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sidetrack
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18 Oct 2018, 1:19 pm

Not long ago I reserved a short story compilation "Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe" by Thomas Ligotti from the library and I was put on a waiting list. From what little I know about him via this website, tvtropes and wikipedia, Ligotti's horror fiction is qualifiably philosophical and fueled in part by his mental health issues.

As someone who hasn't ever really read to much horror fiction,I find it interesting how someone whose fiction is apparently famous for highlighting how seemngly malevolent reality itself is, is coming from someone who has mental health issues--one reason I'm curious to read him is know if that 'experience' expressed in writing might be 'carthatic' to someone who used to dwell on arguably dysthestic or maltheistic thoughts when he was younger before coming to terms with resolving his issues with theism and religiosity once he was older.

I'm curious to hear out how even if Ligotti doesn't always approach this (House of Leaves: The Horror Of Fiction), what the opinions of others on him are?. Are the themes more often scarier than any genre actions or plot points?. My gratitude to any replies.



Kraichgauer
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18 Oct 2018, 11:34 pm

I personally like Ligotti's fiction quite a lot. If Lovecraft and Kafka could have had a baby, it would be Thomas Ligotti. His fiction has the same sort of pessimism found in Lovecraft and Kafka, along with that surreal, dream logic found in Kafka's work.
The Ligotti books that I've read so far are Teatro Grottesco, and My Work Is Not Yet Done.


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graywyvern
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29 Oct 2018, 9:44 am

his grimscribe is a masterpiece, & there are great stories in all the other collections.

(if he's not aspie he needs to get his money back.)


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Kraichgauer
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29 Oct 2018, 1:49 pm

graywyvern wrote:
his grimscribe is a masterpiece, & there are great stories in all the other collections.

(if he's not aspie he needs to get his money back.)


I had him pegged as one of us from the start.


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sidetrack
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16 Nov 2018, 3:23 pm

-___- If most ppl on 'wp' think like Ligott, I think I might hate this (website--being here/arriving to this website and struggling to wean off not feeling free enough to not be here) even more.

Listening to the 'The conspiracy against the human race: A contrivance of horror' *audiobook*---banal b/c of overelaborated sophomoric-ness is an understatement in listening to something which is making an entire genre seem even more off-putting in spite of how meagerly I know and understand it.



sidetrack
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17 Nov 2018, 4:24 pm

Somewhere out there someone would put an effort into analyzing Ligotti and produce something along the lines of the video essay 'Channel Criswell' did for Lars Von Trier.
___

=_=..what would Ligotti say about chattel slavery?.



sidetrack
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17 Nov 2018, 7:26 pm

:| Not sure if actually knowing how he looks like (Google image search) helps.



sidetrack
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18 Nov 2018, 10:51 pm

Let me say this...the indeterminate lengths of what could be said about Ligotti and how it could overlap with say 'transgressive fiction' a la Hubert Selby Jr. would be superfluous. The indeterminate lengths of what could be said about Ligotti and how it could overlap with say the 'House of Leaves: The Horror Of Fiction' video by 'What's So Great About That?' is superfluous.

I would like to say something important about the expoundings on anti-natalism he does which is a topic which as disturbing as it is I have known of before not only via mentions of Schopenhaeur but also via Ollie Lennard's PhilosophyTube' channel. The effort brought up by explaining how an 'excess of consciousness' can be painful is appreciated and I suppose understood. What else is understood is for what reason Peter Wessel Zapffe lends himself to this, someone more obscure but with a significant presence throughout the audiobook than the more famous Lovecraft.
Without such context, without an understanding of such context the anti-natalism brought up through 'The Conspiracy against the Human Race: a contrivance of horror' would even more likely come off as a tell-tale example of the attitude which is claimed by those who are responsibly impartial in a conversation about a topics like assisted forms of death, particularly euthanasia, reoccurringly mentioned throughout the audiobook.


For all the learned monologuing which can emerge from boring into horror fiction even old stuff like Poe for the roots of philosophical pessimism, I can't help but think how yet this is another example of a major intellectual exercise as an outcome of white ppl not 'wearing there feelings on their arms'. The passive-aggressive expression is found not uncommonly in humorous content but here it makes for a major perceptual non-satisfaction in being exposed to what this means in terms of genre fiction---the fact that Ligotti being Italian had exposure to Catholicism is not lost on me being someone with a volatile personal history with Catholicism not the least because of resentment towards the guilt culture and confluences with Italian culture. Heck, me having listened to this was perhaps a 'subconscious' attempt at replicating a sort of 'penance' for the pornography lapsing I had been struggling and suffering from days before, confession having been a sacrament it turned out I never really quite believed in, at least in an 'acceptably Catholic' way.

