Ricky blake 8books

OFF LIMITS 8 DANGEROUS BOOKS RICHARD BLAKE

HUBERT SELBY JR. Contemporary/1964

LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN

Tralala’s back was streaked with dirt and sweat and her an­kles stung from the sweat and dirt in the scrapes from the steps and sweat and beer dripped from the faces on­to hers but she kept yelling she had the biggest god­damn pair of tits in the world and some­one an­swered ya bet ya sweet ass ya­do and more came 40 maybe 50 and they screwed her and went back on line and had a beer and yelled and laughed and some­one yelled that the car stunk of cunt so Tralala and the seat were tak­en out of the car and laid in the lot and she lay there naked on the seat and their shad­ ows hid her pim­ples and scabs and she drank flip­ping her tits with the oth­er hand and some­body shoved the beer can against her mouth and they all laughed and Tralala cursed and spit out a piece of tooth and some­one shoved it again and they laughed and yelled and the next one mount­ed her and her lips were split this time and the blood trick­led to her chin and some­one mopped her brow with a beer soaked hand­ker­c hief and an­oth­er can of beer was hand­ed to her and she drank and yelled about her tits and an­oth­er tooth was chipped and the split in her lips was widened and ev­ery­o ne laughed and she laughed and she drank more and more and soon she passed­out and they slapped her a few times and she mum­bled and turned her head but they could­nt re­vive her so they con­tin­ued to fuck her as she lay un­con­scious on the seat in the lot and soon they tired of the dead piece and the daisy­chain broke­up and they went back to Willies the Greeks and the base and the kids who were watch­ing and wait­ing to take a turn took out their dis­ ap­point­ment on Tralala and tore her clothes to small scraps...

AGE 13 I stumbled upon this book at the public library in my early teens, read the back and then decided to read it. I was enticed by the excessive profanity and gripping short stories.

BRET EASTON ELLIS Horror/1991

AMERICAN PSYCHO

I wait un­til she’s seen the nail gun and the gloved hands to scream, “What the fuck are you do­ing with Robert Hall?”Perhaps on instinct, perhaps from memory, she makes a futile dash for the front door, crying out.

Though the chardonnay has dulled her reflexes, the Scotch I’ve drunk has sharpened mine, and effortlessly I’m leaping in front of her, blocking her escape, knocking her unconscious with four blows to the head from the nail gun. I drag her back into the living room, laying her across the floor over a white Voilacutro cotton sheet, and then I stretch her arms out, placing her hands flat on thick wooden boards, palms up, and nail three fingers on each hand, at random, to the wood by their tips.

This causes her to regain consciousness and she starts screaming. After I’ve sprayed Mace into her eyes, mouth, into her nostrils, I place a camel-hair coat from Ralph Lauren over her head, which drowns out the screams, sort of. I keep shooting nails into her hands until they’re both covered—nails bunched together, twisted over each other in places, making it impossible for her to try and sit up. I have to remove her shoes, which slightly disappoints me, but she’s kicking at the floor violently, leaving black scuff marks on the stained white oak.

During this period I keep shouting “You bitch” at her and then my voice drops to a raspy whisper and into her ear I drool the line “You fucking cunt.”

AGE 15 I read this book when I was a young teenager. I was captivated by the graphic depictions and obscene language. The carnal content left me aghast.

