/lit/ - Literature

>>15767545
I'd like some philosophical horror recs

>>15767545
What's the best atmosphere for reading spooky literature in?

>>15767597
Rainy day or at a pub, I find.

>>15767590
Lovecraft is philosophical in the sense it is very steeped in ur-psychology and the fear of a Big Other or known unknowns. I think that's supposed to be big in psychoanalysis, which some philosophers say is basically ripping from philosophy.

More charts are welcome

>>15767597
I used to go for long night walks and listen to lovecraft audiobooks read by Wayne June, that shit is still burned into my memory as the most immersed I've ever been in literature somehow. 6 hour walks listening to Mountains of Madness and really losing myself in it. I can't do this anymore because I moved to a city and I'm ironically much more scared of black people at night than I am of shoggoths.

>>15767686
Kek

>>15767672
Is that "No Longer Human" a take on Osamu Dazai's one?

>>15767545
I've got Clive Barker's Books of Blood 1-3 on my nightstand so I'll probably read that once I'm done with my current book. Anything else by him thats worth checking out?

>>15767686
I used listen to these audiobooks before falling asleep and I would dream of what I was hearing. Wild.

>>15769520
Yeah

>>15767545
>Junji Ito

Just finished reading the 'The King in Yellow- Robert W. Chambers' and it was reasonably good. A nice creepy Lovecraft esq anthology. Only thing I found was Chambers has a tendency to fall back on his love of Paris for setting/characters . This means you get a lot of troubled young artist etc in Paris type stories. Also, several of the stories aren't horror stories, just short stories about life in Paris. That aside I found "The Yellow Sign" & "The Repairer of Reputations" to be especially creepy and worth seeking out.

>>15767545
>Junji Ito edition
> posts lovecraft in OP image
baka my head

>>15770120
It's actually good, idk why you look down on it.

>>15770126
Sounds pleasant. I might add it to my wish list.

>>15770143
>It's actually good, idk why you look down on it.
Sensationalist garbage, carried entirely by its visuals.

Would you guys consider Hawthorne to be a "horror" writer? I feel that at least some of his stories qualify as horror.

>>15770147
>Sensationalist garbage, carried entirely by its visuals.
He's directly inspired by Lovecraft in Uzumaki, there's great themes about the spiral of the universe or the spirals that exist like monads. Oneness and totality, everywhere and infinite. It's a good metaphor for the fear of the universe in general, being alone against matter and energy.

>>15770167
Which Hawthorne?

>>15770183
Nathaniel

>>15770188
Not read him much but he seems to be a psychological realist, romance and tale writer. That's pretty much interconnected with horror but I wouldn't say it's explicitly horror. Maybe he could be 'weird' - which is maybe a better definition. I'd say Dostoevsky, another psychological realist, would not be horror but certainly gives off weird vibes.

>>15770177
>He's directly inspired by Lovecraft in Uzumaki
Uzumaki was inspired by Lovecraft in the same way Lovecraft was inspired by Poe. They're only similar on a very superficial surface interpretation. The fact is Lovecraft lived the kind of horror he writes about day to day, and Junji Ito merely emulates his storytelling foundation to have an excuse to draw such uncomfortable shapes and swirls. Ito's horror is purely sensual in nature, i.e. the weakest kind of horror.

>>15767672
Shit list. You should start with his short stories before committing yourself to long multi-chapter works.

>>15770237
>His argument boils down to a formalist argument of literature against manga
Do you really think I'm going to argue here that manga can surpass literature

>>15770249
Those short story collections are the same size dude, like 600ish pages. I'm trying to put his best first so people aren't dissatisfied. You should read the short stories on their own if you wanna cough up the money to buy them all, or you could buy the collections which put them all in a hardback for cheaper.

>>15770147
I disagree, while the visuals play a large part, it's the inexplicable uncanniness that carries Ito's horror. It's like Lovecraft without the lore, which makes it all the more mad and intriguing: as Westerners we're used to explanations and most of our horror stories climax at the point where "everything finally falls into place/we understand". Ito leaves you with nothing to grasp onto as his young leads get terrorized butchered.

>>15770262
I never brought up the literature/manga dichotomy. I'm arguing that Lovecraft's and Ito's horror are very subtly distinct from one another. Regardless, I do believe Ito isn't remotely /lit/, maybe /x/ at best.

>>15767672
Mangazone -> search -> junji Ito -> read everything
It isn't difficult.

>>15767545
Lads, what's the ultimate anthology of Arthur Machen? I have The White People and other Stories (or something like that, the one edited by the penguin) but I want to read more.

>>15770293

Ito's inspired by HPL, but it's a different medium. It's all visual horror. The writing itself is pretty shit, which makes sense since he's inspired by HPL.

>>15770332
Kek, I laughed even if I don't mind both

>>15767545
Reading the Fisherman and so far it’s a fucking bore.

>>15770339
HPL's really pretty bad. I have trouble thinking of a more overrated author. He is to weird fiction what Nikola Tesla is to pseudoscience.

The more period horror fiction I read, the more it's obvious how fan-fiction tier HPL is.

>>15770356
Who's that by?

>>15770237
Ironically, Ito also (I think) lives the horror he writes about day-to-day, in a figurative way. Many of his stories parallel the life's overlooked horrors.

>the story where a translucent sea monster washes up onshore, and closer inspection reveals scores of catatonic human beings that had been trapped inside of it for weeks to years.
This is how a fish would feel, if it were returned from an aquarium to the sea.

>the story where teens return from a trip to the jungle with a pot of stolen tree-sap, and find that giant eerie offshoots of the tree can kill them in gruesome fashion, seemingly from anywhere
This is how a bug would feel, trying to eat from food around our kitchen.

That being said, I agree Ito relies too much on visuals to belong on /lit/.

>>15770314
>paying for manga
Come on, show some self respect.

>>15770362
I don't know, I think I love the themes. But I'm not sure he's the first to do that. Prose-wise, he is a very bad writer using lots of archaic language and self-inserts of his fantasies to study at Brown U.

>>15770363
John Langan

>>15770378
That's why I call him a fanfic writer. All of the things are just borrowed from his contemporaries that he admired. You've got all the late vicorian era ghost story writers like M.R. James and E. Nesbit. You've got the writers who took that basic sort of story, and made them a little weirder with more abstracted horror, like Algernon Blackwood and Chambers. They start adding things like aleums, and ancient archaeology and mysterious dusty tomes in old libraries with strange significance. You've got great nautical horror fiction with ghost pirates and octopus monsters by Hodgson. Everything that made HPL's themes good were just borrowed from better writers.

