Comments on: What's the dirtiest book?

Question: What's the dirtiest book?

ktoad — Tue, 09 May 2006 12:53:52 -0800

What is the most profane novel ever written? I'm talking about the absolute dirtiest work of fiction. And by "dirty" I don't really mean sexual content, like a de Sade book. I'm more interested in sheer volume of swears. Thanks!

By: docgonzo

docgonzo — Tue, 09 May 2006 12:54:45 -0800

Trainspotting is up there, I'd bet.

By: docgonzo

docgonzo — Tue, 09 May 2006 12:55:17 -0800

Or his lesser-known work, Marabou Stork Nightmares, which features a nearly unreadable climax.

/shudder

By: docgonzo

docgonzo — Tue, 09 May 2006 12:55:31 -0800

Oh, and Filth lives up to its name, too.

By: josh

josh — Tue, 09 May 2006 13:00:11 -0800

I don't know how it ranks in terms of language, but Philip Roth's Sabbath's Theater is pretty obscene.

By: nitsuj

nitsuj — Tue, 09 May 2006 13:01:03 -0800

The Fuck-Up?

By: vacapinta

vacapinta — Tue, 09 May 2006 13:03:49 -0800

To be clear, all you are looking for is volume of swear words - not a book of profane acts? Such as Lautreamont's Maldoror , who despises God, who describes fucking a whale and murdering children? Just to be clear...

By: PinkStainlessTail

PinkStainlessTail — Tue, 09 May 2006 13:25:51 -0800

Maldoror is one of the few books I've read that I would describe as downright evil.

By: sonofsamiam

sonofsamiam — Tue, 09 May 2006 13:29:30 -0800

Probably not at #1, but William S. Burroughs has some pretty foul passages, children being molested and eaten by gigantic centipedes and things like that.

By: educatedslacker

educatedslacker — Tue, 09 May 2006 13:34:04 -0800

American Psycho? As far as disgusting descriptions go, that's the only book that I've had to walk away from for a while before I could finish a chapter or two. The swear content is pretty high too, but it definitely won't be grabbing the title for the most F-bombs.

By: horsewithnoname

horsewithnoname — Tue, 09 May 2006 13:37:27 -0800

If you want sheer quantity of swearing, The word 'fuck' appears 672 times in this Miles Davis Autobiography.

By: bove

bove — Tue, 09 May 2006 13:38:46 -0800

I am not sure about the dirtiest book, but Wikipedia has a list of the Dirtiest Movies (at least by their usage of the f-word)

By: box

box — Tue, 09 May 2006 13:39:55 -0800

For sheer volume of swears, you might consider crime fiction, hard-boiled, urban lit, that kind of thing. Many of those books are very dialogue-heavy.

By: vkxmai

vkxmai — Tue, 09 May 2006 13:42:10 -0800

"Kinski Uncut" is pretty insane, you should check that out anyway, Klaus Kinski was one bizarre guy.

By: unixrat

unixrat — Tue, 09 May 2006 13:46:00 -0800

Chuck Palahnuik, author of Fight Club among others, wrote a short story called Guts, which is... well, obscene is the word, really.

It's available online in many places, so I won't bother linking to it.

By: maryh

maryh — Tue, 09 May 2006 13:48:57 -0800

I was about to suggest the Kinski book, too! Man, even the dust jacket on the original hardcover was filthy. I remember a pull quote on the back cover having something to do with Kinski's desire for stinging fire ants to pour out of Werner Herzog's asshole. I wish I'd bought a copy before the publisher recalled it!

By: nylon

nylon — Tue, 09 May 2006 13:50:21 -0800

My first reaction was to suggest James Kelman's How Late It Was, How Late, which won the Booker Prize in 1994 and caused one of the panel to resign in disgust. But I can't find reference online of how many swears it has in it, and I'm not in the mood to go through and count them all.

By: ktoad

ktoad — Tue, 09 May 2006 13:53:59 -0800

vacapinta, that's correct! I'm interested in offensive word count rather than vulgar acts.

Great answers everybody, keep 'em coming!

By: the_bone

the_bone — Tue, 09 May 2006 14:06:24 -0800

If you want sheer quantity of swearing, The word 'fuck' appears 672 times in this Miles Davis Autobiography.

I'll second that. Profane, but an amazing book.

(My brother took a poetry class at UCSD a few years ago with Quincy Troupe, co-author of the Miles Davis book. When he told me that I quipped, "So, what are you learning in there... the number of ways you can rhyme the word 'motherfucker?'")

