# Gratuitousness in books



## frogwoman (Apr 2, 2012)

How much violence is too much in a book? Im thinking about crime novels etc. I sometimes do get put off by very in-depth descriptions of how serial killers have tortured their victims although sometimes sickening violence is necessary in a book to advance the plot and make you realise what a cunt this villain they are hunting is. 

However I have noticed a recent trend in crime novels (although maybe it's not that recent) to like endlessly describe in great detail very sadistic images, especially on women (but not always). I used to be fine with this type of stuff but recently? I dunno. It depends on the book though. 

Not really sure where I'm going with this badly expressed post but just wondered what everyone else thought.


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## N_igma (Apr 2, 2012)

There's never enough violence ime


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## Scaggs (Apr 3, 2012)

Iain Banks's 'Transition' had some pretty sick torture passages. It made me wonder how he came to imagine shit like that but I think it came out around the time of the US torture scandles in Iraq. Don't usually read crime or horror though so maybe I'm a bit squeamish.


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## DotCommunist (Apr 3, 2012)

I'm reading 'The Story of O' on and off.

now theres gratuity for you


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## equationgirl (Apr 3, 2012)

frogwoman said:


> How much violence is too much in a book? Im thinking about crime novels etc. I sometimes do get put off by very in-depth descriptions of how serial killers have tortured their victims although sometimes sickening violence is necessary in a book to advance the plot and make you realise what a cunt this villain they are hunting is.
> 
> However I have noticed a recent trend in crime novels (although maybe it's not that recent) to like endlessly describe in great detail very sadistic images, especially on women (but not always). I used to be fine with this type of stuff but recently? I dunno. It depends on the book though.
> 
> Not really sure where I'm going with this badly expressed post but just wondered what everyone else thought.


I know what you mean - there's a few authors that I can't read because of the graphic descriptions, Val McDermid and Stuart McBride spring to mind.


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## Epona (Apr 3, 2012)

I find reading to be a completely different thing than watching - stuff that I might find "too much" on screen I will happily read about! I am quite into the crime genre, it varies widely in terms of both explicitness and quality, and some of the better authors can be more explicit and vice versa. In terms of crime fiction Patricia Cornwell is a complete hack and not that great to read, it doesn't stop me reading it because I'm a crime-fiction nut but it's not the sort of thing I would necessarily pay for, because she is a bit of a hack (a bit like James Patterson, I also regard him as a bit of a hack).

Wasn't there some controversy about Karin Slaughter a couple of years ago? In terms of the detail she gave about (wholly fictional) crimes against women? I read most of her stuff, and although it didn't particularly stand out for me in terms of crime-literature, I recall that she generally focussed upon crimes against women but also with strong female lead characters and I couldn't help but wonder if that was the cause of all the fuss when it came down to it, plenty of male authors have written about worse fictional crimes with a male detective at the helm - I couldn't help thinking that it was a whole lot of fuss about nothing, I think had the lead detective been male there would have been far less fuss about it.

I am able to read far more violent stuff than I would want to watch, I read Lord of the Flies when I was about 10 as part of the curriculum and that's pretty fucking horrific.


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## Idris2002 (Apr 3, 2012)

DotCommunist said:


> I'm reading 'The Story of O' on and off.
> 
> now theres gratuity for you


 
Do you use your right or left hand for the "gratuity"?

There's a Scots crime writer called Stuart Macbride who has quite a bit of gruesome stuff in his Aberdeen-based police procedurals (which are very good, imo). It's sickening but bearable. I've read some other stuff was really gratuitous, and not intended to excite sympathy for the victim - I'm not going to specify what though.


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## QueenOfGoths (Apr 3, 2012)

equationgirl said:


> I know what you mean - there's a few authors that I can't read because of the graphic descriptions, Val McDermid and Stuart McBride spring to mind.


Funnily enough I was just about to mention Val McDermid (sp)- oh and Mo Hayder as well. I really like crime fiction but their descriptions of the violence inflicted on people borders on the gratuitious/salacious. It has put me off reading their books

Whereas the depiction of child sex abuse in Peter Robinson's "Aftermath" is so horrendous because it is underplayed and what he does describe really does work on both your imagination and emotions.


