Quote from: host body on March 11, 2025, 03:44:07 PMDoes anyone have any recommendations for literature with an old school industrial / neofolk aesthetic? I don't mean politically, but maybe set in the ruins of Europe or Japan and with a melancholic, esoteric and dark feel to it? I have read Celine and Ernst Junger, but maybe looking for something more mystical an vague rather than memoirs.
I think you should expand your reading of Jünger, he becomes more mystical after Storm Of Steele.
I'd recommend both "On the Marble Cliffs" and "the Glass bees" which are both easy to find on NYRB who republished them this year. Jünger is largely suspected to have been dealing with post traumatic stress disorder following world war 1 and using opioids. The "fascist" years I think are given more importance than I think they deserve, the man lived 102 years after all. He began experimenting with psychedelics and other drugs around the time he wrote "The Adventurous Heart" which had an impact on Albert Hoffmann who discovered LSD. This book of short prose and dreams makes a departure for Jünger away from military memoir into a more esoteric/science fiction/magical-realist and philosophical dimension. Technology is a major focus of Jüngers as is surveillance. I would not categorize any of his (fictional) writings following Adventurous Heart as memoir.
Adventurous Heart and his great final work which is "Eumeswil" can be found at Telos-Press.
I've not read Danilo Kis yet, but am eagerly awaiting the reissue of "Tomb for Boris Davidovich" on Dalkey Archive, if you like Ebooks that is available now.
Kis is Serbian writer from the Yugoslavia area, his writing concerns living under a Stalinist style state and using Borges style elements. I think if you're interested in European ruin the Balkans as a region shouldn't be discounted. Unfortunately I don't know enough about other authors in that region to steer you further into fiction on the subject.
Other authors I think you might find interesting for the apocalypse in Europe themes are as already mentioned Sorokin, I did not like the "Ice Trilogy" but am enjoying "Dispatches From The District Committee", I also think Laszlo Krasznahorkai who wrote "Satantango", he's also contemporary and most of his books are in print.
Two final authors that may interest you are Leon Bloy, who wrote about French life during the Franco Prussian war, a fanatical nationalist. His admirers include Jünger, and Carl Schmitt. Wakefield Press released recent translations of "Disagreeable Tales" and "Sweating Blood" which are both short story collections, but more of a vignette than what we think of as short story. Highly recommend, brutal stuff.
Finally, Varlam Shalamov, who served 10 years in the Gulags. Both as a miner and then as a medic, NYRB released two collections of his (again, more vignette than short story) writings called "Koylma Tales" and "Sketches of the Criminal World". These are both brutal and occasionally funny (in the blackest sense) accounts of life in the gulags, the day to day structure and internal class systems.
I don't think the Turner Diaries will be appealing. Those this anti terrorism report on its themes is more interesting than the book and breaks down a lot of its themes and aesthetic considerations. I don't think it's as much esoteric as infamous and it doesn't deal with post war Europe.
https://icct.nl/sites/default/files/import/publication/ICCT-Berger-The-Turner-Legacy-September2016-2.pdfHappy reading.
