This is really a long shot, but has anybody on this board read the very obscure and macabre book 'Assisted Living' by swedish author Nikanor Teratologen?
(His name is a psuedonym; Teratologen stems from the word 'Teratologi', which in english is Teratology; it's the study of abnormalities of physiological development. He remained anonymous for quite a while before his cover was blown. His real name is Sten Niclas Birger Lundkvist.)
I haven't read the english translation, yet, but I thought that William Burroughs 'Naked Lunch" and Marquis de Sades 'The 120 days Of Sodom' were disturbing to an extent, until I got this monsterous book. No book has been close to the utter and sheer depravity this masterpiece contains.
The language, at least in swedish, is as mindblowing and genius as it is vile, sadistic and straight out reprehensible.
This book is not for the faint of heart, the easily offended or the politically-correct, decent people out there; it'll there you to shreds.
Here's a short summary;
It's protagonists are Helge (called 'Pyret' , which roughly translates into Tot, or Tiny Tot) and his grandfather, Holger Holmlund a.k.a Grandpa Geezer, who is a violent, gay male chauvinist, a Nazi and a satanist, an anti-intellectual with an interest in philosophy; a drug-addict and an incestuous pedophile, a cannibal and a killer, a human degraded to into a beast. The book is written as 11-year olds Helges account as his grandpa's sex slave, his serial killer side-kick and life companion, collected and compiled by a friend of Grandpa Geezer, who had kidnapped, raped and murdered Helge.
Throughout the book, this duo shoots down an entire family hiking in the forrest, a mother, a father and their children, while joyously getting agitated by the carnage; Grandpa Geezer performs auto-fellatio; Helge put the remains of a maimed, mutilated boy his own age over Grandpas barbecue and flogs it as it's getting ready for consumtion; in grandpas basement is a meatlocker filled with the remains of the victims. Grandpa Geezer does have a bit of insight into his own perversions as he agrees with what a psychiatrist who's examined him concluded;
"...I’m ‘an evil, phallic narcissist’ with ‘necrophiliac tendencies’ . . . A ‘schizophrenic solipsist’ filled with ‘demonic rage, an insane thirst for revenge, and a wild contempt for the entire human race..."
It comes off as something written simply for the sake of shock and awe, but the way Lundkvist pieces together words to convey this horrid and wicked world is simply put, genius.
It struck down in Sweden like an atomic bomb of moral degradation and decadence trangressing anything ever written in the swedish language.
Here's a rough translation of how one critique tried to sum up the reception of the book;
"While the book is branded as the "most disgusting and perverse" ever written in our country, it is unreservedly acknowledged to be vital, astute and linguistically ingenious. ... Disgusting, morbidly perverted, satanically disgusting, disgusting, abominable, but at the same time astute and skilfully shocking, believes a practically united body of critics."
Okay, enough ranting - I get excited talking about this book, and just now saw it had been translated into english.
And, even though it should be obvious; no, I do not in anyway condone any of the themes in this book, but that should go without saying.
If you like macabre, morbid, perverted and morally corrupted texts and themes, this is a book for you.
So, anyone?