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## mrsfran (Apr 3, 2012)

Sometimes the gratuitousness is the point - I am thinking of American Psycho particularly.


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## rutabowa (Apr 3, 2012)

i think in american psycho you maybe couldn't even call it gratuitous, as it is so much part of the book rather than just being tacked on.

i've always been a bit "errr" about the castration scene in Germinal, that was a bit trashy


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## seeformiles (Apr 3, 2012)

Another mention for Val McDermid - I think her descriptions of violence border on torture porn. I can't read her books as a result


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## QueenOfGoths (Apr 3, 2012)

seeformiles said:


> Another mention for Val McDermid - I think her descriptions of violence border on* torture porn*. I can't read her books as a result


That is a really good description, it reads exactly like that


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## Shippou-Sensei (Apr 3, 2012)

i think i have gratuitous manga.

but a lot of times that is the point


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## frogwoman (Apr 3, 2012)

yer reason i ask is i've just read a book that def falls into the torture porn category imo


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## frogwoman (Apr 3, 2012)

yeah the weird thing is i don't always have a problem with it and indeed sometimes i tihnk there's not enough  it all depends on the book imo and if the characters and plot are shit i'm more likely to think that it's gratuitous than not.


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## articul8 (Apr 3, 2012)

And you're going to read Beating the Fascists


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## FridgeMagnet (Apr 3, 2012)

mrsfran said:


> Sometimes the gratuitousness is the point - I am thinking of American Psycho particularly.


I find he gets a bit boring after a while. I remember reading _Glamorama_ and thinking "right, Ellis, I got the fucking point here about a hundred pages back". I wouldn't say that that meant the violence was gratuitous, though, just that the book was badly structured and paced. (eta: I've heard it argued that he does this deliberately, putting so much OTT ultraviolence in that you end up bored by it, but if true I find this a debatably effective device.)

It's interesting that you sometimes hear "was the violence (or sex) strictly necessary for the plot?" as if plot was all there was to a book.


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## frogwoman (Apr 3, 2012)

articul8 said:


> And you're going to read Beating the Fascists


 
lol fair play, but sometimes i read books and get the feeling that the person enjoyed writing it a bit too much.


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## frogwoman (Apr 3, 2012)

yeh i dont think all violence is gratuitous and like you say, sometimes it's necessary not just because of the plot but to develop the people's characters, and also make you realise what a cunt someone is (or if someone's not a cunt, to make you think about what pushed them to do that)


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## spawnofsatan (Apr 3, 2012)

frogwoman said:


> lol fair play, but sometimes i read books and get the feeling that the person enjoyed writing it a bit too much.


 Thing is Beating the fascists happened to real people, Brett easton Ellis violence is aimed at charcters IYSWIM


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## frogwoman (Apr 3, 2012)

oddly enough brett easton ellis wasn't who i was thiking of. I liked american psycho and thought it worked.


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## spawnofsatan (Apr 3, 2012)

Sorry froggy, got you mixed up, apologies.


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## SpookyFrank (Apr 3, 2012)

Scaggs said:


> Iain Banks's 'Transition' had some pretty sick torture passages. It made me wonder how he came to imagine shit like that but I think it came out around the time of the US torture scandles in Iraq. Don't usually read crime or horror though so maybe I'm a bit squeamish.


 
Lots of Banks' stuff has torture in it, particularly the sci fi books. A lot of it is gratuitous in the sense that it feels more like the author indulging himself than something relevant to the story or theme.


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## DotCommunist (Apr 3, 2012)

Point of order: Horza is tortured in Comsider Phlebas, to make a very precise point


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## Frances Lengel (Apr 3, 2012)

Scaggs said:


> Iain Banks's 'Transition' had some pretty sick torture passages. It made me wonder how he came to imagine shit like that but I think it came out around the time of the US torture scandles in Iraq. Don't usually read crime or horror though so maybe I'm a bit squeamish.


 

What goes on in our own minds is our own business - Just coz a person's mind is capable of imagining some sick shit, means nowt - Bank's works, like those of any other fiction writer, are works of the imagination - Fuck knows which it was, but it was an Iain M one, maybe it was the one with Horza in it, but maybe not, but that bit with The Eaters where he's got different sets of steel teeth better to strip the flesh from his luckless victims, I thought of somethin similar in infant school. But then I forgot about it, jumped up on a chair, beat my chest & flung my rice puddin around - It was what was expected in those days.

