Thomas Ligotti

I am new to these boards. I am very new actually but am hopefully it is the forum I have searched for and as such will start ,with what I am sure will become a tangential rant, about (and likely, among other things) an author, in this case, Thomas Ligotti

I came across Thomas Ligotti many years ago when I was likely 14 or so (in '92 I would guess) and have revisited him and his stories a few times in the intervening time. I was on vacation in a rural part of Indiana visiting my great-grandmother. These visitations while important and memorable to my parents (and in some ways to me as well) were notoriously boring. The highlight of the trip usually wound up being a shopping outing at the local Wal-Mart of all places. The goal was never to leave empty-handed so that we had SOMETHING to occupy ourselves with.

One year I remember it was a copy of "Delicate Sound of Thunder" by Pink Floyd which I picked partially because of the artwork on the cover (a man wearing a suit covered in a dozen or so light bulbs looking out to another man surrounded by what I assumed were birds) and the fact that it was two cassettes, meaning more for me to listen to and the longer I would be entertained. Admittedly, this wasn't the best album cut by the band to draw in a listener so young as I was then but it did introduce me to them and some of the tracks were compelling enough that I would remember the band and go on to become a very large fan soon after (though some of it was posturing for a time until I learned to appreciate it more and understand the lyrics... but at the time I thought my “The Wall” t-shirt was the epitome of cool.) I am digressing a bit but it is interesting to me that my first exposure to Pink Floyd, a band that would feature heavily in my later high school years and to Thomas Ligotti, who's short stories never drifted far from my mind whenever I would think of true horror stories, both were the results of these trips to what was almost the epitome in my mind of bland mundane trips (shopping at a Wal-Mart in rural middle America.)

On one of these occasions I wanted a book and my taste in books was pretty specific. Mostly in imitation of my brother, I read “The Gunslinger” in 5th grade ,and I mean read not just carried with me for effect but Stephen King is not an author that lives with a thesaurus in hand (the way China Mievelle and Will Self seem to) so I was able to read what he wrote if not entirely understand the implications. I remember my teacher calling my mom to know if she knew I was reading it but my mom, bless her, always let me read whatever I wanted to and thought it a good thing for me to tackle books likely above my level of comprehension despite the fact there might be content not terribly suitable for most children by accepted standards. I realize now I never asked her why she let me and have an urge to. The only time she ever issued a warning of sorts was when I wanted to buy a copy of one of L. Ron Hubbard's Planet Earth books at a used book store and even then it wasn't to forbid but merely to remind me that not everything I read in a book was true (I realized later she was thinking mostly in terms of Dianetics and Scientology and had recognized Hubbard's name).

Anyway, there were no new Dean Koontz or Stephen King books for me to get and I ended up noticing Grimscribe, first mostly because of the ominous sound of the title which suggested fiction and after I took from the shelf for the cover with the skull over a quill crossing a scythe in Jolly Roger fashion that appealed to me at the time (I just looked it up and it was the reprint mass market version from 1994 that I owned which my guess about my age when I bought it.) I remember reading it and for the first time encountering truly unsettling storytelling. The wikipedia entry for Mr. Ligotti contains a quote from a critic in the summarizing paragraph that states “It's a skilled writer indeed who can suggest a horror so shocking that one is grateful it was kept offstage” and in my mind this is the essence of Ligotti's stories.

I read constantly and each author has a specialty in my mind, a fingerprint. Authors like Stephen King may excel in bringing certain types of characters to life vividly and effectively (those male everyman-turned-hero types likely born and raised around the same time as King himself, a type of hero so prevalent in his work I am sure most fans will instantly recognize the type I mean) or Dean Koontz who has an extraordinarily fertile imagination to work with that makes up for his workman-like prose and characterizations or Jonathon Carroll who shares Koontz's gift of scope of imagination but with a much more enthralling sense of immersion, the hallucinogenic laden works of Philip K. Dick who even wrote about an extraordinary mystical event he believed he experienced with such a grounded style that made what was essentially a mystical event feel like nothing of the sort and more like a completely acceptable secular retelling whose often paradox laden occurrences were described in a manner in which one might describe the normal day of a janitor and finally China Mievelle, my currently most admired author next to David Mitchel, with his utterly alien twists and spins on a world so close to ours that make it entirely unsettling due to its ability to be familiar yet entirely foreign. Philip Pullman also employed this sort of setting in his Dark Materials trilogy though in a much less crude (not in terms of ability but in its description of the story's setting)and traditional story arc that was entirely appropriate of the work.

