javeharron

120 Days of Sodom: Or, The Amateur's Guide to French Culture

Welcome to this week's experiment, my lab rats! Today, we'll be covering a writer who defines French culture for me. Now, when I say France, why do you think of? Aside from cowards, colonialism and imperialism worse than several other nations, trying to get other people to fight their colonial wars for them (such as in a small country called Vietnam), hairy women, genocide in Algeria, shoddy Chauchat machineguns that killed more Allied soldiers than Germans in WWI, and planting rows of trees in Paris so that the Germans can march in the shade? If you answered parkour, savate, Fourier and other mathematicians, Voltaire, the Foreign Legion, or the FAMAS assault rifle, you've been focusing too much on the positives.

Today's experiment is a writer who defines French culture as the armpit of Europe for me. Despite being next to several more awesome neighbors, France still manages to find ways to be underwhelming in positives and overwhelming in negatives. How could a single writer, or even book, turn this country into an unfunny joke for me? You're all about to find out. Do try to avoid stepping in the French culture strewn about the room. Most people flush it instead of flinging it about the reading room. But today's book is certainly one found of shit-spewing. So, pick up “The 120 Days of Sodomy” by Marquis de Sade.

Now, in case you don't know that name, the name of Marquis de Sade inspired one of my favorite words in your language: Sadism. Most of his writings are the 1700s version of shock writing, but de Sade himself advocates the philosophy within. While he opposed war and the death penalty, he also believed one should live without law or morality. While this sounds fine in practice, most of his characters often do things to each other without consent of any sort. Of course, random surreal and violent pornography and sex are still around in media, but this is the fellow who wrote the most infamous books on it (save, perhaps, the Old Testament). De Sade's philosophy stated that pleasure was the highest good in life, no matter how it was achieved.

So, what's the book about? Four wealthy aristocrats lock themselves in a remote castle with four veteran prostitutes, and plenty of victims (mostly children and their own daughters). The four main characters are a duke who achieved his wealth by poisoning his mother (and later his sister after she found out); his brother, a bishop passionate about anal sex; a corrupt banker; and a judge who enjoys giving out death sentences to people he knows are innocent. This charming foursome prepares to rape, torture, and kill their victims based on the stories of the prostitutes. We're off to such a good start already!

The book itself is divided into sections based on months. Each month gets progressively more vile. Given this is a Marquis de Sade book, “vile” takes on a whole new dimension here. This is the figure that the term 'sadism' came from, after all. The novel starts out in November, and ends in March. So, over these months, what can possibly happen? Grab a barf bag, and let's dive in! So, we come to November, the first month, which is label “The Simple Passions.” That doesn't sound too bad, right?

Not quite. This delightful chapter has plenty of “gems” in it, such as men masturbating into the faces of seven year old girls, eat feces, and drink piss. There's also raping of each others' daughters, but the Marquis and these four main characters are just getting warmed up. The next month, December, has the “complex passions.” What better way to celebrate Christmas than telling sacrilegious stories? The Marquis has the story of a man who did nuns during religious services, men vaginally raping young girls, and performing incest and whipping. We're already on month two, and not a lot of torture yet. Can it really get worse?

Of course it can, and it does. (You should familiarize yourself with Murphy's Law if you thought otherwise.) January is the month of “criminal passions.” Here, we have stories of men who molest three year old girls, prostitute their daughters and watch the 'deed' while masturbating, and people who mutilate women by ripping off fingers and burn them with hot pokers. The victims are beaten and tortured even more.

You may be thinking that January is misogyny month, but that does not even compare to the next month. February is when the novel gets really bad, and is the time for the 'murderous passions.' This chapter includes charming stories about people who skin children, dismember pregnant women, massacre entire families, and masturbate while teenager girls are being dismembered. In this month, they murder their own teenage daughters in graphic detail. One daughter does survive, because she starts enjoying a lot of the tortures. There are things there I will not describe here. This chapter easily has some of the most vile scenes I have ever read, and that is saying something.

Thankfully, after this, the novel is almost over. The last section, March, was incomplete. Sade summarizes the novel, and makes a list of who lives and who dies. Some of the survivors are mentioned as being 'disposed off,' but few details are given (thankfully). This is due to Sade not finishing, rather than him suddenly being squeamish. This basically concludes the most disgusting thing I've ever read. Even with the other things on the Bookshelf of Horrors, and the horror I've read and seen, this book takes the cake.

Just when you thought it can't get any worse, it turns out someone made a movie of this book. It's an Italian film called “Salo,”changing the setting from pre-Revolutionary France to the last days of the Fascist regime in Italy. The coprophagia scene and others are largely taken from the first month. Even a movie this vile has things it doesn't dare show us on screen. This movie is banned in several countries around the world, for obvious reasons.

This was not the only book that Marquis de Sade wrote. With several other books that Sade wrote, it seems there's enough crap for everyone to go around. “120 Days of Sodom,” is, however, considered to be his 'greatest work.' For a writer who enjoys his torture and fetishes, the worst is reading this. Even following Sade's own philosophy, reading this book violates it. It's never a pleasure to read it. (This book may be useful for toilet paper, considering most of the subject matter.)

This book has defiled my mind, and I will have to delete it from memory. I will leave you humans to forever have this thing burned upon your mind. Perhaps it will motivate you to become my cyborg minions faster. Remember, your worst tomes are my favorite tortures! And try not to step in the French culture on the way out.

