Thomas Ligotti, The Spectral Link

My instructions were to follow a sequence of absurdly simple acts and to keep the operation secret.  First, I was to make my way into the assigned environment; second, I would depart in the most natural manner, undetected if possible, though that part was not essential.  Such was the basic framework of the dream.  Nevertheless, my sense was that the orders I was carrying out would have repercussions in a far greater scheme.  While feelings of this kind often inhere in night visions, their quality on this occasion seemed of a nature surpassing anything I had previously experienced in the world of sleep. ("Metaphysica Morum", p. 11)

It has been several years since Thomas Ligotti has received a new collection of stories.  Although his latest, The Spectral Link, contains only two, "Metaphysica Morum" and "The Small People," it is a strong collection, as each tale, when unpacked, contains as much within them as many larger story collections.  Those who have read Ligotti's previous work will find certain themes being revisited here, but there is evidence that the shift from physical manifestations of horror to a more metaphysical, almost existential, sort of estrangement that was most evident in his 2010 non-fiction work, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race.

"Metaphysica Morum" begins with a narrator reflecting on a past action.  Or is it a dream?  Despite the statement in the middle of the opening paragraph, there is enough fluidity here that talking about dreams as a sort of fictional state of non-being would risk distorting the tale, yet the import of what transpires is perhaps a bit too much for mere "reality."  One of the more striking elements of this story is its use of the ordinary to upend conceptions of the everyday.  The narrator enters into a sort of showroom, with a "Dealer" who is nearly twice the narrator's height, offering to show the narrator what he seems to be seeking, saying, "If I understand you correctly, sir, you are in the market for an all-new context." (p. 12)

Within this too-real dream-reality, the story proceeds to a discussion of "metaphysical mutants," those who see beyond the frills and trappings of mundane existence, peering into the horribleness that lies beyond.  This concept has been treated by Ligotti before, particularly in The Conspiracy Against the Human Race, but here in this story, it takes on new contextual layers, as the story shifts through levels of conceptual reality to arrive at this chilling point:

Those who contest demoralization as the inexorable way of universal deliverance have failed to see what is before them.  They have lagged behind in the evolutionary ideal of our species.  That ideal is a beneficial mutation.  If nothing else, the demoralized are fortuitous mutants.  From the day that marked our kind's awakening to life, such mutants have borne the common task of attaining for the world its true status and to announce its arrival in a time to come.  Now it has fallen to demoralized mutants to enunciate their closed-off future. (p. 43)

The second story, "The Small People," contains more explicitly grotesque imagery, especially in the description of the eponymous small people:

I noticed that even if they weren't moving very fast, they did seem to be moving as fast as they could, as if they were hurrying to get somewhere.  Their arms and legs shifted around in the manner of prosthetic limbs, making them look almost crippled, though not crippled so that you felt sorry for them, I should say, but maimed in a way that made you want to keep your distance, af if they could infect you with some dreadful condition. (p. 66)

This story, like the one before it, works on several levels.  On one, it is a confession of a man to an unseen doctor.  On another, it is a profession of all that we humans do not grasp, especially our futile attempts to conceptualize what is "real."  As the patient/narrator attempts to gauge what constitutes these grotesque small people, he sees within this a metaphor of sorts, an allegory for our own existences.  Who is the more real, humans or the small people?  Who possesses substance?  And just what might be "the spectral link" between the two?  Ligotti does not provide answers to these questions as much as he forces us to consider whether or not we are ever going to be ready to accept just what those answers about life, the universe, and everything just might be.  That sort of conceptual estrangement is much more chilling and horrifying than mere physical mutilations or psychological torture could ever hope to obtain.