I mention all of these authors not as tangential disclosure on my part (well, not entirely) but in order to help emphasize a storyteller's ability to take on, in at least in my own mind, a role uniquely their own, one that I will likely always identify them with. Thomas Ligotti is also such an author, one that has the rare quality to evoke a specific mastery of an element or elements of storytelling in my own mind.

Such identifying traits take on an even more important role to me as I am (like many people are) an aspiring writer. Despite the fact I do write on a nightly basis I will freely admit that I am an amateur in many areas of storytelling that might ultimately prevent me from succeeding. I know that my strong suit is the invention of 'things' (devices or weapons for example) or a civilization's traditions and the cosmology they adhere to. My imagination is as fertile as any when it comes to these areas and I often derive it from the more compelling (at least to me) and obscure elements to be found in our own history as a race (areas such as Gnosticism and alchemy); and not the overused devices recognized in popular culture for the most part as I am constantly researching some obscure sect, belief system or science which is augmented by the use of similar elements in the fiction I read.

My shortcomings are equally apparent unfortunately. While I excel at scenes and describing some character performing some sort of rite or working with some kind of force, instrument or tool my abilities falter beyond that scene. I have notebooks filled with scenes that have no plot to be attached to and I realize unless I am capable of change or find a source of pure inspiration that I am destined to continue as I have which amounts to little more than a source of entertainment and stimulation for myself alone rather than for an audience. As many authors have said, the key to any story is knowing how it ends and personally if I do manage to sketch out an ending it still remains a sketch likely to be left to rot. There is also the fact, as this post may indicate, that I am prone to expanding and discussing something in more detail than is necessary and in some cases detrimental (describing ever aspect of a weapon when only a brief mention of its affect is warranted would be one example.)

As for the authors and their specific talents of which I am so fond as well as admitting my own attempts at writing I do so to make a very specific point and that is there are a handful of books that as I read I am perpetually thinking to myself that this is the book, the story, the novel I wish I could and had written. That this is what I strive towards. With the exception of Stephen King who in some instances himself doesn't seem to know how his story will end (though I would love to be able to flesh out those quirky unique and realistic characters he sometimes create) and Dean Koontz whose prose and descriptions are not as luxurious or compelling as those of other writers (his seemingly limitless well of stories to tell is an ability I do strongly admire) th authors I mentioned all have or do write stories that evoke such a response; an admiration more than envy as I am usually to grateful to have the story to read and experience in the first place.

To this list I would also add Thomas Ligotti. Out of all the authors mentioned as well as Lovecraft to who he is often compared and Barker who comes closest, Ligotti is the single most unsettling writer I have read and I mean this in the best of ways. As I mentioned I picked up his book at 14 and it was immediately apparent that this was a much different sort of story than I was used to from Koontz and King that for the most part filled the staple of my diet at that point. Despite the relative brevity of Grimscribe it took me quite sometime to finish. The stories were simply to unnerving and genuinely creepy to be read one after the other. In fact, the first three stories are still the ones that are the most vivid in my memory and surfaced more regularly than any of his other stories. There is no way to say for certain if it is because they were the first stories of his I was exposed to (and by default the first sort of this kind of story making the impact more permanent) or if they really are prime examples of his work but I will say it was completely new to me and while Stephen King was shelved under horror right along with the collections of Ligotti's stories the two authors and the stories they told were miles apart in terms of atmosphere and environment.

“The Last Feast of the Harlequin”, “The Spectacles in the Drawer” and “Flowers of the Abyss” still draw me in completely and fill me with a sort of awe-filled dread that I entirely love feeling. Of the three, “The Spectacles in the Drawer” is probably the one I liked the most and its conceit while relatively simple unfolds in such an inventively horrific manner that I still cheer Ligotti when I read it.

I am sure many critics have compared Ligotti to Lovecraft and if I remember correctly “The Last Feast of the Harlequin” was dedicated and written in homage of Lovecraft but while I always enjoyed the sense of ancient evils, of gods long since gone insane and their malignant followers and occult forces lurking ever so near the surface of our world straining to escape, I honestly find Ligotti to be superior. While some of this may be due to the saturation of Lovecraft's mythos or to the fact Ligotti succeeded Lovecraft, the stories in “Grimscribe” and later in the compilation of his work in “The Nightmare Factory” stand out more clearly and resonate on a more base level than other still compelling and great books of short stories such as “At the Mountains of Madness” by Lovecraft and “The Books of Blood.”

K, as is typical for me what was to be a simple post has grown and grown as I have sat here writing for the last hour and a half. So I will steer myself and my diatribe toward my initial reason for posting.