What seems overlooked is (unsurprisingly) how being able to express such things necessitates an ambience which is sufficient secure enough to allow unrestrained self-direction to occur without insult, disrespect and disparaging in 'low-brow' or 'high-brow' ways to occur * ---*most of the planet* , most of the non-Anglospheric planet isn't like that and horrors of inequity when it comes to say labor as experienced by non-whites is still something scantly expressed with the movie 'Get out' being one of the few instances where it is. I say this because it is important to not ignore how in various parts of the world uncomplicated impulses not based on philosophical pessimism can make form instances of eugenics, genocides and labor barely different from chattel slavery (nominally) a very real risk which is something I dread 'gloomy white guys' like Ligotti for not realizing not unlike how Marjane reacted to Momo's nihilism in 'Persepolis'.Similarly it ignores the choicelessness of how in non-humans are subject to abuse because of the world enacting final changes unto others indifferently because uncomplicated impulses. This could be read as and how limitedly speciesist the audiobook is; if the attitudes of Ligotti or the atmosphere of 'True detective' were present in the recent reboot of 'The planet of the apes' you might be able to imagine what I might be getting at.

That being said I am not going to lie/ admit that the fondness of his content in this internet community has made
Stuff like this highlights to all the more greater significance to push towards a 'post-labour' world not the least via committed efforts to cease addictions and participating with certain forms of media and their collarly accompanying consumerism. 'What would be left' even after the indeterminately long aggravations with overcoming factors like unwitting classism *would be* stuff like Ligotti and similar expressions of pessimism which you can't really find outside of the 'underbelly' of Scandanavaian culture..but if stuff like this can be more 'free to express itself' with dense justification then we can try to not forget that collectively, on a collective scale there was enough labour done that if an adult male would choose to spend time like that, it is feasible without retaliatory aggression, 'value-judgments' to possibly inflammatory content being expressed aside like using the 'I wish you hadn't been born' statement as a basis for literary inspiration. It would be hateful if public policies were based on Ligotti. I would prefer that there be more emergences of counter-examples to what he expresses.


The mention of 'ecunemical emptiness' mentioned earlier...the part about 'Buddhanomics' and the words which I can mark--Buddhism is pessimism...I can imagine that one possible day that if Ligotti ever 'reforms' himself he is just as likely to pretend that his previous literary work never happened as he is to express repentance/regret for it. What would be superfluous as well is comparing the inflammation he can express as analogous to Kanye.

Quote:
'Genre films essentially ask the audience, " Do you still want to believe this?" Popularity is the audience
answering, "Yes." Change in genre occurs when the audience says, "That's too infantile a form of what we believe. Show us something more complicated. Genres turn to self-parody to say, "Well, at least if we make fun of it for being infantile, it will show how far we've come"

--Leo Braudy

Thus far I think, I have still listened to less than a dozen audiobooks in there entirety.What this audiobook means to me as far as my understanding is a new realization of the thresholds of hearing,*only* hearing what comes off as inflammatory to me. As appealing on one level as it was for being so theory-based, I feel all the better for not having *read it*, reading being an information consumption process which entails more attention and effort input to absorb information which makes how it lingers different not the least because going through pages ('meatspace' or digital) takes time and arguably more use of my hands. In my opinion, the experience bares a close resemblance to following video essays but the visuals of what YouTube can provide are not there. In world where neurology is being wired in funky ways because of screen based tech, audiobooks when lending themselves to narrative like content which can be adequately expressed without demonstrations of natural phenomena to convey what information is empirically expressed. It makes me think that as far as 'delimitations' go '.D.I.Y.' and a fair amount of art content which isn't overly intentionality or theory based can still benefit from some form of publishing, to say the least.



sidetrack
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28 Dec 2018, 8:46 pm

Given the exposure I got to Ligotti, I can understand how once you 'reach rock bottom' you can swear and express yourself angrily on that 'plateau' of self and not really expect any 'life retaliation'..short of the sort of painful consciousness which to him justifies anti-natalism.