6 Literary Turds (Written By Your Favorite Authors)

The draft was originally rejected by his publishers in a noble attempt to keep Dick from embarrassing himself. Then, in the '80s (the decade when everyone lost their sense of decency), Berkley Books acquired the rights to the original story and decided to squeeze the last bit of blood out of the then-dying sci-fi legend by releasing "The World Famous Classic Now Uncensored For The First Time," incoherent gaps and all, pretending that Ace Books had been stifling genius instead of protecting the reputation of a man who clearly couldn't handle his Class A drugs yet.

In 1971, Sagan penned an essay about how awesome smoking pot is -- likely the first one not written on the back of a pizza box and comprised mainly of Steely Dan lyrics. Not wanting to be outed as a closet pothead, Sagan wrote the essay (published in the book Marihuana Reconsidered) under the unsubtle pseudonym Mr. X, presumably because "Dr. Otto Von Fakename" was already taken by Stephen Hawking for his essay extolling the virtues of crystal meth.

Embarrassingly, the essay goes on to break down the minutiae of a painfully standard high, such as describing how the shadow of a house plant looked like a small Volkswagen "down to hubcaps, license plate, chrome, and even the small handle used for opening the trunk," and how the flame of a candle began to look like a liquor company mascot. Not exactly "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds," doc.

Bantam Books
Surprisingly, "Dr. Lester Grinspoon" is not a pseudonym.

Of course, Sagan didn't just rip on bongs to improve his scientific skills. He also used it to, like, expand his mind, man. In the essay, he admits that he "never much appreciated" art before rocking the ganj. And as much as you might not want to picture Dr. Carl Sagan doing the nasty, he also goes into detail about how much better sex is while you're stoned. In one particularly baffling anecdote, a super-high Sagan hops in the shower with his wife, and then manages to solve racism using the magic of math.

Bantam Books
Must've been a long shower.

Crowley ended up destroying most of his early poetry -- not because it firmly outed him as a practicing bisexual in a time when being anything other than a sexless heterosexual could get you imprisoned (he couldn't give a tuppence worth of fucks about that), but because it made him look like a sobbing weak-willed teenager rather than a master of the dark arts. It's hard enough to convince people to join a weird cult without a leader who writes erotic prose that makes you hungry for seafood.

Aleister Crowley
Not even carving that onto a tombstone is gonna save your rep, bruh.

Speaking of people obsessed with monstrous mollusks ...

As befitting his style, Lovecraft's love for the feline persuasion came from a deeply fearful, antisocial place. Which is why he spends most of the article talking smack about how useless dogs are, praising cats' "superior imaginative inner life" as opposed to a dog's "pitiful" dependence on companionship. It's the kind of thing you'd expect to find in the diary of a seven-year-old with anger issues, not the collected works of a horror icon.

Libraries Press
At least the cat still looks like it wants to eat your soul.

But the hate didn't just stop at dogs. Even though the essay starts out as a socially inept love letter to cats, Lovecraft quickly found a way to make it super racist. Going on a bit of an unexpected tangent, he nonchalantly makes it clear that he considers black people to be as different from "human beings" as farm animals or even "pterodactyls" -- in perhaps the one and only example of Jurassic racism.

H.P. Lovecraft
Hate finds a way.

Leave it to the master of creeping unease to sour what is basically an extended version of that Facebook post about cats and dogs your aunt keeps reposting. After the bout of casual racism, the piece devolves into a one-percenter pro-fascist rant, using cats and dogs as an allegory for the aristocracy and the poor:

H.P. Lovecraft

H.P. Lovecraft

He also enjoyed comparing cats to "superior men" -- which, in 1937, must have really been a shot in the arm for all those Nazis with "Hang In There" posters on their walls. Eventually, Lovecraft's editors decided to step in and remove all of the overt racism and fascism for future publications of the essay. "Wrong kind of crazy," they must've muttered to themselves as they longingly recalled when Lovecraft was just about weird tentacle gods causing madness and mass suicides.

