r/EmoScreamo • u/Evil_Wizard_ov_HELL • 4d ago
Books with the feel of skramz
I’m in graduate school for creative writing (MFA) and recently infodumped about the origin of screamo/emo in front of my workshop classmates. Before you laugh, my instructor suggested I write about it for my critical component. For my thesis we have a creative component (a novel I’m writing) and a critical essay. I’m curious if there have been any fiction books you’ve read that have the feel of screamo, or could be analyzed through the lens of this style of music. I don’t mean books about emo or hardcore, but rather books that evoke similar emotions/similar feelings. I guess what came the closest to me, both in DIY ethic and transgressive themes is Dennis Cooper’s George Miles series, as well as the works of Laszlo Kraznahorkai. Not sure if this is the best place to ask, but also curious if I’ll get any answers.
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u/Goofedlmao 4d ago
In a weird way, a lot of Kurt Vonnegut books kinda have a similar vibe to what you’re looking for. It’s not that they feel sad or “emo,” but they kinda have a similar use of dark humor to some screamo bands. Also, bands like Kilgore Trout and Harrison Bergeron get their names directly from Vonnegut.
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u/crystallineskiess 4d ago
Idk if it ‘feels’ skramz but Tao Lin mentions I Hate Myself in Eeeee Eee Eeee.
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u/passwordstrength 4d ago
read that book way back in high school and did an essay on it in my 11th grade english class, my teacher loved my essay. I’d have to find it in my google drive but it was cool to analyze such a seemingly flippant novel, to notice Lin’s thematic devices and style, how he treats characters and action in the story, even if it’s one of those books where illiterate dolts would claim “nothing really happens.” i was also getting very into classic 90’s & 2000’s screamo at that time, it all felt related and not just because it was all floating around in my consciousness.
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u/Evil_Wizard_ov_HELL 3d ago
Tao Lin feels very skramz tbh. As well as that generation of alt-lit writers.
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u/deerwater 1d ago
check out Sea-Witch by Never Angeline North - sort of post-alt-lit trans scribbly horny surreal punk
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u/Evil_Wizard_ov_HELL 1d ago
I have been meaning to check out sea witch since 2021 when i first saw it in a trans girl’s apartment when i lived in the pacific northwest
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u/deerwater 1d ago
Hell yeah! Be sure to get the 400ish page omnibus bc i don't think v.4 was ever made into a standalone volume
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u/Bulky_Explanation_97 4d ago
The atrocity exhibition - Ballard (also this would be a great band name)
The cipher - Koja
Honestly just scanning through my bookshelf now. This is a fun question. But I’ll quit for now.
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u/DerTomatenToaster 4d ago
So, halfway through reading this post, an indie Visual Novel I recently read popped into my mind - and I wasn't originally gonna comment, since it's not really what you're looking for, but then I finished reading the post and now I kind of have to. Why? Because the bottom of the VN's itch.io page says: "I wanna thank Dennis Cooper for writing the George Miles cycle of books."
I haven't read any of those books (yet), but I feel like this can't be a coincidence (as in: our impression of what a skramz-ish novel is, aren't too different), so I'm gonna recommend* LONER_DOG://Snuff Puppy Carnage Society
*very NSFW, VERY disturbing content; perhaps check the content warnings, if that's something you do.
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u/exogof_3Hn 3h ago
There are not enough gays in skramz for this many people to be name dropping cooper. have you guys actually read his stuff or just read about it? i’m confused
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u/DerTomatenToaster 3h ago
Well, like I said in my comment, I haven't read his books (but I now plan to). I'm also very much trans and bi though, lol.
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u/exogof_3Hn 3h ago
Okay thanks for sharing? Is that supposed to have something to do with Dennis Cooper’s subject matter dealing with explicitly gay psychosexual fantasies of violent lust and obsession?
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u/DerTomatenToaster 3h ago
Maybe it has something to do with the explicitly trans Visual Novel I was recommending in the first place. I only mentioned Dennis Cooper because that Visual Novel (LIKE I SAID) was apparently inspired by his books. I also already SAID in my comment that I didn't read those books (yet), so it was rather weird to ask me whether I read them myself or just heard of them in the first place. And as someone who has NOT read them, I did also in fact not know whether "gay" was referring to homosexual men specifically, or was used as an umbrella term as it often is.
But thanks for being weirdly passive aggressive after asking me a very stupid question???
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u/codyashi_maru 4d ago
Maybe a little off the wall, but I’m going to say Cuckoo by Gretchen Felker-Martin. Lots of queer and trans characters, which is a community highly represented in screamo. Group of teens fighting against a system they just know is literally and figuratively monstrous toward them. Feels like it fits to me.
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u/catladywitch 4d ago
Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis
James Dillinger/James Robert Baker's Adrenaline.
Ryu Murakami's Coin Locker Babies.
Kobo Abe's The Ruined Map AND especially The Ark Sakura.
Lautréamont's Chants of Maldoror <- this this this this
Rimbaud's prose poetry in general.