I think the reason he was largely ignored in his own lifetime was that readers back then were all familiar with the better writers doing the same sorts of stories. Hard to understand why he's such a household name now. You've got August Derleth getting the rights to his stuff and publishing a lot of pulpy collections. You've got pop culture phenomenons like 1st edition Dungeons and Dragons shit referencing him. Terrible 70s shlock horror movies buying the rights for cheap. He just sort of worms his way into the public consciousness.

Ito is so fucking garbage. Glorified guro.

>>15770424
Everyone on here loved Ito until he became mainstream. Now all of a sudden he's an absolute brainlet tier author and his work is complete dogshit. You faggots just hate on him because he got big.

>>15770458
>Everyone on here loved Ito
[citation needed]
Maybe that's the case on other boards but you aren't going to get much discussion about Junji Ito on /lit/ typically.
>until he became mainstream.
Yes, and because he was mainstream I was exposed to his work. Do you not realize how fallacious your reasoning is?

>>15770312
There's a 3 volume set of his works edited by S.T. Joshi published by Chaosium.

>>15770529
Chaosium make cool rpgs, are there fiction editions good? I don't imagine it would have good critical introductions or appendices, but I may be wrong.

>>15767686
i remember walking long distances at night in my early to mid 20s thinking about a girl and listening to music
so fucking sad

>>15770619
I don't own it, but it's edited by S.T. Joshi (I assume you're familiar with his editing work with Lovecraft, etc.) so I imagine it's fine. It's a collection of his better horror writings.
There is a complete set of his fiction, however, published by Hippocampus (also edited by Joshi) which contains his non-horror fiction as well, which may be a negative for you. Here's a link to that one with a description so you can see if it's actually something you'd want to read. Not everything these people wrote is necessarily of interest today.
https://www.hippocampuspress.com/other-authors/fiction/arthur-machen-collected-fiction-3-vols

>>15770424
>guro is bad
What a fucking pussy, lol.

>>15770237
I disagree that Ito's only strength is in visuals. In his shorts he frequently cooks up really compelling and unnerving situations that have the feel of unique, deep-brain horror. Stuff that bothers you for primitive reasons that aren't easy to pin done. The sauna with the hole to hell comes to mind. The one with the cultist monk community. The sea worm with the people inside. The very concept of how Tomie works. They are usually visually-oriented, but even that deserves more respect than you're giving it. Perfectly nailing a genuinely unnerving image is much harder than people think, not just in terms of technical execution but conceptually. You can't just add big teeth and sunken eyes and call it a day. Why is Slenderman creepier than Pumpkinhead? I suspect you haven't read a lot of Ito if you think that little of him.

>>15770529
Noise, thanks. I'll order them.

Can't believe anyone thinks HPL is a bad writer. I think he is one of the most uniquely beautiful writers of the century.

>>15767686
>I moved to a city and I'm ironically much more scared of black people at night than I am of shoggoths.
Now this is the true Lovecraftian experience

>>15770788
Sometimes his writing feels a little too pulpy for me but other than that I think he's great. Faulting him for things like archaism is ridiculous IMO.

>>15770739
There is literally nothing scary about Ito's works.

>>15770835
I was talking about guro, which is meant for fapping. It's not meant to be scary. I haven't read Junji Ito in many years, though, so I don't remember very well.

>>15770889
Junji Ito would be an absolute nonentity if it wasn't for his visuals. Saying he's a visually oriented writer is the nicest thing you can say about him.

>>15770922
But meant to reply to this >>15770757

>>15770922
He's a fucking manga author though, of course his visuals are hugely important. It's like criticizing Tarkovsky for his overly visual long shots.

>>15770139
Junji Ito drew that Lovecraft image

>>15770933
I don't think I'm underselling Junji as a writer at all is what I'm saying. He's incredibly formulaic and has only one way of writing:

>character attains awareness of thing/concept
>character develops obsession
>obsession destroys character in some shape or form

Junji can go ahead and stick to Manga.

>>15770947
Sounds like you've read parts of Uzumaki and that's it.

How do I become obsessed with spirals? Really looking for something that will allow me to slowly go insane. Suggestions for other mentally destructive obsessions are also welcome.

>>15770962
>slowly go insane
If COVID 19 hasn't done that maybe smoke a bunch of pot and see if you're predisposed to schizophrenia. Otherwise take a bunch of meth and draw spirals on the walls of your abode. That will quickly make you crazy.

>>15770958
Wrong. From start to end it has been the exact same scenario throughout. He's a one-trick pony.

>>15770975
>If COVID 19 hasn't done that
Why would it?

>>15770922
this guy is such a dolt.

>>15771033
Milquetoast response.

>>15771000
I thought it was supposed to increase mental health issues
https://medium.com/@richardjwise/the-psychological-effects-of-social-isolation-were-with-us-before-the-pandemic-and-wont-stop-1aad9d8385f7

>>15771061
My job is "essential" so I've been working on-site the entire time, and I live in a red state where the lockdown was minimal and is mostly over, so I wasn't affected very much.

>>15771071
Hope you're doing ok anon, don't try to induce madness though. It is shit. Are you just bored with work and life? Maybe read some mind-bending horror instead.

t. schizo in remission

>>15767672
Japanese horror edition
Plz post more books I should add (or remove)

>>15771452
saved anon kun

>>15771452
If you're going to include manga you should add this too.

Any nordic horror stories?

>>15771490
John Ajvide Lindqvist looks promising, I just searched myself.

>>15771506
I read let the right one in a while ago, it's pretty good. The English translation is very dry but I think that in this case it actually is better written that way.

>>15771526
It was giving me some cringy vibes of vampire romance (e.g. twilight) but if you say it's good, i'll get it

>>15771535
I haven't read it, but the movie is a remotely accurate adaptation, that's not what it's like.

>>15771541
meant
>if the movie is a remotely accurate adaptation
I've only watched the movie version.

>>15771545
>>15771535
If you saw the Swedish version the book is like it, atmosphere & tone-wise, but there's a lot more to the book. The stuff with the kid's alcoholic dad is way more prominent and the pedo stuff is way more explicit and Eli gets a little more backstory.

>>15771567
Yeah that's the one I saw. May have to read the book at some point.

>>15770356
Really? I've heard nothing but good things about it

>>15767545
just read all of bob lemans stories, and I particular loved Window and Instructions.

does anyone have a horror novel that are like those two stories?