Tell yer what, though... A thing I can't stand in books is too many fuckin similies....It was like..It was like??? Fuck right off, it was like two spit-lubed grunters bringing the tent down in a chaos of vaseline and recrimination.


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## toggle (Apr 3, 2012)

frogwoman said:


> How much violence is too much in a book? Im thinking about crime novels etc. I sometimes do get put off by very in-depth descriptions of how serial killers have tortured their victims although sometimes sickening violence is necessary in a book to advance the plot and make you realise what a cunt this villain they are hunting is.
> 
> However I have noticed a recent trend in crime novels (although maybe it's not that recent) to like endlessly describe in great detail very sadistic images, especially on women (but not always). I used to be fine with this type of stuff but recently? I dunno. It depends on the book though.
> 
> Not really sure where I'm going with this badly expressed post but just wondered what everyone else thought.


 
if you think reading it is bad, i suggest you don't move in with someone who writes about serial killers and has a tendency to chat about what he's working on.


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## frogwoman (Apr 3, 2012)

i don't though, that's the thing - i've written plenty of dark stuff in my life  but like how much is too much?


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## spawnofsatan (Apr 3, 2012)

toggle said:


> if you think reading it is bad, i suggest you don't move in with someone who writes about serial killers and has a tendency to chat about what he's working on.


 

I did my HND on Criminal psychology and forensic science, yes I can get away with murder


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## toggle (Apr 3, 2012)

when i'm in bed, for any reason, talking about it is too much. but i don't think that is what yu were asking.

apart from that,I think when it seems that the writer is trying to make the violence seem sexualised, when the language is telling me they are getting off on telling it, or are expecting me to get a kick out of reading it. i don't really care how much blood they have dripping off the walls, or how unpleasent the torture is, it's more about whether it's written in a way that suggests i'm supposed to be getting wet reading it.


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## frogwoman (Apr 3, 2012)

but you can still describe sexual violence but in a brutal way not a way that suggests that you're meant to be turned on by it i guess.


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## Bakunin (Apr 3, 2012)

toggle said:


> if you think reading it is bad, i suggest you don't move in with someone who writes about serial killers and has a tendency to chat about what he's working on.


 
Oops, my bad.


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## DotCommunist (Apr 3, 2012)

Terry Goodkind has lots of sick torture in hi9s books, and yes there is a certain unpleasant lingering to them that suggests he was typing one handed.

as opposed to Stephen Erickson whose pages are awash with guts and combat, but the clinical way he writes it shows what purpose it serves- to shock, to underline the horror of combat etc. 

anyone remember the name of that bloke who got his collar felt for writing a rank story about rape/murdering Girls Aloud?


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## toggle (Apr 3, 2012)

frogwoman said:


> but you can still describe sexual violence but in a brutal way not a way that suggests that you're meant to be turned on by it i guess.


 
yes. one is part of the plot i think, the other is something that would make me go ewwwwwww.


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## FridgeMagnet (Apr 3, 2012)

It's only been airport-novel-type spy, war or horror novels that I've really thought "this particular scene tells me nothing about the characters or plot, serves no purpose, could have been in any book, and the writer is taking way too much interest in the minutiae". That does include a fair chunk of Stephen King and imitators though. Yeah, your obsession with the detailed description of exactly what each exit wound looked like isn't really horrifying me, it's just making me think you wank over forensics books.


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## FridgeMagnet (Apr 3, 2012)

DotCommunist said:


> anyone remember the name of that bloke who got his collar felt for writing a rank story about rape/murdering Girls Aloud?


To be honest, somebody including lots of pornographic torture in a torture porn story isn't really being gratuitous.


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## toggle (Apr 3, 2012)

DotCommunist said:


> Terry Goodkind has lots of sick torture in hi9s books, and yes there is a certain unpleasant lingering to them that suggests he was typing one handed.


 
that is a good example. i've read a few of his books, some interesting ideas there but overall the turning the violence into a sexualised power game was just too much. I started reading horror books, stephen king, koontz, herbert as examples before i was a teenager. i've gone through accounts of some of the most bloody and barbaric periods in hsitory without blinking.  but goodkind more than any of them make me feel nauseous because i feel like he's trying to draw me in to an enjoyment of brutality an rape.


