/lit/ - Literature

>>19523901
Aickman, Ligotti, Evenson

Really depends, if by horror you mean you want to be spooked or if you just want the aesthetic of horror or a bit of both. I would say if you want both, while I can’t really claim any author has scared me, Blackwood is very effective for creating an atmosphere akin to a haunted house, an abandoned building, the woods at night, etc, if you want pure consistent horror-aesthetic, Machen is your best bet, if you want non-aesthetic horror you’re better off going to film or stranger irl material, such as the letters of Albert fish describing to the parents of the child he killed how he tricked her and then killed and ate her. Stuff along these lines, if you want just the pure aesthetic without any actual attempt at inducing fear, I would recommend clark Ashton smith (especially the apocalypse of evil, the devotee of evil and the dark eidolon.) and while he’s not as known, definitely check out Murray Gilchrist, his storm dragon collection has some really really good material in terms of both image and prose. While you’re in these fields you should look into ligotti, Aickman, Eric stenbock and William Scott home.

>>19523901
Dear God...

>>19523940
kys gypsy

>>19524162
Tbh, those kind of erudite posts from him are okay and informative. It's when he goes on about his religious experiences that he sounds subhuman.

White women are so fucking boring with their contrived “goth aesthetic.” They couldn’t name you a genuine goth band because all they listen to is Chiodos and AFI schlock. They’re about as interesting as watching your clothes dry in the dark.

>>19523901
source?

>>19523931
>Aickman
Read The Swords, Larger Than Oneself and The Hospice - loved the last one, the other two not so much
>Ligotti
Finished everything, my #1 genre author
>Evenson
Will look into him
>>19523940
Detailed and thorough post, thanks Frater. Loved Willows by Blackwood, what should I read next from him? Which story is the haunted house one?
>the letters of Albert fish
Not proud of it, but I read those already.

>>19524173
He literally recommended a cannibalistic pedofile serial killer-rapist and Ligotti, two of the worst things that aren't even horror fiction.

Grady Hendrix

>>19524188
>Ligotti
>not horror fiction
You don't know much about the subject, do you?

>>19524188
>Ligotti
>worst
Filtered pleb

>>19524196
Ligotti is just an incel who can't write philosophy with really contrived stories about killer inter-dimensional weirdos. Case in point:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_-mv-Eo0io

>>19524221
Conspiracy against the human race is just his minor work, short horror stories are his primary output and based on those he's the most critically acclaimed author in his genre. Frolic is great, and he doesn't repeat the killer story very often either.

Blackwood, James and Machen for me.

>>19524188
Horror is not supposed to feel good. I actually read Albert Fish's letter when I was 9 or 12 btw and became traumatized and decided to become child-free. I tap into that trauma when writing my own horror fiction, one of which was published.

Most horror fiction is supposed to unnerve or destabilize you, especially Aickman. It's supposed to momentarily induce a sense there is no purpose in this dog-eat-dog world or whatever. That's why people who only read horror are mentally ill.

I actually don't read as much horror as I used to. I unironically prefer children's novels like Wind in the Willows.

I also like watching nature documentaries for more "grounded" horror. I watched Nature: Arctic Wolf Pack recently and that felt kind of like horror; it felt kind of like "dukkha" horror.

>>19524187
The empty house and other stories is a good collection, iirc the titular empty house is the one.
>>19524188
Sure seems to fit the horror aesthetic.

>>19524221
>Ligotti is just an incel
No he is not, >>19523488

Also we're talking about horror fiction not non fiction

>>19524244
MR James is great, his essay on ghost stories is something I’d shill if you want to dive deeper into the genre.

Paul of Tarsus, Tocqueville, Shakespeare

>>19524239
>most critically acclaimed author in his genre
Who cares? Critics and publishers just shill people because they fit their aesthetic projects, it doesn't mean it is good to me or you for that matter. Horror as such isn't always so clean cut, at least from the secondary lit I've read; there's lots of horror-like or Gothic stuff in McCarthy but we don't call him a horror writer. I think the idea of having horror writers and greats of the genre is misleading, because horror has its roots in lots of literature, especially in Gothic (and even Romanticism).
>Frolic is great
I didn't think so, but I will read any other shorts from him because I've got Grimscribe by my bedside and read it occasionally but don't understand the hype.
>>19524247
>terror inspires you to write
That's good, I think lots of writers who can capture their personal emotions and experiences without alienating the reader are fantastic, so well done on getting published.
>That's why people who only read horror are mentally ill.
I used to bag horror before I read Frankenstein and Lovecraft and decided I appreciated it, but I do not think either Mary Shelley or Lovecraft were very clear-cut horror writers.
>Nature Horror
That's cool. Have you heard of The Ritual? One of the few stories which I think utilised a forest and nature setting for horror.