Reading Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe and just finished the first half. It's pretty good but it's pretty much what I expected for better or worse. If you like horror short stories then you will like it.

>>15770356
>>15771955

I really liked it. Its not just a Lovecraft imitation (although it has definite similarities). There is a human story there that raises the horror.

Im currently reading Watchers by Dean Koontz. At this point its mostly for entertainment but im not impressed by him as a writer. Should i give him another chance with another book?

>>15770126
I really enjoyed the setting of the story in the besieged town but I cannot remember it's name. I wrote up a plan to do a pen and paper game in something similar. Also, the other night I was pitching public suicide booths to my family as a solution to overpopulation. You just give the family tax credits easy peasy.

>>15767590
Thomas Ligotti is your man.

>>15767629
Lovecraft's work by themselves are not very philosophical at all. The works seen in context of his life add the psychoanalytic perspective.

>>15770788
Read more.

>>15772854
Grimscribe is head and shoulders above Soadd, so enjoy anon.

>>15771452
Just ordered Piercing from here without knowing much about it. It was only $9 though so can't go wrong. Cool cover anyway.

>>15772911
Not that anon, but I just ordered Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe. Is it good to start there? Wasn't particularly interested in his non-fiction book, although the cover was cool.

>>15773164
>Not that anon, but I just ordered Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe. Is it good to start there?
Yeah, but if you don't like it make sure to try Teatro Grottesco.

What's your favorite Thomas Ligotti story? Mine is The Clown Puppet.

>>15773252
>>15773199
>>15773164
>>15773002
>>15772911
>>15772854

Continue discussion of Ligotti here. Someone please also make a chart for Ligotti because I haven't read him much yet.
>>15773272

>>15773289
>93 replies
>new thread
why?

>>15773352
Honestly, I just want to discuss Ligotti more as the main thread theme.

>>15772928

>"It is because the cosmos is meaningless that we must secure our individual illusions of values, direction, and interest by upholding the artificial streams which gave us such worlds of salutary illusion. That is - since nothing means anything by itself, we must preserve the proximate and arbitrary background which makes things around us seem as if they did mean something. In other words, we are either Englishmen or nothing whatever."

I think he had a philosophy which he explorer the implications of in his work. You could psychoanalyse it but i dont think Lovecraft was ignorant of the probing questions he asked in his work.

>>15773289
Let's just continue the discussion here. We can still talk about Ligotti. We don't get horror threads too often, and not everyone will move over to the other one, so splitting up the discussion will probably just make both threads die.

>>15773252
>Every place I had been in my life was only a place for puppet nonsense. The medicine shop was only a puppet place like all the others. I came there to work behind the counter and wait for my visit, but I had no idea until that night that Mr Vizniak was also waiting for his. Upon reflection, it seemed that he knew what was behind the curtained doorway leading to the back room of the medicine shop, and that he also knew that there was no longer any place to go except behind that curtain, since any place he went in his life would only be another puppet place. Yet it still seemed he was surprised by what he found back there. And this is the most outrageously nonsensical thing of all - that he should have stepped behind the curtain and cried out with such profound surprise as he did. ... Now he would see, I thought during that brief moment. Mr Vizniak would see what controlled the strings of the clown puppet.

>>15773438
I'll delete the other one then. Sorry about that.

>We don't get horror threads too often
Yeah I realised that /sffg/ lacked other really important speculative sub-genres or elements so I started a horror thread. Maybe we could try to unofficially just make it 'weird' fiction or allow it under the umbrella of horror.

>>15773472
I just thought general threads were better to start because they're easier to find in the archive because they have keywords, e.g. /hfg/

True horror.

>>15773459
Yeah I post in /sffg/ sometimes and have tried to bring up horror there, but it doesn't get much traction most of the time.

>>15773459
Also I saw you asked for a chart about Ligotti. I'm not sure about making one, but here's some advice about reading him. Several of his works (e.g. Noctuary, The Agonizing Resurrection of Victor Frankenstein) are out of print and only available in either very expensive used versions or as ebooks (and sometimes not even ebooks). If you go on libgen there's an ebook that someone made called The Collected Short Fiction that has everything except a few poems and Conspiracy Against the Human Race.

>>15773508
Well we got a new abode. It's comfy talking to you guys here. I usually actually don't "love" horror but recently been getting big into Lovecraft again as well as Ito. I think Ligotti is going to make me love horror for once. We read Frankenstein for university, which while very aesthetically pleasing, was not scary at all. I think lots of fear is temporal or contextual, that kind of monster was scary for its time but not anymore. (I'm sure it was a fear of electrification, experiments and industrialisation, or something).

>>15773531
Thanks heaps anon!

>>15773531
Oops, it's not on libgen, it's on b-ok that link in the /lit/ sticky. There are a few different versions of it as well so set the search by Year and get the most recent one.

>>15773536
One more thing about Ligotti, make sure to check this out by Current 93. It's a poem written by Ligotti that they made into a piece of music:
https://current931.bandcamp.com/album/i-have-a-special-plan-for-this-world

>>15767545
>>15767672
>>15770293
>>15771452
Fuan no tane

>>15773164
>Just ordered Piercing from here without knowing much about it. It was only $9 though so can't go wrong. Cool cover anyway.

tbf it's more of a thriller than horror so I'm considering replacing it in the chart, it's really riveting tho, I read it in a day

Anyone here read The Wine-Dark Sea?
Was looking at it going mmm aaa yes some good stories, maybe a bit nautical
No idea if it's actually any good though, help me out fellas

>>15769545
The Damnation Game
Cabal
Books of Blood 4-6

>>15770367
Fish in aquariums aren’t catatonic though

>>15770529
>S.T. Joshi
kek

>>15773727
Thanks for this constructive response.

>>15773164
Great buy dude. Also if you are turned off by Soadd feel free to skip to Grimscribe. Soadd has first work problems and the prose can be too elevated for its own good but TL nails his style in Grimscribe. Importantly don't skip the introduction of Grimscribe by Ligotti himself, raises the work greatly imo.

>>15773252
The Tsalal. I oddly sympathize with Andrew Maness and that ending is the best Ligotti has done.

>>15773727
More like... St. Yoshi
hehehehehe

>>15773430
That's right but he never really delved deeper into it in his horror fiction. Most of his horror philosophy is different way of saying the same thing and not really exploring it in great detail. Those were more about the atmosphere and bleakness. Dream cycle tho is really nice and shows maybe a different side of him but it's not horror per se.