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## frogwoman (Apr 3, 2012)

> "To the people in the United States Intelligence Community, who, for decades, have valiantly fought to preserve life and liberty, while being ridiculed, condemned, demonized, and shackled by the jackals of evil".[1]


 
wrong'un


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## frogwoman (Apr 3, 2012)

jackals of evil


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## Bakunin (Apr 3, 2012)

If I may contribute (as our resident true crime writer and long-time armchair criminologist), I'm not a fan of unnecessarily graphic content either. I've been studying both true crime and military history since I was old enough to take an interest and, coming from six generations of Royal Marines, I'm not exactly a stranger to grim tales and unpleasant images and footage. But I have noticed a certain sector of the market that seems to glory in the gory and I don't like that as that kind of material doesn't usually offer any real insight or meaningful comment on the subject at hand.

If you write the stuff that I do then you need to have a pretty strong stomach, that's simply a part of the job. You do see and read and hear about the kind of things that a lot of people wouldn't actually want to. So far, so predictable. But, while I could probably make more money and get more exposure by catering to that kind of market, I simply won't do it. When you're dealing with crimes that have caused untold misery and suffering then you have to show a modicum of respect for those concerned and covering true crime cases in a style that would make the National Inquirer blush isn't doing that and it contributes precisely nothing to any meaningful debate or serious study of the subject.

M.R.D. Foot (a former SAS officer during World War 2) first noted this kind of writing over 20 years ago in one of his books on the Special Operations Executive. When he referred to the cruelty routinely meted out to captured SOE agents by the Nazis (and also to their subsequent brutal executions) he wrote that not nearly enough has been written about the that aspect of SOE's history by serious historians and far too much has been written by what Foot referred to as 'pornographers', who seemed far more interested in revelling in the cruelties handed out than in serious study of the events described. Foot first made that claim in the mid-1980's and I think it holds more water now than it already did then.

Fiction writers have a greater degree of artistic licence afforded them in terms of what they write and how they write it, granted, and there's no doubt that, unfortunately, there's definitely a lucrative market for those who care to produce torture porn if they want to. But I don't think for a second that non-fiction writers should assume anywhere near the same latitude. Personally, it's a market that I don't want anything to do with, irrespective of the financial gains it might provide.


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## FridgeMagnet (Apr 3, 2012)

frogwoman said:


> jackals of evil


Shackling jackals!


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## equationgirl (Apr 3, 2012)

frogwoman said:


> jackals of evil


Better than axis of evil though. Just.


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## toggle (Apr 3, 2012)

Bakunin said:


> Personally, it's a market that I don't want anything to do with, irrespective of the financial gains it might provide.


 
there go my dreams of shopping in waitrose


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## Bakunin (Apr 3, 2012)

toggle said:


> there go my dreams of shopping in waitrose


 
Do I get to make entertaining mimes using large leeks in there as well?


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## toggle (Apr 3, 2012)

Bakunin said:


> Do I get to make entertaining mimes using large leeks in there as well?


 
i'd guess that and the conversation about garotting might get us thrown out my dear.


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## T & P (Apr 3, 2012)

I'm certainly far from prudish or adverse to sex or violence in books or films, but the first time I read Stephen King's _It _and reached the part where the 12-year-old kids deemed it neccesary to have themselves a gang bang to help them beat the monster, I thought that was a tad fucked up and superfluous to the plot.


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## machine cat (Apr 3, 2012)

FridgeMagnet said:


> I find he gets a bit boring after a while. I remember reading _Glamorama_ and thinking "right, Ellis, I got the fucking point here about a hundred pages back". I wouldn't say that that meant the violence was gratuitous, though, just that the book was badly structured and paced. *(eta: I've heard it argued that he does this deliberately, putting so much OTT ultraviolence in that you end up bored by it, but if true I find this a debatably effective device.*)


 
You crave the violence because you're so bored by the obsession with consumerism.

"Fuck off listing cleansing products and kill a prostitute ffs"


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