One of the founders of the Beat movement, Jack Kerouac is best remembered as that gonzo writer guy your pothead college roommate wouldn't shut up about. From his work, one might assume that a guy like Kerouac was only into jazz, drugs, and general filthy beatnik-ism. But you'd be wrong. Kerouac had an intense hobby, one he kept secret from his fellow cool artist friends like Ginsberg and Burroughs: fantasy baseball.

When we say fantasy baseball, we don't mean the modern version in which fans pick the perfect combination of players. No, Kerouac made up an entire league, in which all the teams, players, and games were the product of his imagination.

Jack Kerouac
An imagination so ahead of the game that he named the teams after the sponsors.

Starting as a teenage obsession, Kerouac's created his very own baseball board game -- which he made with a marble and a toothpick. To flesh out the concept, he developed a fantasy league which featured teams like the Pittsburgh Plymouths and the Cincinnati Blacks, and players with names such as Wino Love, Zagg Parker, and Phegus Cody. Not only did he record the fictitious games, full of detailed statistics, but he even wrote about the games for pretend newsletters under the alias "Jack Lewis," a magazine publisher and "turf luminary" who had married a wealthy horse breeder. That's some seriously dedicated world-building. Even George R.R. Martin doesn't care enough about the minute details to type up The Westeros Daily Tribune.

Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac
On The Road was originally going to be a collection of box scores from teams' away games.

Kerouac kept writing these newsletters throughout most of his life, typing up his last two mock United Press International reports 11 years before his death. In that time, he also ran an imaginary horse racing circuit in which the winners were determined, just like in the baseball leagues, by rolling marbles. So if any English students out there are ever intimidated by On The Road, simply imagine its author firing marbles around his room while imagining they're athletes with improbably silly names.

Jack Kerouac
No word on if he'd break his thumbs after losing bets to his make-believe bookie.

One of the cornerstones of any American childhood has to be the Berenstain Bears books, the beloved stories about an adorable bear family ... which aggressively judges whichever one of them displays the tiniest of flaws.

Random House Books for Young Readers
It all comes to a head in Berenstain Bears: When Brother Takes A Swing At Papa.

Stan and Jan Berenstain never hid their contempt for children misbehaving all that well. Before they went in for the most obvious pun on their names, they created the comic book Be Good Or I'll Belt Ya!, which promises to explain "What really happens between parents and children" -- mainly yelling, destruction of property and a whole lot of casual violence against minors.

Dell
Lovecraft would not approve of the cat abuse, either.

But despite all of the holier-than-thou moralizing of these children's books, the Berenstains actually cut their teeth in the world of dirty joke books. For instance, there's the Lover Boy series, comics filled "jokes" about the hilarious misadventures of men and their extramarital affairs, spousal abuse, and workplace harassment.

Dell

Now you know why there was never a Berenstain Bears And The Objectification Of Women book. Had Brother Bear been caught with one of these scandalous paperbacks, there probably would have been a whole book dedicated to him explaining bruises to teachers.

Dell

Dell
These are the jokes switching to paperless offices robbed you of.

They even tried their hands at humorous sex education books, such as What Dr. Freud Didn't Tell You. Apparently, what Sigmund Freud omitted from his writings were a whole bunch of weird naked doodles about hot moms and lecherous creeps grabbing a woman's ankle.

Dell
The top-right drawing would eventually become that classic children's book The Berenstain Bears And The Penis Envy.

Zoroastrianism used to be one of the biggest religions in the world, but their idea of heaven had a slight twist on it: To get there you'd have to cross a bridge, sometimes rickety, sometimes wide and sturdy. If you fell off, you'd go to the House of Lies for eternity. Fun! Not terrifying at all! This month, Jack, Dan, and Michael, along with comedians Casey Jane Ellison and Ramin Nazer discuss their favorite afterlife scenarios from movies, sci-fi, and lesser-known religions. Get your tickets here, and we'll see you on the other side of the bridge!

Also check out 6 Famous Artists You Didn't Know Were Perverts and 7 Famous Artists You Didn't Know Were Perverts (Pt. 2).

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out Quentin Tarantino's Gay Revenge Fantasy, and other videos you won't see on the site!

Also, follow us on Facebook, and let's be best friends forever.