>>15773560
Post degenerate little town too anon. I think its the best.

>>15773531
>>15773543
dangerously based
thanks m8
would you recommend where to start, or doesn't ultimately matter?

>>15773858
Here you go
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBca33v8oGM
He also recorded an album called The Unholy City, here's a song from that:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fetSoZFyBw

>>15773252
>>15773452
>>15773790
what are some others you enjoyed brehs?

>>15773897
Thanks fren

>>15773902
Sort of in order from each collection

>Soadd
Dr. Voke Mr. Veech
Alice's last adventure
Notes on the writing of horror: a story
Troubles of Dr. Thoss

>Grimscribe
Shadow at the bottom of the World
The Night School
The Cocoons
The Glamour
Mystics of Muelenberg

>Noctuary
The Tsalal
Rinaldi's angel
Strange design of Master Rignolo

>Teatro Grottesco
Bungalow House
Red Tower
Town Manager
Our temporary supervisor
Teatro Grottesco
The Shadow, the darkness.

>>15773902
It's not much, but I liked The Journal of J.P. Drapeau

>Out of sheer inattentiveness I had stared at my reflection in the mirror a little too deeply. I should say that this mirror has been hanging in my room for more years, I would guess, than I have been on this earth. It's no surprise, then, that that sooner or later it would get the edge on me. Up to a certain point there were no problems to speak of: there were only my eyes, my nose, my mouth, and that was that. But then it began to seem that those eyes were regarding me, rather than I them; that that mouth was about to speak of things outside of my knowledge. Finally, I realized that an entirely different creature was hiding behind my face making it wholly unrecognizable to me. Let me say that I spent considerable time reshaping my reflection into what it should be.

>Later, when I was out walking, I stopped dead on the street. Ahead of me, standing beneath a lamp hanging from an old wall, was the outline of a figure of my general size and proportion. He was looking the other way but very stiffly and very tense, as if waiting anxiously for the precise moment when he would suddenly twist about-face. If that should happen, I knew what I would see: my eyes, my nose, my mouth, and behind those features a being strange beyond all description. I retraced my steps back home and went immediately to bed.

>But I couldn't sleep. All night long a greenish glow radiated from the mirror in triumph.

>>15773960
>>15773967
saved, thank you lads

>>15773881
I'd just go in chronological order. His earlier stories can sometimes be a bit more in the Lovecraftian vein, but he doesn't really have a bad period.

Poll for next thread edition. It will be posted after this one is is naturally archived. I attempted to make it 'weird' themed - including 'new weird'.

https://linkto.run/p/CVB9AMX0

>>15773967
This, Dr. Voke Mr. Veech, troubles of dr. Thoss and voice in our bones are contenders for Ligotti's weirdest story.

>>15773960
>Shadow at the bottom of the World
This was based on a poem by Sakutaro Hagiwara. I bought an anthology of his poetry recently which included it. I think Ligotti based his story on an earlier translation, but here's the one I have:

>Sickly Face at the Bottom of the Ground

At the bottom of the ground a face emerging,
a lonely invalid's face emerging.

In the dark at the bottom of the ground,
soft vernal grass-stalks beginning to flare,
rat's nest beginning to flare,
and entangled with the nest,
innumerable hairs beginning to tremble,
time the winter solstice,
from the lonely sickly ground,
roots of thin blue bamboo beginning to grow,
beginning to grow,
and that, looking truly pathetic,
looking blurred,
looking truly, truly pathetic.

In the dark at the bottom of the ground,
a lonely invalid's face emerging.

>>15774074
Thanks anon. Didn't know that, i thought it was homage to The color out of space but done in Ligottian style. The rewrite in the penguin edition makes it one of my favorites.

>>15774125
I read an older translation (the one I referred to) which was titled "Face at the Bottom of the World" which should make the influence more explicit. I can't find it online unfortunately. Ligotti has cited Hagiwara as an influence in interviews. His primary relevance to weird fiction is a short story that he wrote (the only one actually) titled Cat Town, which is an interesting read.

https://twitter.com/sreed101/status/1278572389144637440?s=20

horror books for this feel

>>15772890
I don't think so. He's pretty average, not bad if you're young and he's among your first horror writers, but I'd look elsewhere now

Hate Ito and agree he's a "sensualist" at best, hate Ligotti, so this thread has been annoying to me personally. Fuck Ligotti.

>>15776677
Who do you like?

In your opinion, what's the "high" horror novel for ghosts? Dracula is for vampires, but what's for ghosts?

>>15776763
That house on hill book seems like the essential ghost novel

>>15776788
Haunting of Hill House? Does anyone know how much like that horrible Netflix series it is? I assume they have nothing in common.

>>15776814
Yes that's what I meant
>I assume they have nothing in common
As far as I understand they really don't.
There's a black and white movie based on the book as well, and that just has a girl running around a spooky mansion I think
Again I've literally not read or seen any of this

>>15776763
Poe's House of Usher

>/hor/
>90% manga discussion

you goddamned faggots, this thread is more embarrassing than /sffg/

>>15776834
I asked about a book earlier and everyone ignored me to keep talking about anime and Ligotti

>>15776838
I suggest an informal ban on discussing either in the next thread. Anyone who does is a faggot.

Who is your favorite lowbrow horror author and why is it Richard Laymon?

>>15776894
>>15776894
>https://linkto.run/p/CVB9AMX0
Then vote for your preferred edition. Make a suggestion of writers for the next poll too here.

>>15776900
Isn't all horror lowbrow?

>>15774074
This poem was actually giving me small chills. Good mood to it

>>15767545
OP your pic is superb

>>15770458
I like his work, but he's not horror so much as a weird fiction author. I think stories like The Town Without Streets and Maptown are actually better than horror. It's too bad that so many fans are only into Uzumaki

What's that story where Suichi joins the Carpenter and they build a study for his brother?

>>15776677
Brainlet

>>15767545
I admire ito as artist, but he doesn't really scare that much.

>>15777586
no, the guy who got into penguin classics is pretty lit.

>>15776814
Absolutely nothing in common

>>15776788
I found it somewhat disappointing. More of a psychological study than an actual ghost story.

>>15778020
The snail people and the cannibalisation of them were unsettling to me.

