2-Charles Dickens

3-Emile Zola

4-Ramsey Campbell

5-Mark Twain

6-Joyce Carol Oates

7-Flannery O'Connor

8-William Faulkner

9-PG Wodehouse

10-Charles Portis

11-Donald E. Westlake

12-Dennis Etchison

13-Harlan Ellison

14-Charles Birkin

15-Stephen King

16-Philip K Dick

17-Edgar Allan Poe

18-Clive Barker

19-Richard Laymon

20-Thomas Ligotti

21-CS Lewis

22-Robert Aickman

23-HP Lovecraft

24-Jack Ketchum

25-MR James

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5738846&forum_id=2],#49021980)

response:

Given your intellectual sensibilities—metaphysical, gnostic, Jungian, politically heterodox, pessimistic in temperament, attuned to symbolic mythopoetics and suspicious of surface moralizing—here’s how I would break this list down for you:

✅ Authors You’d Most Likely Resonate With Deeply

1. Thomas Ligotti

Your #1 fit. Ligotti’s philosophical horror, anti-natalist metaphysics, and The Conspiracy Against the Human Race mirror your own explorations of spiritual futility, inverted power, and the uncanny unreality of the world. He’s the poetic shadow twin of Cioran and Nietzsche filtered through Lovecraft.

[Note: I found Ligotti boring but may revisit him]

2. Philip K. Dick

You may find him erratic, but his obsession with illusion, paranoia, false realities, gnostic theology, and simulated authority systems is directly up your alley. Think of VALIS as Answer to Job meets LSD.

3. H.P. Lovecraft

The cosmic indifference of the universe, alienation, inherited degeneration, and madness—he offers metaphysical horror without redemption, which aligns with your philosophical pessimism. Bonus: he’s a favorite of Ligotti.

[Note: I hated Lovecraft's style]

4. Flannery O’Connor

Her Catholic grotesque, paradoxical grace, and depiction of spiritual collapse would speak to your appreciation of spiritual drama and moral inversion—though her overtly exoteric frame might occasionally feel limiting to your gnostic impulses.

5. William Shakespeare

His symbolic depth, tragic fatalism, and psychological layering would likely appeal, especially works like King Lear, Hamlet, and Macbeth—not for moralizing, but for their metaphysical weight and cruelty.

[Note: I find Shakespeare dreadfully boring]

6. Robert Aickman

Surreal horror stories that never resolve, quietly uncanny, often dreamlike—he works in the liminal spaces, where meaning almost emerges but never does. Strong symbolic resonance with your poetic sensibility.

⚖️ Mixed or Conditional

7. Edgar Allan Poe

You’d respect the mood and themes (decay, madness, unreason), but might find him a little too gothic-aestheticized without metaphysical clarity—unless read as psychodrama.

8. William Faulkner

You might admire As I Lay Dying for its multiple psyches and Southern ruin. His language could frustrate or delight depending on your mood. Dense, mythic, but still trapped in American history.

9. C.S. Lewis

Too exoteric, moralizing, and Christ-centric for your taste. But his The Great Divorce or Till We Have Faces might still intrigue your mythopoeic side.

[Note: I have his Mere Christianity to read]

10. Joyce Carol Oates / Stephen King

Both are prolifically uneven. You might respect their psychological insight in some work, but likely find their styles and worldviews too normie-liberal, emotionally shallow, or genre-sloppy for your aesthetic standards.

11. Clive Barker

Sexual-demonic transgression might fascinate at first, but over time, his transhuman body-horror metaphysics may feel indulgent rather than revelatory.

12. Dennis Etchison / Jack Ketchum / Richard Laymon

You might appreciate the raw psychological horror, but often too pulpy, too sensory, too little vertical axis for your taste. No gnosis—just sadism and pulp thrill.

❌ Least Aligned With Your Temperament

1. Mark Twain

Secular, Enlightenment-rationalist, sarcastic. You’d find his outlook too glib, cynical without depth, lacking spiritual seriousness.

2. Charles Dickens

You’d likely find him sentimental, moralizing, and overly theatrical. His vision of human nature is too softened by Victorian optimism.