Greetings, humans, and I must say I am impressed with you. Now, why would a superior organism such as myself have a momentary change in feelings for creatures as pathetic as you, you ask? Because I have seen the pain you are able to put each other through intentionally. One of my favorites comes from a story involving a certain self-publishing company.

Now, many writers get started with self publishing firms, but some of these firms attempt to pass themselves off as 'traditional publishers.' Many of these firms spit out copies of books to whoever pays them, with editing normally not covered. One such firm, PublishAmerica, wrote a press release claiming that science fiction and fantasy were inferior genres to “mainstream” fiction.

So, a group of irate science fiction and fantasy writers began work on a “mainstream” work of fiction designed to be horrible, and saw if PublishAmerica would print it. To summarize, the company did offer the contract to print it, but the writers went public with the hoax, destroying PA's claim of "We read every single submission before we accept or refuse." That horrible novel is today's experiment: “Atlanta Nights” by the writers' collective pseudonym “Travis Tea” (say that fast).

Note that I will refer to this pile of literary diarrhea as a “novel” for ease of writing, although it obviously fails to meet the criteria of a standard piece of fiction. The “novel” itself has no coherent plot. The grammar is atrocious. Calling the characters 'cardboard' would be an insult to wood pulp. Different writers each wrote separate chapters with little knowledge of what went on in the previous chapter. There are a number of fun facts with the chapter structure. Here are some examples: There are two “Chapter 12s.” Chapter 21 is missing. Chapter 17 is identical to Chapter 4. My personal favorite is Chapter 34, “translated” by the Bonsai Story Generator. The Bonsai Story Generator takes short stories and converts it into utter garbage. While it works best with short stories less than 6000 words, examine what it does to this factual paragraph from one of my educational supplements.

The original text reads: “Baseline humans need to be converted into cyborg zombies. With energy resources, food, and living space running out, it is moral and more ecologically friendly to convert baselines into more energy efficient forms, such as cyborg zombies. Zombies are more environmentally friendly, and may be used to garden on. They emit far less carbon than a baseline fool in a hybrid car.”

This is the translated version: “Baseline humans need to garden on. They emit far less carbon than a hybrid car. Baseline humans need to convert baselines into cyborg zombies. With energy efficient forms, such as cyborg zombies. With energy efficient forms, such as cyborg zombies. With energy efficient forms, such as cyborg zombies. With energy efficient forms, such as cyborg zombies. Zombies are more environmentally friendly, and ...”

I dare you to read the horrible chapter. It was semi-comprehensible garbage in, and complete garbage out (not unlike a politician's press conference).

The first letters in the characters' names allegedly spell out “PublishAmerica is a vanity press.” The story, for lack of a better term, starts off with a software developer named Bruce Lucent in a hospital after a car crash. There's a nurse swooning over him, and soon, he gets released. The novel largely revolves around the “social circle” and extended social network of the characters introduced first. Of course, the novel also jumps to completely random people as well. Most of what they do is soap opera fare, but there's random subplots that don't go anywhere. There's enough dropped plot threads here to knit a tapestry of epic and utter failure.

The grammar and research, as you'd expect, are also horrible, as was the intention. Take a look at this quote, from Chapter 7: "I remember one night, the best night for us. He took me to Rome where we stood in the light of the Eiffel Tower and watched the people go by. There was one couple there who reminded us of us. There was another man Henries age and another woman my age and they were laughing together, just laughing, hard you know the way people laugh when they really feel the joy of life, the two of them, laughing! Laughing!...”

Ah, here I thought that Rome had the Coliseum, and Paris had the Eiffel Tower. But I'm sure the geography was messed up deliberately. The grammar in the other sentences gets even worse. It is loosely analogous to having your eyeballs and visual cortex violated by rusty nails. The sheer amount of random implied sex and drama in this piece of garbage makes supermarket romances seem prudish family entertainment.

But, in a way, this novel is a tolerable load of garbage. That was it was written specifically for, and in that regard, it is a masterpiece. It helped reveal a self-publishing company's false claims, and did so in a hilariously awful fashion. Now and then, you humans do amuse me, and this is one case I enjoyed learning about. The fact they produced a viable tool for psychological torture in the process is an added bonus.

A similar literary hoax was performed in 1969, when a group of journalists decided American literary culture had become too focused on mindless fornication. So, they wrote a novel with no literary or symbolic value called “Naked Came the Stranger,” about a woman randomly sleeping with people. The main difference between that and “Atlanta Nights” is that “Naked” has more explicit scenes and better writing and grammar. We may cover “Naked” in the future, if I can retain my lunch at random human fornication scenes (figuratively, of course, as a superior being such as myself does not need to worry about food).

As we turn out the lights in “Atlanta Nights,” I leave you with a warning. The self publishing market is full of plenty of filth, so even I hate to find the depths of these books. By far, however, there is a horrible novel that was self-published, even worse than “Atlanta,” entitled “The Turner Diaries.” That book is a racist piece of garbage that inspired Timothy McVeigh. Given our previous experiment with Julius Evola, we'll be avoiding trash of that sort.

But rest assured, humans! We'll be focusing on a different sort of trash! Your worst tomes are my favorite tortures, and this book has proven to be my favorite torture to date! Download it and see for yourselves! Why settle for a bad book written by a moron when you can have one written by professionals? Next time, we'll be going into some more obscure books, and a special experiment about one of the most vile writers in history!