>>15778026
who is this guy?

maybe you guys can help me find a horror/thriller title I read when I was very young that I can't remember if it was real or a dream
>old book, I seem to remember it was pre-lovecraft (maybe I read it was an influence to lovecraft?)
>don't remember if it was a standalone book or a short story
>remember the atmosphere being almost real-world but with spooky elements
>remember there being a house, maybe on a hill, which I think was important
>almost certain there was a reference to a large figure walking in the distance, maybe seen from the house. I seem to think it was being described as seen from above
>for some reason the color green comes to mind?

This has been driving me crazy for years. I honestly can't remember if I dreamed this story up but I feel so much like I read it.
I remember at the time I was looking for "spooky" stuff (I was really young) and found this as a recommendation. The pre-Lovecraft factoid I'm almost sure about
after this I remember reading House of Leaves

>>15767545
Anything Ligotti.Arthur Machen, The House of Souls. T.E.D. Klein, The Ceremonies and Dark Gods. Ramsey Campbell, anything up to The Count of Eleven. Algernon Blackwood, any of the non-John Silence collections. Richard Gavin, Charnel Wine and At Fear's Alter.

In Notes On Writing Weird Fiction (1933), Lovecraft describes his sense of four basic ways of writing weird fiction:
>Mood or Feeling
An atmosphere of awe, shadings of moods, etc. He references Americans like Poe for example, in their mechanical progression of feeling. Tension in Machen's work. Less atmosphere is said to be found in Bierce but he rates him highly.
>Pictorial conception
Substance and not clouds of colour abound in the work of French authors like Theophile Gautier. Arguably in many sensual mangaka as well.
>General Situation
This could be describing the condition, legend of intellectual concept. He references German Romances and the role of Phenomenology. Basically any experiential narrative with existentialist themes comes to mind.
>Explaining a more definite tableau
This is more situational, more of a sea-faring method of narrative. It's centered around contingencies, obscure methods of detection in regard to the scene and its particulars... the story that always comes to mind in this regard is Lovecraft's... The Horror at Red Hook, not because of its horror but due to its unique method.

tl,dr: roughly he's saying it's either the result of some condition (phenomenology) or some direct action of persons involved in the condition.

>>15778435
no way it was house on the borderland?

>>15778509
Saved. Thanks for the summary. Is this piece part of a larger collection?

>>15778568
It may be printed alongside the much larger series of short critical reviews in the essay, 'Supernatural Horror in Literature'.

>>15778575
https://www.amazon.com/Collected-Essays-H-Lovecraft-Criticism/dp/0972164499/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=lovecraft+essays+2&qid=1578627808&s=books&sr=1-1

>>15778275
Thomas Ligotti
>>15772854

>>15778580
Anon coming through with the goods. I genuinely don't stan Lovecraft but I need to find out what his critical views were.

>>15776900
redpill me on this guy

>>15778519
fuck I think it was. thank you so very much anon

bump

>>15776814
just finished it last night. kinda disappointing ending imo

>>15773252
The last feast of harlequin for me

>>15778634
Good sex'n'death horror novels. Decent writer, fun stories, died way too young from being a big fat fuck. Wrote a notable series about rape monsters with toothed penises who ahageo bitches and eat people. Reccomend The Cellar, The Glory Bus, Night in the Lonesome October, The Traveling Vampire Show, etc.

>>15779656
>He has an MA in English lit AND rape monsters
Alright, I'll check him out.

I miss the scares I could get from books as a kid. Nothing gives me that feeling anymore.

>>15779703
Lay off the internet for a bit maybe. I think nothing scared me after lurking /gif/ wrecked threads

>>15779694
He was literally teaching at a Catholic girl's school when he was writing about the rape monster.

>>15767590
Anything by Hegel. It sure left me scarred.

>>15779738
Lmao there seems to be a bit of that going around. Max Stirner also taught at a girl's school and had some weird passages about a little girl masturbating in Ego and Its Own.

>Where could one look without meeting victims of self-renunciation? There sits a girl opposite me, who perhaps has been making bloody sacrifices to her soul for ten years already. Over the buxom form droops a deathly-tired head, and pale cheeks betray the slow bleeding away of her youth. Poor child, how often the passions may have beaten at your heart, and the rich powers of youth have demanded their right! When your head rolled in the soft pillow, how awakening nature quivered through your limbs, the blood swelled your veins, and fiery fancies poured the gleam of voluptuousness into your eyes! Then appeared the ghost of the soul and its eternal bliss. You were terrified, your hands folded themselves, your tormented eyes turned their look upward, you — prayed. The storms of nature were hushed, a calm glided over the ocean of your appetites. Slowly the weary eyelids sank over the life extinguished under them, the tension crept out unperceived from the rounded limbs, the boisterous waves dried up in the heart, the folded hands themselves rested a powerless weight on the unresisting bosom, one last faint “Oh dear!” moaned itself away, and — the soul was at rest. You fell asleep, to awake in the morning to a new combat and a new — prayer. Now the habit of renunciation cools the heat of your desire, and the roses of your youth are growing pale in the — chlorosis of your heavenliness. The soul is saved, the body may perish! O Lais, O Ninon, how well you did to scorn this pale virtue! One free grisette against a thousand virgins grown gray in virtue!

>Buying book off Marketplace
>Look at the seller's profile
>8/10 19 year old girl
>Hey anon what's your address so I can come over and drop it off?
>U-uh can we do postage?
>Oh sure.
>I'll send you money over paypal
>Ok. Let me look.
>...
>Can I just come over in the morning instead? I can just leave it at the door and you can leave money at the front.
>No, please just do postage, it should be $15 all up.
Ten dollars shipping for a five dollar book, I think, what am I doing? I'm sweating profusely now in my own cowardice.
>...Ok, I'll send it tomorrow.
Why am I such a coward, /lit/?

>>15772854
is this on libgen

>>15779795
If you want to read Ligotti look here
>>15773531
>>15773543

>>15779788
You haven't allowed yourself to fail enough. If you had, you'd have learned from it and would be better with women by now. Even if you didn't get any better, you'd still be so familiar with failing that you wouldn't really be scared of it anymore.

did Lovecraft have an overbite? is that why his mouth looks awkward in most of his photos?

>>15780518
You mean an underbite, where the lower jaw extends forward. I have the same thing unfortunately.

>>15780617
my bad, yeah i meant underbite. i know this is unsolicited advice, but getting a beard can obscure your the visibility of an underbite.

where should i start with Lovecraft? Call of the Cthulhu?

>>15780644
Call of Cthulhu and Other Stories penguin collection

>>15780644
>i know this is unsolicited advice, but getting a beard can obscure your the visibility of an underbite.
No worries, I've had a beard since I was 18 and that's one of the main reasons.

