Humor

Required Goth Reading

By Oddlystrange

Well goths have required reading at certain stages of their development, kind of like how you had to read certain novels to pass each grade in school. Below is the required reading list for goths.

Choose your reading list wisely, what you choose determines the road you are going to take.

Everyone starts with the basics, in pre-goth, you must read several works by any two of the following to graduate:

1) Stephen King
2) Anne Rice
3) Edgar Allen Poe
4) Dr. Suess

Now once you've done that you've entered into the babygoff/kindergothen level, at which point you must choose a path. Here what you choose to read will determine your future path into goffness. (reading several different things can give you a prestigious dual major, it also requires you to enter philosphy, English, computer science or history as a major in college as well).

Choose: H.P. Lovecraft to start on your way to death rocker
Choose: more Edgar Allen Poe for a romantigoff/Victorian goff
Choose: Anton LeVey to drop out completely and join the School of death metal
Choose: Douglas Adams to head into perkygoff-dom
Choose: Nietze to become an ubergoff
Choose: more Anne Rice to switch over to the Vampyre tract
Choose: Stephen Hawking to become geeky net.goth or Industrial-lite
Choose: Le Morte de Arthur (preferably in some horrid ancient language) to become a mopey goff
Choose: more Dr. Suess and/or Marilyn Manson's new autobiography to, well, head *that*a*way*

Now that you've passed kindergothen...if you have passed kindergothen, and didn't move onto death metal, vampyres or Marilyn Manson...you get to the official goth reading list. Here are the required authors for the tracts you've chosen:

DEATH ROCKER: It is *now* ok to read Anton LeVey, continue with Lovecraft and add a lot of obscure Weird Tales authors no one but you have ever heard of.

ROMANTIGOFF: Any old classics, preferably ones that end with the main character dying. Suggestions; anything by the Shelley's, Camus, Brontes, and of course the complete works of Lord Byron.

PERKYGOFF: The ENTIRE Oxford English Dictionary, so you know what words like hoginith mean and can use them at appropriate moments. You can substitute any other book if you so like.

NET.GOTH/INDUSTRIAL: Anything by Phillip K Dick. You are also permitted to use the excuse that you are too busy reading alt.gothic to read books. Extra credit is given for giving the IP address for the gutenberg project on your final exam.

UBERGOFF: At this point you should be reading your own writing to yourself every night.

MOPEYGOFF: You should have moved on to moving and depressing poetry, bonus for being able to recite the major monologues from all of Shakespeare's tragedies.

Graduate school happens when you die, and I haven't gotten there yet.