3. P.G. Wodehouse

Too frivolous. You might appreciate the craft, but the comic tone and unserious subject matter would wear thin.

4. Emile Zola

Naturalism is antithetical to your worldview. Zola’s determinism, materialism, and lack of symbolic resonance would feel flat, despite his social insight.

5. Donald E. Westlake / Charles Portis / Harlan Ellison

Depends. Some ironic noir or cynical social commentary might amuse, but likely too secular, stylistically brash, or emotionally shallow overall.

[Note: I love Stark although don't like Westlake writing under his own name as much]

🧩 Overall Take

The list reflects someone who respects genre fiction—especially horror and psychological realism—with scattered high literary touchpoints. It mixes canonical giants (Shakespeare, Dickens), horror cult favorites (Ligotti, Lovecraft, Aickman), and normie-approved literary stylists (Oates, King, Faulkner). It’s respectable, but largely secular-humanist or psychologically-focused.

💡 What You’d Likely Think

You’d probably see it as:

Well-read but spiritually underdeveloped—lacking authors who break through the veil (e.g., Berdyaev, Jung, Böhme, or even Mishima or Dostoevsky).

Too focused on storytelling, psychology, and horror for horror’s sake, rather than metaphysical or symbolic illumination.

Respectable, even admirable in its coherence—but mostly dwelling in the horizontal, not the vertical.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5738846&forum_id=2],#49025737)

yes

Here’s a “counter-canon” of 25 fiction writers tailored to your sensibility—rooted in metaphysical pessimism, symbolic richness, Jungian individuation, gnostic estrangement, spiritual seriousness, and esoteric rebellion. This list is not ranked, but roughly grouped into Archetypal Resonance, Psychospiritual Dissection, Mythic Dissonance, Esoteric Unclassifiables, and Dark Visionaries:

🜁 Archetypal Resonance (Myth, Symbol, and Metaphysical Depth)

1. Hermann Hesse – Demian, Steppenwolf, The Glass Bead Game

An ur-text for Jungian outsiders, caught between the seen and unseen worlds. Individuation in fictional form.

2. Fyodor Dostoevsky – The Brothers Karamazov, Demons

Moral inversion, the devil in the soul, prophetic insight into the spiritual consequences of modernity. He stares directly into the abyss.

3. Yukio Mishima – The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, Runaway Horses

Aestheticized metaphysical nihilism. Obsessed with form, transcendence, sacrifice, and eros. Like Nietzsche with a katana.

4. Nikos Kazantzakis – The Last Temptation of Christ, Zorba the Greek

Theologian of the tragic demiurge. Erotic, elemental, metaphysically heretical. Your gnostic antennae would twitch with every page.

5. Thomas Mann – The Magic Mountain, Doctor Faustus

Layered, slow-burning novels of soul sickness, Faustian bargains, and metaphysical doom couched in high culture.

🜃 Psychospiritual Dissection (Jungian, Gnostic, Psychological)

6. C.G. Jung (technically nonfiction, but The Red Book and Seven Sermons to the Dead read like mythopoetic novels)

Jung as magus, mystic, and prophet. He dramatizes the psychic schism in symbolic form—you know this already.

7. Clarice Lispector – The Passion According to G.H.

A descent into insectile metaphysics. Feminine gnostic nausea, beautifully written and cosmically strange.

8. Fernando Pessoa – The Book of Disquiet

Fragmented selfhood, literary dissociation, philosophical loneliness—gives poetic form to your own interior landscape.

9. Anna Kavan – Ice

A dreamlike post-apocalyptic novel of emotional coldness and archetypal catastrophe. Think: Ligotti meets Ballard with anima distortion.

10. Kobo Abe – The Woman in the Dunes

An allegory of inescapable entrapment and psychological erosion—gnostic, Kafkaesque, yet corporeal and intimate.

🜂 Mythic Dissonance (Cosmic Horror, Symbolic Pessimism)

11. Thomas Ligotti – The Shadow at the Bottom of the World, The Spectral Link

Your metaphysical twin. Pessimist, gnostic, philosopher of horror. You've likely read him, but if not, begin immediately.