>>15780644
>Where do I start?
Necronomicon: Best Weird Tales
>>15780655
I disagree, it's a waste of money to get so few stories in that penguin edition

>>15773639
Thanks bud, any opinion on the Great and Secret Show?

>>15780772
it's free on libgen

We currently have a tie in the poll, so we might make it a dual edition of Mieville qua Ligotti

Unless anons go and vote to change the results

>>15780976
gross, Lovecraft is best

>>15781005
Then vote. There's also been a good, deep discussion on why Lovecraft isn't the best here.
>>15770378
>>15770411
I suggest you read it and give your thoughts too. It's good to have these discussions.

>>15770947
What you just described accounts for a small number of his shorts and outside of Uzumaki that doesn't remotely describe the rest of his big manga. Like I said, it seems like you haven't really read a lot of Ito.

>>15773252
Lovecraft is a neurotic mess, but I still greatly enjoy his work. Would I enjoy Logotti's fiction if I found him to be insufferable as a person and thought CATHR was desperate trash?

>>15781120
Yes but stick to Grimscribe and Teatro Grottesco. Noctuary and Soadd do have quite a few great stories but they also have quite a few with the 'insufferable prose'.

>>15781120
>Would I enjoy Logotti's fiction if I found him to be insufferable as a person and thought CATHR was desperate trash?
His stories don't feel like he's philosophizing at you. Obviously they're written from his philosophical perspective, but hmm... he's a very good writer, and while he was obviously inspired by Lovecraft, especially in his earlier writings, he often feels more like Kafka I think. Try Teatro Grottesco rather than his early stuff and see what you think of it, but don't approach him as a Lovecraftian writer and let him do his own thing.

>>15770237
>The fact is Lovecraft lived the kind of horror he writes about day to day, and Junji Ito merely emulates
You've never lived in Japan, eh?

Why do some people like the fact that Poe and Lovecraft lived gritty lives? If they were better off, their attitude would be well-adjusted and their work would probably be much better than it is. It's always seemed like more of an embarrassment to see how American publishers viewed Poe in particular.

>>15781358
people like the myth of the suffering artist using their pain as fuel for art

>>15781358
If they were well-adjusted they would have produced entirely different works.

>>15781358
Nobody ‘likes’ the fact.

People who live harder lives tend to have a lower tolerance for all sorts of bullshit, and this might be reflected in their art.

>>15781358
Nobody wants to read about Cthulhu the hug-pillow.

>>15767686

Based.

If im correct wayne june also narrated darkest dungeon (game) right? That voice has power in its own right.

>>15771452
The Strange Tale of Panorama Island by Suehiro Mario is kino

>>15776900
Edward Lee.
Dude is purposely OTT but can actually plot and pace a story well. I highly recommend him if you can stomach the ridiculous rape, rednecks and violence.

Also you niggers best have read "The Troop" by Nick Cutter.

>>15770362

>Nikola Tesla
>pseudoscience

Try reading a book. Also youre a fag and nobody loves you

>>15781358
Poe maybe, but Lovecraft definitely not. Lovecraft's work is overwhelmingly owed to his own specific fears and neuroticism. You can connect the dots between his psyche and his work very easily. I seriously doubt we'd have anything resembling what we have now if Lovecraft had been raised under better conditions. At that point he's not Lovecraft. I don't know,enough about Poe's personal life to speculate on him.

>>15781984
Amateur psychologist horseshit.

Imagine reading a Lovecraft that didn't hate niggers. No thanks.

Thinking about getting these:
Ito’s No Longer Human (I love his work, and I read the novel a long time ago)
The Drifting Classroom

solid pickups to have as physical copies? I’ve been reading most manga on my iPad but I have the craving to get some good stuff for my shelf.

Anyone ever read the Guo Tanabe manga adaptations of Lovecraft? Are they any good?

>>15782353
Do it. Viz media make great hardbacks

>>15767686
Lovecraft's spirit is alive in you, then.
Someone ought to commission Wayne June to read 'On the Creation of Niggers.'

>>15773164
his "non-fiction" book is shit. avoid.

babies first nihilism

>>15782175
>I have nothing intelligent to contribute and no specific issue with the idea that a writer's work is the product of his experiences, but reading the word "psyche" triggered me so fucking hard that I need to make a quick low-effort response just to show how mad I am about psychologists
You could always just explain why you disagree.

>>15769545
I love books of blood. The Hellbound Heart is fantastic as well. I've heard the movie (Hellraiser) is better since Barker himself directed it, but I've yet to see it.

>>15782806
The film is alright but it doesn't have anything too good in it other than it's art direction and it's general dread inducing atmosphere. Apparently the second one is better but I have yet to watch it.

There's not enough dedicated posters to sustain this thread.

>>15784239
>83 posters
It’s pretty solid honestly. Probably not enough to be up all the time, but enough.

>>15781891
A long time ago I remember reading bits of Header after seeing somewhere a whole speil about a femanon who learned how to suck dick from from it. At the very least, that'll get you to libgen something.

>>15776763

it's a novella, but The Turn of the Screw

>>15784284
First thread doesn't mean anything.

>>15782806
>>15783083
The movie is pretty good. Slightly different from the novella, and some of the special effects will look kinda dated but then again Barker didn't have that big a budget (and, per his own admission, some of the effects were done in like a single weekend by him and another guy while being completely drunk).
Sequel kinda expands on the lore behind the cenobites. Barker didn't direct it because he got busy with something else, but was still very much involved. Definitely worth the watch.
Hellraiser 3 and onwards though have no involvement or input from Barker at all. Watch at your own peril.

>>15780518


>"by the age of eighteen or twenty he had perhaps reached his full height of five feet eleven inches, and had probably developed that long, prognathous jaw which he himself in later years considered a physical defect [...] As late as February 1921 [...] Lovecraft writes to his mother of a new suit that "made me appear as nearly respectable as my face permits."

>>15770126
For anyone who wants to read Robert W. Chambers horror stories, I’d really recommend Out of the Dark, a collection that came out not too recently.

It has all of the connected King in Yellow horror stories and doesn’t have any of the boring Paris war stories.

It also has other horror stories he wrote from other collections.

Overall I’d recommend that rather then just the King in Yellow collection.

>>15770167

If you’re talking about Nathanial Hawthorne, then yes, he is one of the great horror writers. Even if not everything he wrote was horror writing.

