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Fiction. Horror. Literature. Short Stories. HTML:Two terrifying classics by “the best kept secret in contemporary horror fiction” (The Washington Post) Thomas Ligotti’s debut collection, Songs of a Dead Dreamer, and his second, Grimscribe, permanently inscribed a new name in the pantheon of horror fiction. Influenced by the strange terrors of Lovecraft and Poe and by the brutal absurdity of Kafka, Ligotti eschews cheap, gory thrills for his own brand of horror, which shocks at the deepest, existential, levels. Ligotti’s stories take on decaying cities and lurid dreamscapes in a style ranging from rich, ornamental prose to cold, clinical detachment. His raw and experimental work lays bare the unimportance of our world and the sickening madness of the human condition. Like the greatest writers of cosmic horror, Ligotti bends reality until it cracks, opening fissures through which he invites us to gaze on the unsettling darkness of the abyss below. For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.… (more)
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Songs of a Dead Dreamer is divided into three sections: "Dreams for Sleepwalkers," "Dreams for Insomniacs," and "Dreams for the Dead." Each of these ends with a story which involves critical reflexivity regarding the horror genre: "Notes on the Writing of Horror: A Story," "Professor Nobody's Little Lectures on Horror," and "Vastarien," respectively. This first collection shows many of the tropes that Ligotti uses to communicate disquiet and the uncanny: puppets, masks, vegetable growth, insects, and others. The central section "Dreams for Insomniacs" has a few tales that work in well-defined weird subgenres, such as the Christmas ghost story of "The Christmas Eves of Aunt Elise," the vampire story in "The Lost Art of Twilight," and sword & sorcery in "Masquerade of a Dead Sword."
"The Sect of the Idiot," opening with a quote from The Necronomicon, shows Ligotti's familiarity with the Lovecraftian corpus and its virtues, but is neither a pastiche nor an instance of Yog-Sothothery per se. More Lovecraftian in its overall texture is the longest Grimscribe story "The Feast of Harlequin," which is overtly dedicated to HPL. The things that most tie Ligotti's work to this predecessor are a preoccupation with dreams, a philosophical pessimism, and a general effort to portray the violation of metaphysical norms.
Ligotti's occasional representations of contemporary occultism and secret societies are highly credible, despite the anti-naturalism of his style. He affords addictive tomes, obscure ceremony, and exotic drugs, often with libidinal contexts/subtexts. Like Lovecraft, he prefers his grimoires to be as invented as his characters, but he does show a familiarity with actual occult tradition by invoking Austin Osman Spare (in "In the Shadow of Another World"). The magic employed by sorcerers in these stories is sometimes grounded in powerful hypnotic suggestion.
The stories of Grimscribe are all told in the first person by unnamed narrators, and an introduction establishes the conceit that these are received texts, drawn from a pool of consciousness through an authorial function personified by Ligotti as "Grimscribe." These are then grouped into "Voices" characterizing the specific narrators, such as "The Voice of the Demon" (culpable narrators) and "The Voice of the Child" (juvenile narrators). The final section "The Voice of Our Name" contains only the single story "The Shadow at the Bottom of the World." This last tale seems especially suited to seasonal reading, for those who want an elegant text to instill horror into Hallowe'en observances.
I would be hard-pressed to select a favorite from this book. There is not a dud among the 33 stories assembled here.
So...Thomas friggin' Ligotti...
Damn.
I
I don't know that I'd necessarily call this horror fiction. There's absolutely horror elements strewn through here. But there's also fantasy and perhaps a touch of science fiction, with a dollop of Lovecraftian cosmic horror mixed in to add a little spice.
Honestly, if I were to tag Ligotti's particular genre as anything, I'd simply term it "weird fiction"...because it's certainly weird.
There's not necessarily a lot going on in a Ligotti story. Don't look for action, or fight scenes, or love scenes, because there are none. Instead, his stories are home to very troubled individuals who have to go through situations and come to some sort of quiet, but impactful realization. But the settings they go through these situations in is what truly makes this weird. At times, the world seems just like ours, only he may shine a light on a darkened, previously ignored corner we hadn't noticed before. Other times, you've never experienced a world like this, or a house like this, or a person like this.
"We sleep...among the shadows of another world. These are the unshapely substance inflicted upon us and the prime material to which we give the shapes of our understanding. And though we create what is seen, yet we are not the creators of its essence. Thus nightmares are born from the impress of ourselves on the life of things unknown. How terrible these forms of specter and demon when the eyes of the flesh cast light and mold the shadows which are forever around us. How much more terrible to witness their true forms roaming free upon the land, or in the most homely rooms of our houses, or frolicking through that luminous hell which in pursuit of psychic survival we have name the heavens. Then we truly waken from our sleep, but only to sleep once more and shun the nightmares which must ever return to that part of us which is hopelessly dreaming."
Through the two months of reading these strange and wonderful (and I mean "wonderful" in the truest meaning of the word...these stories are full of wonder) stories, I struggled with how to describe Ligotti's writing. His lexicon is massive, and he busts out words I've never read before...but they're always the precisely right word. Always.
But it's more than that.
There's horror authors who come at a story like a serial killer to their victim, hacking and slashing, ripping and tearing, with no thought of finesse or subtlety. Probably a Graham Masterton type.
There's horror authors who come at a story like a butcher. They're still cutting, but now there's more expertise, more finesse, but it still gets messy. But you'll end up with some prime cuts. Probably someone like Joe R. Lansdale's horror stuff, or Skipp and Spector, back when they still liked each other.
Then there's the horror author surgeons. Now there's a lot of skill involved. There's subtlety, and there's true purpose. Their cuts are precise, and there's no wasted movements. Think Stephen King, Clive Barker, or Jack Ketchum.
And then there's Ligotti. He's the Hannibal Lecter of horror authors. He's got the requisite background knowledge and skill that he doesn't need to make a single cut. He cuts by getting into your mind. He flays with the precision of the words and thoughts not only that he uses, but that he puts into your mind, where they'll ricochet like small bits of targeted shrapnel. And if he does decide to actually cut, he has the most expensive instruments. The sharpest. And the steadiest hand. And when he cuts, he'll leave you forever changed. The scars won't be visible, but they'll always be felt.
That's what his writing is like. These stories, this author, are not to be read. These stories are to be experienced.
Behind the scenes of life lurks something pernicious that makes a nightmare of our world.
I have noticed that certain experiences are left to languish in the corners of life, passed by like waifs on the street, as if they should be dissuaded from circulating too freely among legitimate persons.
That's overwritten and faux-deep. "Legitimate persons" especially sounds as though he's reaching for eloquence on a shelf just beyond his arms' length.
Part of it is philosophical: was there a consistent philosophy, besides maybe "things are bad", in the book?
Part of it is that I don't think anything happens in any of these stories. He has great predecessors in this genre, Poe and Lovecraft, but both of them had better, or at least more interesting, prose.
And part of it is a softer thing that I might call emotional: it's silly to talk about "the" point of fiction, but at least one of the points is to cause a reaction in the reader, and, whether it's a fault in me or in the text, I don't think I had a single one over however many pages this was.