Suffering and joyful we have lived time and history far beyond our own little existence, while they, the older generation, were confined within themselves. Therefore each one of us, even the smallest of our generation, today knows a thousand times more about reality than the wisest of our ancestors. But nothing was given to us: we paid the price, fully and unequivocally, for everything. (Note that this expanded sense of reality is mostly gone as well: He lived through two world wars, we today are soft, ignorant, AND cut off from tradition and humanity)>>25278028>Doesn't deny being a woman Post feet, posthaste. You better have cute toes.