>>15770202
But there is stuff like Young Goodman Brown and Edward Randolph’s Portrait deal explicitly with supernatural horror. He is very good at it.

To people who have read both Dazai's and Ito's No Longer Human, how do they compare? I've read Dazai's and I'm thinking about picking up Ito's.

>>15770312

Yeah, the problem is that a lot of collections don’t have the entirety of his novel “The Three Imposters.” They just take excerpts from it like “Novel of the Black Seal” and “Novel of the White Powder.”

If you can find a collection that has the entire novel I’d go with that, because it should have a good overview of his horror fiction.

>>15773252
The Spectacles in the Drawer I liked, because I love readinga about gnosticism

>>15785784
pretty cringe bro, pretty cringe

>>15772890

Dude, I wouldn’t read any more Koontz.

He’s the bottom of the barrel of pop fiction horror.

Say what you want about Stephen King, but I have literally never seen another horror writer say they were influenced by Dean Koontz. Like I think other horror writers ignore him because he’s an embarrassment to the genre.

>>15773252

“Our Temporary Supervisor” is the best socialist horror story.

>>15773636
By Robert Aickman?

I believe that’s a collection so the name doesn’t really mean anything.

He calls his stories “strange stories,” and I think that’s pretty adept.

Frequently weird and almost supernatural things happen but there’s a rarely an explanation. The reader is just left to think what just happened.

I know that can be frustrating but I very much enjoyed it. It’s much more realistic to supposed supernatural events that happen in real life.

>>15773727
I definitely disagree with his literary opinions a lot but his editing is good.

>>15773252
The Bungalow House actually brought me to tears which was an unexpected effect from a horror story. On the spooky side though, I think Dr. Voke and Mr. Veech might be the quintessential Ligotti piece.

>>15785955
Our Temporary Supervisor made feel a deep dread because I know a lot of rich capitalists would love it is done to the factory in it.

I’m for one glad this is a thing.

Horror is a great and diverse genre. There is plenty of good from the bad.

I just hope we just don’t talk exclusively about Lovecraft, Ligotti, Poe, and Ito.

I love those authors, but we should definitely talk about new and upcoming authors in the genre.

Also definitely think we should talk about any sort of “dark” literature. Whether it be horrific thrillers, dark fantasy, or sci-fi horror.

Here’s the horror fiction chart someone made about a year back.

>>15769520
Yes. It was really good. Ito does a great job of balancing surreal horror with the content of the stories, and I never felt like any of the drawings felt out of context with respect to the book. I think its one of Ito's best projects.

>>15786104
There was also this one done on horror story collections.

>>15786132

>>15786140
>>15786104
why do faggots who make charts never actually read the books theyve listed, quality check them, and provide concise descriptions for them?

2019 Shirley Jackson Awards nominations were announced:

NOVEL

The Book of X, Sarah Rose Etter (Two Dollar Radio)

Curious Toys, Elizabeth Hand (Little, Brown and Co)

Goodnight Stranger, Miciah Bay Gault (Park Row Books)

Ninth House, Leigh Bardugo (Gollancz-UK/Flatiron Books-US)

Nothing to See Here, Kevin Wilson (Ecco)

Tinfoil Butterfly, Rachel Eve Moulton (MCD x FSG Originals)
NOVELLA

Into Bones Like Oil, Kaaron Warren (Meerkat Press)

Late Returns, Joe Hill (Full Throttle)

The Monster of Elendhaven, Jennifer Giesbrecht (Tor.com)

Ormeshadow, Priya Sharma (Tor.com)

This is How You Lose the Time War, Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone (Gallery/Saga Press)
NOVELETTE

Black Bequeathments, Simon Strantzas (Dim Shores)

The Couvade, Joanna Koch (Demain Publishing)

“Deeper, Darker Things,” Steve Dillon (Deeper, Darker Things and Other Oddities)

Luminous Body, Brooke Warra (Dim Shores)

Pwdre Ser, Kurt Fawver (Dim Shores)

“Taproot,” M. R. Carey (Ten-Word Tragedies)
SHORT FICTION

“How to Become a Witch-Queen,” Theodora Goss (Hex Life: Wicked New Tales of Witchery)

“Kali_Na,” Indrapramit Das (The Mythic Dream)

“The Truth About Josh Enloe,” Nick Straatmann (Parhelion)

“The Well,” Mariana Enríquez, translated by Megan McDowell (issue 55.1 of The Southern Review)

“Whistle, My Lad, and I Will Come,” Gina Ochsner (The Pink Issue of Fairy Tale Review)
SINGLE-AUTHOR COLLECTION

Collision: Stories, J. S. Breukelaar (Meerkat Press, LLC)

Every Human Love: Stories, Joanna Pearson (Acre Books)

Homesick, Nino Cipri (Dzanc Books)

Mouthful of Birds, Samanta Schweblin, translated by Megan McDowell (Riverhead Books)

Song for the Unraveling of the World, Brian Evenson (Coffee House Press)

Wounds, Nathan Ballingrud (Saga Press)
EDITED ANTHOLOGY

Echoes: The Saga Anthology of Ghost Stories, edited by Ellen Datlow (Saga Press)

The Mythic Dream, edited by Navah Wolfe and Dominik Parisien (Saga Press)

The Twisted Book of Shadows, edited by Christopher Golden & James A. Moore (Twisted Publishing)

The Unquiet Dreamer: A Tribute to Harlan Ellison, edited by Preston Grassmann (PS Publishing)

Wonderland: An Anthology of Works Inspired by Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, edited by Marie O’Regan and Paul Kane (Titan Books)

>>15786076
So who's the most /lit/ up and coming horror writer?

>>15785876
The 3 vol set by Chaosium that I recommended earlier has The Three Imposters in complete form.

>>15786104
>>15786140
Why does every single chart have to be so fucking terrible?
Joe Hill? Neil Gaiman? Might as well just look at a goodreads poll

>>15781984
>I seriously doubt we'd have anything resembling what we have now if Lovecraft had been raised under better conditions. At that point he's not Lovecraft.
OP here, I suppose I agree in terms of his experiences but there's also the other Lovecraft, the one who learned Latin as a boy from Ovid, giving him a love or appreciation for metamorphosis.

>>15772890
I enjoyed "Watchers". It had its issues but i enjoyed the ride.

>>15785893
>I have literally never seen another horror writer say they were influenced by Dean Koontz
Wasn't Richard Laymon open about being a fanboy?