Thomas Ligotti, "Purity" (2003)

We were living in a rented house, neither the first nor the last of a long succession of such places that the family inhabited throughout my childhood years.  It was shortly after we have moved into this particular house that my father preached to us his philosophy of "rented living."  He explained that it was not possible to live in any other way and that attempting to do so was the worst form of delusion.  "We must actively embrace the reality of non-ownership," he told my mother, my sister and me, towering over us and gesturing with his heavy arms as we sat together on a rented sofa in our rented house.  "Nothing belongs to us.  Everything is something that is rented out.  Our very heads are filled with rented ideas passed on from one generation to the next.  Wherever your thoughts finally settle is the same place that the thoughts of countless other persons have settled and have left their impression, just as the backsides of other persons have left their impression on that sofa where you are now sitting.  We live in a world where every surface, every opinion or passion, everything altogether is tainted by the bodies and minds of strangers.  Cooties – intellectual cooties and physical cooties from other people – are crawling all around us and all over us at all times.  There is no escaping this fact.' (p. 3-4, Teatro Grottesco edition)

"Purity" perhaps is one of my favorite Ligotti stories of the past ten years (coincidentally, I learned today while scouring the web for this story's original publication that there are plans to make a short film based on it).  The opening paragraph contains an excellent "hook" that hints at the type of tale to follow.  Here, the nameless narrator relates a tale from some years ago when he was a child.  Ligotti utilizes a matter-of-fact style of narrative to create sharp contrasts between the mundane family discussions and the very unsettling commentary by the narrator's father on the issue of "non-ownership" and the pervasiveness of commonality in people's lives.

Purity is a concept that appears in many guises, often as a means of indicating the corruption of the ideal.  What Ligotti sets up here in this opening paragraph is the notion that purity is an impossibility; we are all "polluted" with "cooties" that manifest themselves in mind, body, and soul.  We cannot escape "contamination;" it is a part of us.  The setting for "Purity" reflects this sense of impurity, as the narrator's family moves from cursed house to blighted house, skirting the fringes of even more decrepit and sinister houses.  One quickly gets the mental image of paint peeling from weathered frame houses, rank weeds sprouting among cigarette butts, broken beer bottles, and used condoms.  Ligotti does not explicate the environs, yet our imaginations easily fill in the urban desolation hinted at in the paragraphs following the opening scene.  Unsound minds in unsound settings, more or less.

Against this backdrop is the mysteriousness of the father's attempts to somehow undo or at least alter the impurities around him.  We get fleeting glimpses of some vague, possibly nefarious "experiments" on the narrator, his sister, and his mother.  This is heightened during a scene in which a missionary visits the rental house, attempting to proselytize.  The father's response is telling:

"I will explain.  you have these two principles in your head, and possibly they are the only principles that are holding your head together.  The first is the principle of nations, countries, the whole hullabaloo of mother lands and father lands.  The second is the principle of deities.  Neither of these principles has anything real about them.  They are merely impurities poisoning your head.  In a single phrase – Citizens for Faith – you have incorporated two of the three major principles – or impurities – that must be eliminated, completely eradicated, before our species can begin an approach to a pure conception of existence.  Without pure conception, or something approaching pure conception, everything is a disaster and will continue to be a disaster." (p. 6)

There is a bleakness in most of Ligotti's fiction, a sense that nothingness is pure compared to the degradations of life and life's self-deceits.  In "Purity," that nihilistic attitude is more transparent than in the majority of his tales.  As the father works upon the idealism of the missionary, the narrator relates what happens when he leaves the father to do his "work" and he wanders off to a friend's house in the most dangerous part of the neighborhood.  This digression serves to reinforce the earlier scenes regarding the father's earliest experiments on his own family and the mystery surrounding this serves to deflect reader attention from what is occurring in the background.  By the time the tale winds to a close, Ligotti has executed a narrative double-bind:  the philosophy of the father is seen in the experiences of the son and the two actions create a plot/theme reverberation that echoes the philosophy spelled out in the beginning in ways that are disturbing more for the reflections generated by the words and actions than for the actual plot conclusion.

