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.