Books from the perspective of punishingly neurotic people?
July 7, 2010 11:09 AM   Subscribe

What are some good, hopefully funny books from the point of view of punishingly neurotic people?

I greatly enjoyed Lauren Weedman's article linked in the Daily Show thread. I'm also a fan of Roland Topor's The Tenant and Evan S. Connell's Diary of a Rapist. Patrick McCabe writes in this mode sometimes - from the perspective of a delusional main character. I'm also a huge fan of "Peep Show," "Human Remains," and the movie The Weather Man. What other books might I like, fiction or nonfiction?

I'm especially interested in books written from the POV of someone with an anxiety disorder. I'd prefer books to either have a story or storylike episodes, and I'd prefer things that are funny (even darkly funny) to things that are not.
posted by Sticherbeast to Media & Arts (26 answers total) 26 users marked this as a favorite
 
American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis
Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
Notes from the Underground - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Requiem for a Dream - Hubert Selby Jr. (the parts about Sara, spec.)
posted by griphus at 11:15 AM on July 7, 2010 [1 favorite]


Portnoy's Complaint- Phillip Roth
posted by Bango Skank at 11:21 AM on July 7, 2010


Jernigan by David Gates is a fantastic combination of hilarious and bleak, and it has a very dysfunctional main character.
posted by Wordwoman at 11:21 AM on July 7, 2010


The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime is written from the point of view of a teenage boy with autism... I know that's not the same as anxiety/neuroses, but I loved that book and I recommend it all the time.
posted by hungrybruno at 11:34 AM on July 7, 2010 [1 favorite]


The Pleasure of My Company by Steve Martin. It's a short novella, but a pretty intimate perspective on OCD/Asperger's. Funny and sad.
posted by so_gracefully at 11:42 AM on July 7, 2010


The protagonist of The Debt to Pleasure is deluding many people, including himself. He's trying to write a combination memoir and cookbook that will give you the episodic structure you're looking for. To say more would ruin the fun; don't read any reviews. Dark humor aplenty.
posted by drdanger at 11:42 AM on July 7, 2010


Foreskin's Lament, Shalom Auslander (the title suggests it might make a nice companion piece to Portnoy's Complaint, listed above)

Some of David Sedaris's stories are like this, check out the collection "Naked" for starters.
posted by phoenixy at 11:45 AM on July 7, 2010 [1 favorite]


I'd consider David Sedaris punishingly neurotic, and certainly funny. Me Talk Pretty One Day is his most accessible, When You Are Engulfed in Flames is my favorite but very dark.
posted by Starmie at 11:52 AM on July 7, 2010 [4 favorites]


Houyhnhnm is absolutely right about the section of Infinite Jest. Worth buying the whole book just for that.
posted by drdanger at 11:55 AM on July 7, 2010


If you have not yet had the pleasure of reading the works of the late, great Spalding Gray, you are in for a treat. I particularly recommend Sex and Death to the Age 14. But it's all wonderful -- anxious, funny and wonderful.
posted by Paris Elk at 11:58 AM on July 7, 2010 [1 favorite]


Lady Oracle, by Margaret Atwood features a pretty kooky and dysfunctional main character.

It also has one of my favorite first-lines: "I planned my death carefully; unlike my life, which meandered along from one thing to another, despite my feeble attempts to control it."
posted by cottonswab at 11:58 AM on July 7, 2010


Also, anything by Anne Tyler. Loveably neurotic characters are her specialty.
posted by cottonswab at 12:06 PM on July 7, 2010


The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker is basically nothing but neurosis, as are most of his other books. Why Did I Ever by Mary Robison is from the perspective of someone with severe ADD, but probably fits the bill. Both are very funny. On a radically different note, Yukio Mishima's Temple of the Golden Pavilion is an amazing (but dark) study of anxiety and self-delusion.
posted by thermogenesis at 12:19 PM on July 7, 2010 [1 favorite]


Italo Svevo's Zeno's Conscience, a.k.a The Confessions of Zeno, has neuroses in spades and is pretty funny, too.
posted by cobra libre at 12:48 PM on July 7, 2010


Sue Townsend's Adrian Mole books.
posted by Toekneesan at 1:07 PM on July 7, 2010


Came in to mention Confederacy of dunces, but was beaten to it- it's awesome!
posted by TheBones at 1:09 PM on July 7, 2010


The protagonist from The Perks Of Being A Wallflower may not be neurotic, but he's definitely not swimming in the same stream as the people around him.
posted by ramenopres at 2:45 PM on July 7, 2010


Jonathan Ames's books are quite good in this way. I like "Wake Up, Sir!" for its updating of P.G. Wodehouse. He's very funny, even in his non-fiction, although a healthy portion of the neuroticism is also related to alcohol.
posted by OmieWise at 5:55 PM on July 7, 2010


though it's not funny, The Collector by John Fowles otherwise fits the bill.
posted by gursky at 6:21 PM on July 7, 2010


While we're talking about David Foster Wallace, "The Depressed Person" from Brief Interviews With Hideous Men.
posted by Merzbau at 7:01 PM on July 7, 2010


2nding Merzbau. Dark, horribly funny story from a punishingly neurotic perspective.
posted by mediareport at 7:38 PM on July 7, 2010


A lot of Murakami books come across this way, not so much in the actions of the people involved but the prose focus on details about the mundane and endless inaccurate self reflection.
posted by ifjuly at 8:59 AM on July 8, 2010


nthing Confederacy of Dunces. I don't believe there's a better fit for your query.

2nding works by David Sedaris

encouraging exploration of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. - Hocus Pocus has quite a bit of what you're looking for, in my opinion.

non-fiction, you might consider Erma Bombeck. I know, that might seem like left-field. She was amusingly neurotic, though, and her stories about her family life are both hilarious and instructive.
posted by batmonkey at 9:13 AM on July 8, 2010


If Nicholson Baker is going to be recommended, I'd go with A Box of Matches over The Mezzanine.
posted by wittgenstein at 10:39 AM on July 8, 2010


Remembered this the other day: Geek Love, Katherine Dunn
posted by batmonkey at 1:33 AM on July 22, 2010


Just ran across this thread. Here are a few:

- several characters in The Replacements (Franzen) are funny and neurotic and anxious, particularly one of the sons
- the main character in Prep has social anxiety
- the professor in Dalva by Jim Harrison is pretty neurotic
- the main character in She's Come Undone has something going on, maybe more about abandonment than anxiety, but it has some funny moments of anxiety
- Phillip Roth writes some good neurotic chapters in American Pastoral (but I see others have recommended other books by hime where that might be even more of a focus of the book)
posted by salvia at 3:58 PM on December 26, 2010


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