"Purity" depends upon the reader being able to buy into the premise established in the beginning.  Once the reader is committed to wrestling with/against the ideas presented there, then the narrative action can take on frightening implications.  This creates an unsettling reading aftermath, as the very semantics behind "purity" have been twisted here to create something that feels "off" and perhaps "wrong," yet which is powerful for making the reader question just what "purity" might be. 

Thomas Ligotti, My Work is Not Yet Done (2002)

There was only darkness.  It flowed like a black river that had no bottom.  And it was unconfined by any shores, infinite and turbulent and moving without direction, without any source or destination.  There was only darkness flowing in darkness.

Then something felt itself struggling in this black and bottomless and infinite river, something unformed and embryonic swirling within the darkness.  It had no eyes, just as the darkness had none.  It had no thoughts and no sensations, only the darkness flowing through it and around it in a blind chaos of thrashing agitation.  It was something living, something restless and alive in the darkness that flowed relentlessly like a black river in a black world.  Yet even without eyes or thoughts or sensations it moved toward the impossible surface of the darkness...and broke through. (p. 63)

Thomas Ligotti, based on the current poll results, seems to be an unknown entity for several readers of this blog.  With luck, over the course of October, I plan on writing short(er) reviews of several of his stories and/or collections.  A good place to begin is his 2002 short novel (more widely available in the not-pictured 2006 UK edition that includes two related stories, "I Have a Special Plan for This World" and "The Nightmare Network"), My Work is Not Yet Done.  This story differs in some regards from others that I have read over the past three years, but its heart is just as disturbing and unsettling as his best works.

My Work is Not Yet Done is set in a nameless, faceless corporate office.  Frank Dominio, a long-time, rather fastidious employee who has had to do (for him) some rather unpleasant things to rise to the inglorious ranks of middle management, feels that he is being demeaned and dehumanized by his fellow corporate committee members.  He comes to see them as the Seven, sometimes dwarfs but more often as swine whose callousness represents a greater negative force.  As the story unfolds, we see Dominio forced out of his position and ultimately out of the company by the Seven, headed by a nefarious manager known as Richard, or the Doctor.  Ligotti over the course of the first section's roughly 60 pages builds upon Dominio's seething contempt for the Seven, for the vacuousness that they represent, until after his forced resignation he plans how to exterminate them in a blaze of guns and wielded knives. 

At this point, the tale follows in the tracks of a homicidal ideation.  We see the motives for Dominio's desires for revenge against those who conspired to keep him from completing his (never fully-revealed) work, his obsessive-compulsive nature, and we sense that we are inside the mind of someone who is somewhat divorced from common perceptions of reality.  Ligotti expertly builds upon this perception until just before Part I's rattling conclusion, when he broadens the scope of the darkness on display with this seemingly off-topic exchange with a banker:

"May I ask why you've decided to close your account with us?" asked the gray-suited man to whom the teller had sent me.  He was sitting behind a desk in a corner of the great vaulted lobby of the bank.

"Because I despise you," I replied, looking at him straight in the eye from behind amber-tinted eyeglasses.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I think you heard me.  This is a bank.  I'd rather carry my money around in my crotch than have it serve the purposes of this institution for another minute."

The banker, somewhat petulantly, retrieved three forms from the top drawer of his desk and asked me to fill them out.  Two of the forms he kept.  The third he told me to take to the teller who had sent me to him.  "This is a waiver.  You understand that the bank can't be held responsible for cash withdrawals once you've taken possession of your funds.  Even while you're still on the bank's premises, our security guards will not be available for your protection."  As I rose to go back to the teller's window and have all my money loaded into the shoe box I had brought with me, the gray-suited man added, "We sincerely have enjoyed serving you and hope to do so again in the future."  It occurred to me that all civilization was structured so that such people could make snide remarks like that and get away with it.  They had been getting away with it for thousands of years and would continue to get away with it until the end of time. (p. 55-56).

