/lit/ - Literature

i don't get it
it's just a bunch of stories weird things happen
is that supposed to be scary or deep?

what are some literary horror?

How would you describe Thomas Ligotti’s writing style?

The stories in this book are extremely hit or miss.

>>18257616
Buy this book

Anyone else think Horror fiction is best done in the short story format?

While there are great horror novels, the best horror stories are always the short stories to me. Something about the genre makes short stories just far more suited to it I think.

It’s a shame short story horror anthologies are so less common than regular novels these days. Why is that?

this is some goosebumps shit

has anyone read the first story in this?

I know it was purposefully incomprehensible, but I still had no idea what was going on.

Ligotti's other stuff is good, no question.

This one though, first time I read a whole anthology of his instead of a short story here or there.

This one hit me hard for some reason.

one of his more recent works. You can make the case for Lovecraft and others as the greats and I would agree, yet one of the few stories I felt genuinely scared from is in this collection.

I don't want to spoil the rest, but the story that stabbed me where I lived was one about a guy with an anxiety disorder in a shithole town, working in a factory making bits he never understood, using what cash he makes to pay for anti-anxiety medication, but not enough to save up to leave.

Eventually, a new supervisor arrives, and suddenly the work hours are being subtly increased every day. A man that entered into the new office to protest the change dies of fright, the medication getting more expensive, and the story ends with the main character in a death spiral, literally sleeping on the floor while the workers are working around the clock at feverish pace, compelled to an ever increasing rate of productivity, incapable of ever leaving, endlessly toiling until they all eventually burn out.

tell yah, I don't have anxiety problems, but the prospect of living in that kind of poverty, that idea of useless toil that you can never escape from, the way Ligotti tells it, the story genuinely unsettled me :l

...

that, and I gagged a little when he described a fat woman in a separate story eating raw hot-dogs while dipping them into a mayonnaise jar while living in a dilapidated house where people shit in the cellar.

>>9871719
Specifically the story "Gas Station Carnivals", but this whole collection has a Gothic circus/harlequin motif bubbling just under the surface

>>7561060
The Temporary Supervisor is the most depressing horror story I have ever read, but the whole book is a masterwork in post-industrial nihilism.

>>7561105
This, you fuckers need to branch out.

>>7562480
This also is killself worthy.

>>7442410

Yesss thank you based anon

Ligotti.

Start with pic.

>>6943915

What does /lit/ think of Thomas Ligotti? I'm currently reading pic related and it is creepy as fuck, especially that I'm in a dark basement and listening to some ambient post-rock.

Feel free to discuss Conspiracy Against the Human Race as well, which I haven't read but certainly seems interesting enough to hold up a discussion.