>>19524300
We don't need to argue about genre definitions or semantics, there are plenty of writers who can be clearly labeled as horror authors and those are the subject of this thread. Poe is one of the original horror genre authors, and huge influence on most successors; he can be classified as gothic or romantic too.
>Grimscribe
What about the first story there, The Last Feast of Harlequin? It's been a while since I've read it, but I recall absolutely masterful "weird town" atmosphere and impressive ending too, some sort of perverted gnosticism.

>>19523901
Poe, Chambers, Hitchcock.

Name of strumpet?

>>19523901
>McLuhan
>Baudrillard
>Debord

>>19523901
Maupassant, Hodgson, Lovecraft

These are practically the only ones I've read so it's not much of a selection, but I like them.

>>19524187
>>Aickman
read meet mr millar and the same dog next

Poe
Lovecraft
Pugmire

>>19524651
>>19524824
>Poe
This. Even 200 years later, his best stories like Ushers, The Black Cat or Tell-Tale Heart remain cornerstones of literary horror. Frankenstein, or Dracula to lesser degree, aged quite badly.

>>19524180
>>19524673
sinisterdarling

>>/lit/19523901
Bram Stoker is all you need

>>19524875
I like short stories so I mentioned those. I found Frankenstein more sad than anything, it's really emotional for me and have been wanting to re-read. I've never read Dracula but i think that the concept of vampires is going through an awkward phase. Where I would say Shelley was influential within the horror genre was in that she placed the scientific as outside of human control which reached a new level with stories like I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.

The worry I have is artistic singularity, taking the phrase "there is nothing under the sun" in its usual connotation would mean that there is no more space for artistic innovation.

Matthew, Mark, and Luke have some pretty grimdark horror about nailing god to wooden beams and leaving him up for everyone to watch.

Stephen King

>>19523901
In no particular order, Ligotti, Poe, Lovecraft

I'm an indecisive fuck, so I'll just write a few reccs in no particular order.

>Matt Cardin
Ligotti-lite (literally an editor of "Vastarien"), but his characters feel a lot more human and this makes some of his stories hit a more private, rather than philosophical note

>Laird Barron
He's alright, has a lot of fun while he writes and you can tell, the campier snack in the contemporary horror buffet

>M.R. James
The GOAT of writing about stuffy old cunts flabbergasting wildly at minor details only to have a deathly nightmare afterwards; love him everyone should read him

>Sheridan Le Fanu
In a Glass Darkly is a fun little Gothic romp, I wouldn't say a masterpiece but it'll dull the edge of a winter afternoon

>Sadeq Hedayat
The Blind Owl is absolutely brilliant fiction, one of the few stories I've read to actually imprint a sense of the looseness of reality and sanity on their reader

>Fritz Leiber - as a treat
The Lankhmar stories are rightly classified as sword & sorcery, but I've yet to read one that at some point doesn't wander drunkly into horror for a considerable length

Here is a short analysis I wrote on Lovecraft where I was comparing his style of pessimism to Ligotti and Poe. I can also share excerpts of my analyses on Ligotti and Poe too if anyone else is interested. I also discussed how racialism is integral to understanding Lovecrat's vision:

From what I’ve read, Lovecraft’s stories focus more on an external unfathomable horror revealing man’s life as insignificant in an indifferent universe. However, these stories do not typically show man’s personal identity to be illusory in-itself as in the case of Ligotti. It is more about confronting an unknown that makes one feel pitifully small, and this unknown is not always readily cognizable or parsed. Moreover, much of these confrontations can have disastrous effects such as the case of “The Colour out of Space”, which involves a farming family malforming because of a meteorite. This unknown may also lurk in forbidden placessuch as “The Rats in the Wall”. It makes one uneasy and shows human beings are not the Heraclitan center of the world, but there is a sense of “sublime terror”, which may indeed induce insanity, but not in a manner that makes one feel like they are transparent dreams with the illusion of consciousness.

