Today was interesting so far because it was a break in my normal routine of get up, shower, eat, and go to work by 7:30.  Today I got to sleep in a bit because I had an eye appointment scheduled for 10:00 AM.
It’s always interesting for me to see the world outside my apartment during the hours that I’m at work. There are people jogging, walking their dogs, dining on terraces.  Often I wonder what it is they do that allows them to be out at this time in the morning, enjoying the sunlight, and I envy them for being able to read at their leisure,  to get up and have coffee and pastries out on a terrace when the rest of the world is beginning to work.

Well, the eye doctor, Dr. Reagin, didn’t get to me until 10:45 or so, and then I spent an hour–an hour–in the chair as he slowly slipped different lenses into place to test out my prescription. I appreciate his thoroughness, but after forty-five minutes I began to fidget and wish I were on my way.

Before going back to work, I stopped in at the library.

I wasn’t searching for anything in particular, but ended up getting a book called The Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler. It’s one of the books recommended by someone who commented on the 10 Most Disturbing list, and so it caught my eye and I checked it out. Two other books had been listed as “Checked In” on the library’s database, but I didn’t have time to look for them.

Speaking of the 10 Most Disturbing list, I can tell you that I acquired a copy of The 120 Days of Sodom, began the first two parts of it, and will not be reading it any further.

Frighteningly, it is number three on the list.

Even more frightening is that I could not get through it.

That book is horrible. Horrible. Now you remember how I ranted over American Psycho and said that it made me physically ill to read that book;  well, 120 Days of Sodom was worse than that.

Without me having done any research and with no real authority at all except my own experience in reading books for the last (approximately) 21 years, I can say that there is no real reason to ever read this book, ever.

I’m reading it because I made a promise to myself to finish a list of something.

However, this book shakes the very foundations of my desire to continue reading. It is number three, and if people rank other books above this one, then I’m not sure I possess the willpower and fortitude to continue.

I can say that the main plot of this book–loose plot, mind you–is that of four men who try to discover who is the most libertine of them all. Together with their daughters and a bunch of other prostitutes and young men and women (very young in some cases, I believe some less than 12), they hole up together in some castle and embark on a long period of debauchery.

That said, the book is divided into parts. The first two are the most fully fleshed out, as de Sade did not finish the novel. The first part is a list of all the events that will unfold, who is attending, their physical descriptions, and descriptions of the setting.  The second part is a general overview of the beginnings of the giant orgy. At this point I was having some trouble reading it, but it wasn’t terribly bad yet. There were some things I cringed over, but skimmed, and overall it wasn’t any worse than American Psycho, except in quantity of acts.

I began to skim over parts 3 and 4, because this damn book is about 800 pages long and I wanted to see what else I would have to endure.

Well, 3 and 4 detail the acts that get more violent and horrific. Some of the things I read I don’t think I will ever forget. I said this about American Psycho, but now that I have read through de Sade, I can say that American Psycho is a child’s book compared to 120 Days of Sodom.  Parts three and four begin to chronicle the acts against the men and women who are in this orgy, and while part two left some specifics out (about why these people are not allowed to use the bathroom very often), part three expands on this. Graphically.

It became so graphic that my skin began to crawl, and I felt the familiar warning signs of my body telling me it was about to go into fight-or-flight mode.

I skipped to part four, hoping that they would wrap up, and perhaps the story of how the people fared afterwards would be told and I could at least lie and said I’d read most of the book.

Well no. Part four was the way that each participant was dismembered and tortured to death. The descriptions were merely a sentence or two long, as de Sade evidently had only sketched out what was to occur here, but the mere ideas alone were so foul and loathesome that I could not continue after a few pages. Thumbing through the last fifty pages or so (or more), I caught snippets off of each page. Each victim’s fate was worse than the last, and eventually I began to feel feverish, my heart pounding and sweat breaking out all over my body, until I thought I would be sick. I threw the book across the room and tore out of bed.

It took me the better part of three hours to calm myself enough where I could fall asleep. I watched “The Little Mermaid” and read up on Disney Princesses on Wikipedia as well in order to get those vulgar images repressed enough to have some peace. Even then, I still felt some of the same things that I had when I had read through American Psycho: chills, nausea, weakness, and a general lack of desire to ever be happy again.

That someone would write a book like this makes me question my faith in people. Authors are capable of making dreams unfold in writing, making magic seem possible, but so are they also capable of creating horrors that should not be in existence.

Truly, this book is the worst thing I have read to date.  I don’t see why it exists, except as a testament to how truly warped, disgusting, and perhaps even evil the human mind can become.

I have decided that I will not be giving out this book to anyone. People who want to read it I’m sure will find a way to get their hands on it (or look it up online), but while I normally find joy in lending out books to people so that they can share my literary experience, I will not be so much as mentioning to many others that I have it. For me it is a shameful text to say that I own, embarrassing to see it on my shelf, horrifying to me that I paid money to own this abomination.

Does it deserve its place on the 10 Most Disturbing list? Yes, without a doubt. I have not read the other books yet to judge a better place for it, but I really can’t imagine that any of them are as bad as this one.  If I can stomach another five books off the list (the first two, number four, and number six), I will be happy to tell you which book should rank where.

If I can stomach it.

Categories : adventures, books