The "problem" that Dominio experiences is not limited to one situation or one group of people, but is rather a perception that it is a system ingrained in human societies that degrades people, corrupts them, makes them less than pure.  It is a darkness akin to that described in the opening paragraphs of Part II, one that is perhaps a "black swine" larger and more insidious than any of the Seven could dream up to oppose Dominio.  It is this larger issue that Ligotti threads throughout the remainder of his narrative:

As many of you have already realized, I did not give up my intentions of crafting a document that, in an earlier section, I described as my Ultimate Statement.  This document, or statement, had merely mutated into a different format - from a ranting declaration into what might be categorized as a paranormal memoir:  a work-in-progress of uncertain form, very much like its creator.  Among the principal elements to emerge in this latter form was that sinister presence whose sign and symbol had appeared to me as (1) a river of darkness; (2) a constellation of dark stars which filled the darkness behind the darkness of the night sky; (3)"dark spots" that, despite my enhanced perception of the world around me, still obscured certain crucial things from my view, most prominently any knowledge concerning the peculiar – "non living" – state in which I now existed; and (4) stains or smudges of darkness which spread across the sky at all hours and grew increasingly prominent each time I knocked the living daylights out of one of The Seven (plus Chipman). (p. 107-108)

Although Part Two (and the first half of Part Three) is devoted to Dominio executing his ghastly eliminations of the Seven, Ligotti does something here in this section that makes the horror less about how Dominio inflicts his revenge and more about the helplessness in which Dominio and others find themselves.  Many horror fictions revolve around the breakdown of societal bonds and structures; there is a sense of transgression.  What is surprising in this section is how Ligotti inverts this.  The horror is found in the reinforcement of the system, symbolized in the corporate structure headed by Richard.  Dominio may be utilizing dark powers to gain revenge, but whence the dark powers?  Who is controlling whom?  It is around this question that the denouement unfolds and which makes this story exemplary of some of the concerns that Ligotti addressed in prior fictions.  It also makes for a story that unsettles its readers long after the final exchange is read and the reader dwells upon what s/he has just finished.  Their work, too, is not yet done.

Thomas Ligotti, Songs of a Dead Dreamer

Thomas Ligotti is, in my not-quite-so-humble opinion, one of the greatest horror writers writing today.  Ever since I discovered him a couple of years ago, I have been a huge fan of his works.  Dark as his fictions in collections such as The Nightmare Factory and Teatro Grottesco are, what I have especially enjoyed about Ligotti's stories is his masterful use of the English language to create atmosphere and to unsettle me whenever I might have become a bit too comfortable.

But I have not read much of his work.  Since most of his collections until recently had been released in short print runs from small presses, the cost of acquiring his work can run into the hundreds of dollars for some of his rarer collections.  However, this appears to be changing, as Subterranean Press is planning on issuing new editions of several of Ligotti's collections, starting with the revised edition of his earliest collection, Songs of a Dead Dreamer, which was originally released in 1985 and expanded in 1989.  Apparently the Subterranean editions will be the "definitive" ones, as Ligotti has reworked elements of each individual story for this collection and this presumably will be the case for upcoming collections.

Songs of a Dead Dreamer is divided into three main parts:  "Dreams for Sleepwalkers," "Dreams for Insomniacs," and "Dreams for the Dead."  Each of these sections are thematic, although there are also certain elements shared in common.  As I stated above, Ligotti's masterful prose is key to my enjoyment of his tales.  Take for instance this opening paragraph to "Alice's Last Adventure":

A long time ago, Preston Penn made up his mind to ignore the passing years and join the ranks of those who remain forever in a kind of half-world between childhood and adolescence.  He would not give up the bold satisfaction of eating insects (crispy fries are his favorite), nor that peculiar drunkenness of a child's brain, induplicable once grown-up society has set in.  The result was that Preston successfully negotiated within a few decades without ever coming within hailing distance of puberty.  In this state of arrested development, he defiantly lived through many a perverse adventure.  And he still lives in the pages of those books I wrote about him, thought I stopped writing them some years ago. (p. 37)