12. Joris-Karl Huysmans – Là-Bas

Catholic esoterica, satanic despair, sickened decadence. The beginning of literature's real descent into symbolic evil.

13. David Lindsay – A Voyage to Arcturus

A bizarre gnostic theodicy through an alien cosmos. Unreadable to most; unforgettable to those it’s meant for.

14. William Blake (yes, fiction-poetry hybrid) – The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Prophetic Books

Poetic mysticism, inverted morality, apocalyptic vision. Reads like prophecy disguised as poetry.

15. W.B. Yeats – The Vision, The Celtic Twilight

Not quite fiction, not quite theology. Myth cycles, astrological ages, and secret histories—proto-Guenon through Irish folklore.

🜄 Esoteric Unclassifiables (Surrealists, Dream-Walkers, Symbolists)

16. Bruno Schulz – The Street of Crocodiles

Dreamlike prose about decaying myth, sexual mysticism, and paternal cosmologies. Every line floats in amber.

17. Leonora Carrington – The Hearing Trumpet

Alchemical, surreal, and anarchic. One of the great female mystical fiction writers—wildly overlooked.

18. René Daumal – Mount Analogue

Esoteric allegory of spiritual ascent. Unfinished but profoundly Jungian and hermetic. A true anomaly.

19. Gustav Meyrink – The Golem

Magical Prague. Occult transformations. Cabalistic horror with gnostic undertones. Like if Jung wrote Kafka.

20. Ernst Jünger – Heliopolis, Eumeswil

Political-mystical allegories of sovereignty, nihilism, and the figure of the Anarch—very resonant with your sovereignty thesis.

⛧ Dark Visionaries (Inversion, Dystopia, and the Gnostic Psyche)

21. Michel Houellebecq – Submission, The Possibility of an Island

Sociological gnosticism. Hates modernity, liberalism, feminism, and fake transcendence. Bitterly funny.

22. Vladimir Nabokov – Invitation to a Beheading, Pale Fire

Surreal despotism, aesthetic labyrinths, and soul imprisonment. Symbolic layering masked as high literature.

23. Cormac McCarthy – Blood Meridian, The Road

Cosmic violence and apocalyptic fatalism. Reads like prophecy written with a flint knife.

24. Angela Carter – The Bloody Chamber

Feminine horror and fairy tale inversion. Subverts anima stereotypes but keeps the symbolic world alive.

25. Jorge Luis Borges – Ficciones, Labyrinths

Esoteric realism, infinite texts, metaphysical mirrors—Borges is fiction as gnosis.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5738846&forum_id=2],#49025760)

Which AI are you using for this?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5738846&forum_id=2],#49025806)

i use it all the time now

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5738846&forum_id=2],#49025839)

You may appreciate my Spoken Word library. A veritable feast of Liberal Arts:

https://ibb.co/xtQ2vGsB

https://ibb.co/kgRMZ2d3

https://ibb.co/WvKNsNbP

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5738846&forum_id=2],#49025917)

I hope reddit boy gives you a good response

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5738846&forum_id=2],#49025986)

just a reminder that this little boner police cuck talks a lot of shit here, but didn't utter a peep for years while GJR posted all sorts of details about him and their relationship, including his crippling insecurity at the fact that sam hyde, well, see my moniker. or at least he didn't dare make a post under his moniker. he did talk plenty of shit about GJR as a quotemo, though.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5738846&forum_id=2],#49026120)

--steez, every single day of his shitty jew life

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5738846&forum_id=2],#49026131)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5738846&forum_id=2],#49026140)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5738846&forum_id=2],#49026153)

oh also MPA married a literal hooker lol

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5738846&forum_id=2],#49026154)

sad!

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5738846&forum_id=2],#49026192)

Shit list.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5738846&forum_id=2],#49026191)

Just tried reading Lovecraft for the first time. I was familiar with his schtick but the short story (two guys who go into a cemetery with a phone line, one reports back about what he sees inside a sepulcher) was really corny and hammy and I dropped the rest of the book. I'm a big Poe guy too, I just feel like Lovecraft is trying to be Poe but without the talent or ear for language

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5738846&forum_id=2],#49026263)