Mira Bellwether's Fucking Trans Women is a zine about sex educatio but it has a very DIY, skramz-y feeling.
If comic books count I'd say EVOL by Atsushi Kaneko, Wet Moon by Sophie Campbell, Black Hole by Charles Burns and Giant Days by John Allison+Max Sarin+Lissa Treiman.
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u/Bulky_Explanation_97 4d ago
Come Closer by Sara Gran
I tend to think of skramz as disjointed and dark so that’s where my head is at.
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u/bringemtotheriver 4d ago
Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq has a very Screamo feel to me - about a woman in the Arctic who has traumatic encounters she begins to rationalize by falling in love with an Arctic fox, and ceding herself to the northern lights. Very dark and hallucinogenic, and swirling, which to me is the feel that a lot of the modern scramz bands give. The Plague by Albert Camus, maybe. Any sort of weird fiction (though arguably something like rockabilly or thrash metal fits better for weird fiction).
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u/_squiggle 3d ago
Christopher Norris from combatwoundedveteran has two books out that sounds to be up your alley, check them out. I haven't gotten around to reading either yet. Hunchback 88 is his first one and The Holy Day is his newer one
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u/Bulky_Explanation_97 4d ago
Or maybe Extinction by Thomas Bernhard. Not horror like my other recs but still gloomy and disjointed along with being somewhat self-obsessed
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u/jasonvictorious 4d ago
How about Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West or maybe like Earth inferno by Austin Osman Spare. :)
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u/Spiritual-Toe7150 4d ago
I'm not sure if this would fit, but maybe check out Ellen Hopkins? She deals with a lot of themes of like teen angst/trauma/etc. her books are written in a very artful way, with the words sometimes taking shape of a theme from that passage, or all aligned to one side of the page. Not sure if it's what you're looking for, but maybe worth a shot? Some of her books - Crank - Glass - Identical - Burn - Smoke
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u/k1ngd0m0fg0dw1th1n 4d ago
Honestly anything by Vladimir Nabokov. Maybe more emo than skramz specifically but it fits the feeling for me.
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u/tprnatoc 3d ago
I would argue most transgressive fiction makes me feel very “screamo”, stuff like Dennis Cooper’s Frisk definitely, but also like Naked Lunch, The Story of The Eye, Last Exit to Brooklyn, Geek Love, Nausea, Almost Transparent Blue, etc. Something that helps too is finding your favorite artists favorite authors, like (non-skramz related) Darby Crash read a lot of Nietzsche. Philosophy tends to have a screamo influence to me like The Stranger by Camus or Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment.
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u/Evil_Wizard_ov_HELL 3d ago
Iirc angel hair name dropped battaile. Big story of the eye fan, and huge cooper, sade, ryu murakami fan. Possibly not thought of in the same category but i think we should definitely consider toni morrison as writing transgressive fiction too.
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u/exogof_3Hn 3h ago
everyone name dropped bataille it’s just what you do when you’re in your 20s and trying to have sex.
but trying to equate skramz to dennis cooper, hubert selby jr, and all this other extreme shit seems to miss that skramz people are like the biggest pussies in all of punk aside from maybe folk punk people? i’d head over to the power electronics reddit with those ones lol
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u/tprnatoc 3h ago
They asked what fiction books “have the feel” of skramz, and transgressive fiction feels skramz to ME. Whether or not they’re “pussies” is irrelevant. Transgressive fiction definitionally “focuses on characters who feel confined by the norms and expectations of society and who break free of those confines in unusual or illicit ways.” Screaming out toward the abyss is a pretty transgressive experience. When music is usually garnered with pleasant and melodic vocals, I would argue that making harsh sounds is instead “going against the norm”.
Reminds me of the noise scene too.
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u/RonMossIcon 2d ago
Anything by Haruki Murakami
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u/DrPibIsBack 1d ago
I was also going to recommend Murakami, not just because of the band Toru Okada (and Jeff Smith of Jeromes Dream having been in an ambient duo also named for The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles) but because his prose has that particular dreamy quality I find a lot of Screamo lyrics have.
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u/Large-Assumption3675 1d ago
Dunno if it has the feel of screamo, but Black Card was written by Chris Terry who sang in Light the Fuse and Run, deals with some band stuff, and is great
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u/R0BiN4343 2d ago
tampa - alyssa nutting (extremely disturbing) the road - cormac mccarthy any dostoyevsky
i think tampa rlly evokes this like other wordly suburban horror feel for me that i get from a lot of screamo
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u/whoreshradish 22h ago
Catcher in the Rye?
Its subject of anxious adolescent existential crisis seems pretty complimentary
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u/Bulky_Explanation_97 4d ago
I love thinking about music in this way.
Penpal by Dathan Auerbach — originally posted on the nosleep subreddit of all places, so pretty damn DIY. Disjointed storytelling, gloomy and super dark, deals with childhood trauma.
House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski — even more disjointed, unreliable narrator always on the brink of a breakdown.