By: sacre_bleu

sacre_bleu — Tue, 09 May 2006 14:07:21 -0800

The Fermata, Nicholson Baker.* Lit-porn. Notable especially for its lengthy and inventive list of synonyms for semen.

*If "offensive" includes moral offense, such as the feelings some readers might have about a hero who can stop time and uses his talent to get his freak on in myriad ways with unsuspecting women.

By: fire&wings

fire&wings — Tue, 09 May 2006 14:27:09 -0800

Something by Irvine Welsh, Alan Warner or James Kelman.

By: Deep Dish

Deep Dish — Tue, 09 May 2006 14:38:41 -0800

Here is another vote for filth!!!

By: anotherpanacea

anotherpanacea — Tue, 09 May 2006 15:03:47 -0800

What, no Henry Miller? Try Tropic of Cancer.

By: Aghast.

Aghast. — Tue, 09 May 2006 15:22:39 -0800

The Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille has lots of swear words.

By: hwestiii

hwestiii — Tue, 09 May 2006 15:23:05 -0800

James Ellroy ("L.A. Confidential", "American Tabloid") has got to be up there somewhere. Very cynical, hard-boiled, and foul-mouthed.

By: dobbs

dobbs — Tue, 09 May 2006 15:27:47 -0800

I wouldn't call Ellroy foul-mouthed in comparison to many of the works referenced here.

And Nersesian's The Fuck-Up is not profane in the slightest, that I can recall. Good book, though.

By: docgonzo

docgonzo — Tue, 09 May 2006 15:41:05 -0800

Leonard Cohen's 60s novel were particularly smutty (and particularly bad) as I recall.

By: arto

arto — Tue, 09 May 2006 16:11:57 -0800

"Tropic of Cancer" by Henry Miller. I dunno if it's the absolute dirtiest, but apparently ol' Hank was paid by the "cunt".

By: pompomtom

pompomtom — Tue, 09 May 2006 16:55:04 -0800

Irvine Welsh's 'Filth'.

(oh, I mean "nth vote for Filth)

By: painquale

painquale — Tue, 09 May 2006 17:42:03 -0800

Not a book, but James Joyce's love letters to Nora Barnacle are some of the most poetically dirty things I've ever read.

By: plumberonkarst

plumberonkarst — Tue, 09 May 2006 18:42:56 -0800

Over the Rooftops of Paris by Henry Miller.I needed to wash my eyes after reading it and I am a construction worker !! Fascinating read though.

By: Scram

Scram — Tue, 09 May 2006 18:46:35 -0800

BTW, Maldoror's love object was a shark, not a whale.

By: AmbroseChapel

AmbroseChapel — Tue, 09 May 2006 19:10:43 -0800

Is there a novelisation of Deadwood? Because that would have to be in the running.

By: Falconetti

Falconetti — Tue, 09 May 2006 20:12:04 -0800

Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel:

One of them would call it her little dille, her staff of love, her quillety, her faucetin, her dandilolly. Another, her peen, her jolly kyle, her bableret, her membretoon, her quickset imp: another again, her branch of coral, her female adamant, her placket-racket, her Cyprian sceptre, her jewel for ladies. And some of the other women would give it these names,--my bunguetee, my stopple too, my bush-rusher, my gallant wimble, my pretty borer, my coney-burrow-ferret, my little piercer, my augretine, my dangling hangers, down right to it, stiff and stout, in and to, my pusher, dresser, pouting stick, my honey pipe, my pretty pillicock, linky pinky, futilletie, my lusty andouille, and crimson chitterling, my little couille bredouille, my pretty rogue, and so forth.

By: Sallyfur

Sallyfur — Tue, 09 May 2006 21:43:35 -0800

I know you are looking for breadth of foul vocabulary, but what is more profane, the word "motherfucker", or finding, to your horror, that a love scene between an academic with a smegma fetish and his homeless, incontinent young gentleman caller (culminating in them pissing all over a bookcase full of books) brought a sympathetic tear to your eye?

That would be "The Mad Man" by Samuel Delany.

It also says motherfucker a few times, if I recall.

By: lalochezia

lalochezia — Tue, 09 May 2006 22:40:51 -0800

Sorry, but the profanisaurus or the big book of filth has you all beat.

Not much plot in these though!

By: Sallyfur

Sallyfur — Wed, 10 May 2006 00:34:06 -0800

In that case, may I draw your attention to these volumes of Maledicta?

I'm fond of Volume X.