CHUCK PALAHNIUK Satire/1996

FIGHT CLUB

Mar­la’s cold and sweat­ing while I tell her how in col­lege I had a wart once. On my pe­nis, on­ly I say, dick. I went to the med­ical school to have it re­moved. The wart. Af­ter­wards, I told my fa­ther. This was years af­ter, and my dad laughed and told me I was a fool be­cause warts like that are na­ ture’s French tick­ler. Wom­en love them and God was do­ing me a fa­vor. Kneel­ing next to Mar­la’s bed with my hands still cold from out­side, feel­ing Mar­la’s cold skin a lit­tle at a time, rub­bing a lit­tle of Mar­la be­tween my fin­g ers ev­e ry inch, Mar­la says those warts that are God’s French tick­lers give wom­en cer­vi­cal can­cer. So I was sit­ting on the pa­per belt in an ex­am­in­ing room at the med­ical school while a med­ical stu­dent sprays a can­is­ter of liq­uid ni­tro­gen on my dick and eight med­ical stu­dents watched. This is where you end up if you don’t have med­ical in­sur­ance. On­ly they don’t call it a dick, they called it a pe­nis, and what­ev­er you call it, spray it with liq­uid ni­tro­gen and you might as well burn it with lye, it hurts so bad. Mar­la laughs at this un­til she sees my fin­gers have stopped. Like maybe I’ve found some­thing. Mar­la stops breath­ing and her stom­ach goes like a drum, and her heart is like a fist pound­ing from in­side the tight skin of a drum. But no, I stopped be­c ause I’m talk­i ng, and I stopped be­c ause, for a minute, nei­t her of us was in Mar­l a’s bed­r oom. We were in the med­i cal school years ago, sit­ting on the sticky pa­per with my dick on fire with liq­u id ni­t ro­g en when one of the med­i cal stu­dents saw my bare feet and left the room fast in two big steps. The stu­d ent came back in be­h ind three re­a l doc­tors, and the doc­tors el­bowed the man with the can­is­ter of liq­uid ni­tro­gen to one side. A re­al doc­tor grabbed my bare right foot and heft­e d it in­t o the face of the oth­er re­al doc­tors.

AGE 14 I found this book while browsing the aisles of a bookstore in middle school. I opened a random section, read a few raunchy lines and decided to buy it.

JEFFREY EUGENIDES Coming of Age/1993

THE VIRGIN SUICIDES

The party was just beginning to get fun when Cecilia slipped off her stool and made her way to her mother.

Playing with the bracelets on her left wrist, she asked if she could be excused. It was the only time we ever heard her speak, and we were surprised by the maturity of her voice. More than anything she sounded old and tired. She kept pulling on the bracelets, until Mrs. Lisbon said, “If that’s what you want, Cecilia. But we’ve gone to all this trouble to have a party for you.” Cecilia tugged the bracelets until the tape came unstuck. Then she froze. Mrs. Lisbon said, “All right. Go up, then. We’ll have fun without you.” As soon as she had permission, Cecilia made for the stairs. She kept her face to the floor, moving in her personal oblivion, her sunflower eyes fixed on the predica­ ment of her life we would never understand. She climbed the steps to the kitchen, closed the door behind her, and proceeded through the upstairs hallway. We could hear her feet right above us. Halfway up the staircase to the second floor her steps made no more noise, but it was only thirty seconds later that we heard the wet sound of her body falling onto the fence that ran alongside the house. First came the sound of wind, a rushing we decided later must have been caused by her wedding dress filling with air.

AGE 13 I read this novel when I was in middle school. I was enthralled with the storyline of four suicidal sisters told through the eyes of neighborhood teenage boys.

FORBIDDEN AUTHORIZED

NIGHT AGE 13

THE PASSION OF NEW EVE AGE 20

FIGHT CLUB AGE 14

AMERICAN PSYCHO AGE 15

LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN AGE 13

BOOK

INTENDED AUDIENCE

NO EXIT AGE 17 ADULT

YOUNG ADULT

CHILD

WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS AGE 8

THE VIRGIN SUICIDES AGE 13

ANGELA CARTER Magic Realism/1977

THE PASSION OF NEW EVE

He was the first man I met when I became a woman.

