Repellent Books

It would, in fact, be great if books could somehow repel mosquitoes, gnats and other annoying aerial critters, so that one could sit quietly in the backyard on a summer evening and actually read. As it is, I try for five minutes, then give up and come in the house and scratch for the next half hour.

No, I’m thinking of genuinely repellent books. Have you ever read a published work that you found offensive, nauseating or otherwise disgusting, something you wish you’d never opened or that you’d like to toss in the trash can?

Perhaps this is put too strongly. Obviously, most people would find seriously repulsive those pornographic novels in which men, women or children were subjected to vividly described torture. Recently, on another forum, a distinguished writer confessed that he found pedophile Humbert Humbert, in “Lolita,” so repugnant that he couldn’t finish the book, despite the beauty of its prose. The work of Bret Easton Ellis—especially “American Psycho”—has alternately been judged by some readers to be edgy black humor and by others to be utterly sick.

Then there’s the matter of kitsch. Some books—such as Amanda Ros’s “Irene Iddlesleigh,” which was a favorite butt of the Bloomsbury Circle—are so saccharine, so corny, so fustian that they become almost gloriously bad. In the case of the Ros novel, one can enjoy bits and pieces of it as inadvertent parody.

Some readers find the philosophical poetry of, say, Jorie Graham so densely written as to seem rebarbative and unreadable. Others might find religious tracts or the publications of the smiling, upbeat lifestyle gurus as genuinely creepy. Then there are the legendary “hate” books such as “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, racist works like “The Turner Diaries,” or much of the wartime writing of the novelist Celine.

In your reading life, are there books that you’ve found repellent? That offended your sensiblities, in one way or another, so much so that you reacted to them with an almost visceral loathing? Similary, are there kitschy books that works you know you should dislike but nonetheless find perversely attractive? Please share some of your thoughts about “bad” books.

- Michael Dirda