>>15785784
LOVED "Cows". Bleak.

>>15786765
Stephen Gregory. "The Cormorant" and "The Woodwitch" are based.

>>15786140
I'm very autistic when it comes to anthologies, obviously this person isn't aware that some of those are terrible anthologies. Why buy The Dark Eidolon when Night Shade Books released six books with every short story ever written by Smith (plus letters and stuff). Hippocampus Press released a beautiful edition of 3 volumes with all the fiction of Machen. There's a definite anthology of Hodgson too.

>>15787266
Actually there are some very interesting stories in Fragile Things, Gaiman is good at writing short stories, although I don't know why he's in that list. Those stories, at least the ones in Fragile Things, aren't scary.

We'll start the new thread soon after this is archived with Ligotti unless you vote otherwise in the poll.

https://linkto.run/p/CVB9AMX0

>>15788107
Why not just make a thread starting with observations about an actual book or author?

>>15788117
I tried to make one and you all sperged it wasn't /lit/ because it's a Japanese mangaka, of whom I've read quite a lot. I thought a little democracy would make it fairer.

>>15788107
Clark Ashton Smith

Quick breakdown... It looks like Ligotti is still in the lead, sorry other anons.

>>15788107
>>15788240
Clark Ashton Smith, also

>>15788284
based ligotti

>>15788240
>>15788309
We'll add it next time.

And I thought /sffg/ was bad.

>>15785864
>To people who have read both Dazai's and Ito's No Longer Human, how do they compare?
No Longer Human isn't horror, and Ito's adaption is fine until those moments where he inserts his own writing into it.

>>15786462
because charts are for pseuds, always have been

We should make our own charts in like the third thread.

>>15786765
>>15786665
Check some of these out and see if you find anything you like.

>>15788414
I did my own chart a few months ago, however I did it in a rush and I should remake it.

I would recommend "Dead Sea" and "Long Black Coffin" by Tim Curran, as well as "The Croning" by Laird Barron. Well worth reading.

>>15788496
The Croning by Laird Barron is great!

Haven’t read his non-horror mystery novels yet.

>>15781120
>"You only read parts of Uzumaki!"
Now it's
>"You only read one of his manga!"

You think I wouldn't notice the backpedal, Junjifag?

>>15786765
Check out Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year anthologies. Great way to find new good authors.

>>15787266
Have you ever actually read Joe Hill, you fucking mongoloid?

>>15788746
You're getting posters mixed up. Are you doing this on purpose because you're treating this like an argument instead of a discussion? How about you just read some Ito so you can form an actual opinion about him instead of relying on what strangers on the internet- myself included- have to say about him? Off the top of my head:
>The Enigma of Amigara Fault
>Long Dream
>Army of One
>Red Turtleneck

>>15773531
>>15773543
Thanks much anon.

>>15788496
>"Dead Sea"
It sounds similar in premise to The Terror by Dan Simmons, I will have to check it out

>>15789219
Not him, but I read Strange Weather and it was pretty bad. I think Snapshot was okay; I remember Aloft being particularly terrible and cringey

recommend me a horror story where a man is raped by a woman

>>15784284
We'll get a boost by October!

Hey I saw this thread on the main page, I might not be a big book reader but I do know some good horror manga authors so I might as well share some of my fav ones:
>Hideshi Hino
His style might be a little hard to get used to, but he does create some of the most messed up manga out there. His best work imho is Panorama of Hell a somewhat of a messed up "autobiography" but my personal favourite is "Red Snake", "Bug Boy" is also a good starting point from him.
>Suehiro Maruo
This might be a more /lit/ friendly author because he likes to adapt stuff from Edogawa Ranpo his version of "Panorama Island" is strangely beautiful but not big on eroguro (his strong point), this author loves to draw the human filthiness, that said his works can be a bit hit or miss with some people, still his drawing style and paneling are superb. "The Laughing Vampire" and "The Caterpillar" are my personal favourites from him.
>Kazuo Umezu
This is the grandad of japanese horror manga, and one of the most prolific authors, that said he has some of the best works in the medium when it comes to horror, while reading his stories you feel how his influence is felt across other authors specially Ito's works. His most known work is "Drifting Classroom" a horror classic, but my fav one from him is "14" one of the most bizarre and creppy manga I've ever read, but it can be a bit hard to get into it.
There several other good authors, people like Shintaro Kago (with his weird as fuck drawings and panel composition) or Gou Tanabe (with his great Lovecraft adaptations) or Shigeru Mizuki (with his classic youkai stories)... the list goes on. I hope with some of these recommendations I can get some anons interested in horror manga, is a genre that I truly love and I feel that it is kinda underrated here in the west.

>>15789468
Or we can just post threads that aren’t in a subreddit and actually improve the catalogue

>>15789502
bait

>>15789365
Heart Shaped Box and NOS4A2 were good. 20th Century Ghosts (the one in the chart) has some really good selections in there and that was more so what I was getting my ass chapped about. Joe Hill can write some really good shit but most people won't bother trying to see him as anything but King 2.0 (who can also write good shit when the need strikes him).

>>15789395
Laymonposter returns! Go read Amara, also known as To Wake the Dead. It's his worst novel, but it's got some of that. It also has a totally unexpected gunpoint NTR blowjob. Good for boners if you're into that, good for horror if you aren't.

>>15789219
>>15789365
>>15789587
Horns was bad.

>>15789313
Every single one of those besides Long Dream follow the formula of obsession and destruction I mentioned before. Of course, every single one of them are utterly pointless and insipid, merely touching upon a "scary" concept but offering nothing beyond that. Stop treating Junji Ito as a writer.

Guys.
I'm trying to remember this scifi picture book envisioning the history and bizarre evolutions of humanity over the span of several billion years.
I remember the illustrations being black and sepia and it featuring, at some point, a living wall of humans whose bodies had been made square and stitched together.

>>15790220
Is it this?

>>15790346
No it was this. But thanks for the heads-up nevertheless

>>15790139
You're being silly now. If you're including all those other shorts in it, you've officially stretched your formula so much that it doesn't even mean anything anymore.
>character learns about thing
>character engages with thing
>character pays price for engaging with thing
This is probably 75% of all horror stories ever written, never mind beyond horror. I doubt you even read those stories, so I don't see a point in continuing this talk.

>>15777977
>The Town Without Streets
That's a really good one I'd forgotten the name of. I enjoy stuff that descends in to absolute eerie absurdity like that. Taking recommendations for that if anyone has them.