He raped me unceremoniously in the sand in front of his ranch-house after he dragged me from the helicopter, while his seven wives stood round in a circle, giggling and applauding. I was in no way prepared for the pain; his body was an anonymous instrument of torture, mine my own rack. My nostrils were filled with the rank stench of his sweat and his come and, dominating even these odours, the sweetish, appaling smell of pig-shit, a smell which clung to the entire ranch and its environs in a foul miasma. When Zero had finished with me, he went into the house with the jumpin dog at this heels and banged the door behind him. The girls picked me up and dusted me down and took me to the room where they ate and slept, a sorority dormitory with Indian printed fabrics hung here and there on the wooden walls, furnished with orange crates and lit by flickering oil-lamps, for the electricity generator had broken down and Zero did not have the patience to repair it. A saddle-backed sow, caked with filth, rose up heaving and squeaking from a mattress as we entered the room and trampled the bare feet of the young girls as it lurched out through the door.

Even the pigs thought they were too good for our company.

AGE 20 I read this book in a college English literature class. The story was extremely bizarre and perplexing, leaving me wondering what the future has in store for society.

ELIE WIESEL Memoir/1955

NIGHT

One day, as we returned from work, we saw three gallows, three black ravens, erected in the center of the camp. Roll call. The SS surrounding us, machine guns aimed at us: the usual ritual. Three prisoners in chains - and, among them, the little servant boy, the sad-eyed angel. The SS seemed more preoccupied, more worried, then usual. To hang a child in front of thousands of onlookers was not a small matter. The head of the camp read the verdict. All eyes were on the child. He was pale, almost calm, but he was biting his lips as he stood in the shadow of the gallows.

This time, the Lagerkapo refused to act as executioner.

Three SS took his place. The three condemned prisoners to­ gether stepped onto the chairs. In unison, the nooses were placed around their necks. “Long live liberty!” shouted the tow men. But the boy was silent. “Where is merciful God, where is He?” someone behind me was asking. At the signal. the three chairs were tipped over. Total silence in the camp. On the horizon, the sun was setting. “Caps off!” screamed the Lageralteste. His voice quivered. As for the rest of us, we were weeping. “Cover your heads!” Then came the march past the victims. The two men were no longer alive. Their tongues were hanging out, swollen and bluish. But the third rope was still moving: the child, too light, was still breathing.... And so he remained for more than half an hour, lingering between life and death, writhing before our eyes. And we were forced to look at him at close range. He was still alive when I passed him. His tongue was still red, his eyes not yet extinguished. Behind me, I heard the same man asking: “For God’s sake, where is God?” And from within me, I heard a voice answer: “Where is He? This is where -hanging here from this gal­ lows...” That night, the soup tasted of corpses.

AGE 13 This book was a required text for my 7th grade English class. It was the first book I read that detailed the atrocities of the Holocaust, exposing me to the obscenity within humanity.

JEAN-PAUL SARTRE Drama/1944

inez: That’s it. You laughed at him. And so he killed himself. estelle: Did you used to look at Florence in that way? inez: Yes. estelle: You’ve got it all wrong, you two. He wanted me to have a baby. So there! garcin: And you didn’t want one? estelle: I certainly didn’t. But the baby came, worse luck.

I went to Switzerland for five months. No one knew anything. It was a girl. Roger was with me when she was born. It pleased him no end, having a daughter. It didn’t please me! garcin: And then? estelle: There was a balcony overlooking the lake. I brought a big stone. He could see what I was up to and he kept on shouting: “Estelle, for God’s sake, don’t!” I hated him then. He saw it all. He was leaning over the balcony and he saw the rings spreading on the water—

NO EXIT

AGE 17 I read this play in my literature class in high school. It was the first existentialist text I read that made me realize the hell humans put themselves into.

SHEL SILVERSTEIN Poetry/1974

There is a place where the sidewalk ends And before the street begins, And there the grass grows soft and white, And there the sun burns crimson bright, And there the moon-bird rests from his flight To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black And the dark street winds and bends.

Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow, And watch where the chalk-white arrows go To the place where the sidewalk ends.

WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS

Yes we’ll walk with a walk that is measured and slow, And we’ll go where the chalk-white arrows go, For the children, they mark, and the children, they know The place where the sidewalk ends.

AGE 8 This book of poems was read to me as a child. I was intrigued by the subversive rhymes and characters.