There are short stories out there that will forever be total and absolute inspirations to me, stories like “The Spectacles in the Drawer” and other stories from “Grimscribe; “The Function of Dream Sleep”, “Semicolons”, “Paladin of the Lost Hour” and “The Region Between” by Harlan Ellison; “Between the Conceits” and “Inclusion®” by Will Self; “In the Hills, the Cities” by Clive Barker and several others by authors like Philip K. Dick and Stephen Jobyna. Yet, despite these stories and how much I enjoy them I am at heart not a true fan of short stories in general, or even novellas. I like to spend time with a story and specifically with the characters in them. I would say the primary reason I have not read as much of Ligotti's works as I should (nor even very many stories by Lovecraft despite the facts some are considered classics and proved to be the inspiration for so many other writers) is simply for the fact he seems only to write short stories. I haven't found any works by him of real substance (in this case I refer to length rather than worth) and when I read any story I tend to take a break as I mull it over for a few days and absorb what stood out to me. This tendency almost makes reading collections of stories problematic as there have been more than one occasion that I have read only a third or so of the stories in a given collection simply because of the time it takes to do so.

Don't get me wrong, I will read many books in one sitting but these sittings are rarely the half an hour it takes to read a short story of average length. I will often read 300-400 page books in a single night when sleep appears to be AWOL.

It is not that I am incapable of reading things not a hundred pages or longer, in fact I am also a poet and read poetry which for the most part is shorter than most 'short stories'. It is just that I have a ... tendency toward something approaching hyperactivity but not in a physical sense but rather in a mental one. I will often pause a movie for no good reason to go and browse the Internet even if I am enjoying it up to that point and other similar quirks. When it comes to books though, I will likely leave a book untouched even if I was eager to buy it on release until I get into that mind set I know will keep me reading the book to its end. I have left several books unfinished simply because I tried to read them when I wasn't in this particular mindset. This may sound like a mild psychosis to some but it is really just a quirk (I can force myself to read a book without interruption but doing so decreases my enjoyment of it if I was not in the mindset to do so in the first place.) This of course makes short stories more difficult because usually by the time I have 'settled in' the story is coming to a close and I have to start again with the next often completely different story. One of the few collections I was able to read cover to cover was the “Angry Candy” compilation of stories by Harlan Ellison because thematically all of the stories were similar and in lieu of returning characters and environments this let me absorb myself in the book by focusing more on the shared messages of the stories.

So now that I have completely written a post much to long, I would leave you (who has come this far with me and my thoughts) with a question. Does Mr. Ligotti have any novels or even novellas currently available? I searched for myself online but was redirected to many times to the same collections of short stories and eventually gave up, but if any of you are familiar with his works know of a longer work written by him I would love to know about it and hear your opinions of its worth in regard to the general quality of his short stories.

Of course, I would love to hear opinions or retorts to anything I have said so please feel free to post your thoughts in reply.

[noctuary]

It's good to see another Ligotti fan around here. In my opinion, he is one of the very few true prose artists of the current time, along with Mieville, Ramsey Campbell and Steven Erikson.

In response to your question, I do not believe that Ligotti has written any novels. The closes I can think of would be "My Work is Not Yet Done", a long novella. In fact, it appears that Ligotti is no longer writing anything at all. I read a recent interview with him, and he appears to be severely psychologically disturbed.

[evilreign]

Originally Posted by noctuary

It's good to see another Ligotti fan around here. In my opinion, he is one of the very few true prose artists of the current time, along with Mieville, Ramsey Campbell and Steven Erikson.

In response to your question, I do not believe that Ligotti has written any novels. The closes I can think of would be "My Work is Not Yet Done", a long novella. In fact, it appears that Ligotti is no longer writing anything at all. I read a recent interview with him, and he appears to be severely psychologically disturbed.

you coudn't tell that from just reading his stories?

[noctuary]

Originally Posted by evilreign

you coudn't tell that from just reading his stories?

That's like saying that Bret Easton Ellis is a serial killer since he wrote American Psycho.

[Kreech]

I have just reserved a copy of Grimscribe from my local library (also my workplace). I'm going to see if he's as good as you say. Thanks for the refferal.

[darrick]

yeah, i'm a huge Thomas Ligotti fan! along with H.P. Lovecraft, he's my favorite author.

unfortunately, his career is going in reverse. instead of mass market editions, his work is now only being handled by the small press.

Ligotti has put a couple new things out since My Work is Not Yet Done (which i didn't really care for, actually). some are just new compliations of his stories, but a couple of them are brand new stuff.

check http://www.ligotti.net for news on what he's putting out and when.

Darrick