What strikes me most about passages such as this is this apparent sense of detachment within the prose; Ligotti is seemingly just reporting the facts about this insect-devouring Peter Pan type.  But "apparent" and "seemingly" do not equate with "true" dispassion.  Ligotti's narrators, often speaking in first-person, often have their own problems, some of them quite deep.  Again, a passage from "Alice's Last Adventure":

I remind you that I've been drinking steadily since early this afternoon.  I remind you that I'm old and no stranger to the mysteries of geriatric neuroticism.  I remind you that some part of me has written a series of children's books whose hero is a disciple of the bizarre.  I remind you what night this is and to what zones the imagination can fly on this hallowed eve.  I need not, however, remind you that this world is stranger than we know, or at least mine seems to be, especially this past year.  And I now notice that it's very strange - and, once again, untidy. (p. 53)

This sense of the bizarre intermixing with the mundane, of madness coexisting with banality, creates a slow, creeping sense of unease that horrifies not at what is revealed about the characters as much as ends up being revealed to the reader about his/her own interactions with the world.  Horror, after all, isn't all that effective if its impact hits just the characters.  Ligotti, with his meticulous approach toward crafting stories, infuses a sense of personal connection to what ends up being some very disturbing scenes.

Most of what's disturbing is nothing that can be explicitly stated; Ligotti's horror does not work as much at the visceral level as it does at the existential.  Several of his stories, including many in this collection, revolve around the breakdown of ritual and tradition, or the subversion of each.  The pillars of everyday life are shown to have cracks in them and things held in common to be "true" are questioned through the use of bizarre characters and/or situations.  The end result are stories that slowly eat at the reader's subconscious, undermining several of that reader's preconceptions.  Although Songs of a Dead Dreamer has not developed this subversiveness that is evident in Ligotti's latter works, it certainly is a fine introduction for readers curious to know more about this critically-acclaimed author.  Highly recommended.

Author Spotlight: Thomas Ligotti

Thomas Ligotti may very well be the best horror author I never read until this year. Umm....let me rephrase that a bit. He just might be the creator of some of the creepiest stories that I've come across this year. A bit better, although this too does not do justice to his stories. However, based on the recent graphic novel adaptations of eight of his stories, The Nightmare Factory: Volumes 1 & 2, I believe Ligotti is deserving not just of my attention, but also that of readers of dark fantasy and horror.



In the two graphic novels (covers pictured to the side), Ligotti uses several motifs most familiar to those who enjoy Edgar Allan Poe's darkest tales: Outsiders, outcast in some form from society; inversions of ritual and ceremony; explorations of human attempts to "master" self and fate. In addition, in tales such as "The Last Feast of Harlequin" and "Dr. Locrian's Asylum," there are certain supernatural elements present, if only hinted at for much of these two tales, that resemble some of H.P. Lovecraft's most famous tales.

But Ligotti does not merely ape these two acclaimed writers. While most of my reading to date has been of these graphic novel adaptations, even there in modified form, there is a great sense of pacing and word choice that is distinctive. Hopefully, tonight and later this week I'll have the chance to read the just-released (as of Sept. 16) American paperback version of Teatro Grottesco, which contains 3 of the 8 stories found in the two graphic novels, in addition to 10 others. I hope to have at least a capsule commentary up this weekend (I'll be off work on Thursday and might have the time to complete three long-delayed reviews, if I'm luckier than I have been; if so, then Saturday's commentary might expand into a 750-1000 word review).

But based on what I have read, Thomas Liggoti is one of the rare few authors of horror that I actually can stomach reading; Poe and some of Stephen King's earlier short stories, as well as Ray Bradbury's occasional forays into horror motifs being the few examples of works that I enjoyed greatly. Shall be interesting to see how I'll view the graphic novel adaptations after I finish reading this collection. Looking forward to the experience, even if it might cost me some dearly-needed sleep.