Racialism is also integral in Lovecraft stories. As “The Shadow over Innsmouth” makes clear, it’s the miscegenated savages who are closer to the chaos underlying reality, and the more evolutionary sophisticated Anglo will shrink back in horror when uncovering the madness that underlies reality via empirical science. Therefore, it is a kind of circle in the sense that the primitive savage dances to mad tunes of reality whereas the evolutionary sophisticated man uncovers it through science and shrinks back in horror when seeing the primitive savages are closer to the unfathomable chaotic truth. Some of Lovecraft’s stories such as “Celephaïs” and “The Lost Key” also deal with the theme of escaping into dream-worlds in order to flee from the madness of this reality. My friend describes this theme well here:

“I feel like Lovecraft focuses a lot more on the material of things, the inferior nature of one thing to another, such as the hierarchy of gods, noble mortals, and more along the lines of what is considered savage mortals who, for Lovecraft, are more in touch with the imperceptible secret materiality of the Great Old Ones by their occult practices which he saw as exotic and stupid, yet more true to how he saw the universe.

I think Lovecraft was trying to awaken his utmost terror by the implication that the Great Old Ones are incomprehensible and that the most acutely sensible people like himself would be forced to shrink back in horror. I think Lovecraft and Ligotti were both less romantic in general, and this makes Poe unique in his regard, the most different from the other two.”

Fav stories: “The Shadow over Innsmouth”, “The Music of Eric Zahn”, “The Colour out of Space”

>>19525334
Never heard half of those names, will definitely check them out. Do you rate Carmilla by Le Fanu?

>>19525348
Good stuff, post the analysis of Poe’s pessimism

>>19525371
1/2
Poe is not as big of a philosophical pessimist as Thomas Ligotti or Lovecraft. To Poe, life can still be beautiful, but sorrow will always follow no matter how much one attempts to avoid it. Poe is more of a “dark romanticist”. That is, both love and sorrow have a complementary and interpenetrating relationship, which can enhance one another, and they cannot be separated since wherever there is peace, there looms the threat of despair, and vice versa. For example, this theme can somewhat be seen in the “Masque of the Red Death”, which involves a gaudy masquerade but is interrupted by the sudden appearance of death in overly macabre costume. Poe’s characters tend to be more complex with contradictory feelings and aspirations. Therefore, Poe’s stories seem more focused on the psychological domain rather than metaphysics unlike Ligotti or Lovecraft. To Ligotti the dissociated and derealized state mirrors the true nature of the malignant world whereas in the case of Poe his stories don’t concern themselves with the nature of the world outside of life and death, love and sorrow, and so forth existing in a complementary relationship. This is best observed in the ending of “Ligeia”, which focuses on the protagonist’s opium-induced hallucination of his deceased wife alternating with the corpse of his new one. During this scene, we are exposed to a flux of feelings for yearning for his long-gone wife, including conflicting feelings for his new deceased one he does not truly love.

The focus on the inner turmoil of man in coping with his own vices or the inevitably of death is also embodied in his famous “The Black Cat”. In this story, the male protagonist is described as being friendly to animals in the beginning of his life, but after he married his wife, who is also an animal lover, he starts to drink and abusing his pets due to intemperate outbursts, which culminates in him gouging out the eye of a beloved cat and afterwards killing and walling up his wife. The rest of the story includes a complex intermingling of guilt, hatred, and revenge, which is characteristic of Poe.

>>19525371
>>19525580
2/2
Two Poe stories that may have influenced both Ligotti and Lovecraft tremendously are “Manuscript in a Bottle” and “The Man of the Crowd”. Both stories seem to argue that man engages in daily prosaic routines or automated tasks in order to avoid confronting his own mortality. These stories are eerie and have much symbolic depth. These stories are not so much saying that mankind’s life is meaningless, but that mankind engages in many psychological tricks and nonsense (including revelries) to avoid confronting the “Conqueror Worm”, a reference to Poe’s famous poem of the respective name. Another way to phrase this is that the setting of Poe’s stories, such as “The Fall of the House of Usher”, reflect the deteriorating or depressed state of mind of the main leads, rather than reveal their “true natures”.

Poe was a very versatile writer. He wrote what is called the first detective story, “The Murders in Rue Morgan”, and also adventure stories such as “The Gold Bug”. Most of his stories have a subtle sinister atmosphere, which beautifully describes the environment and more.

Common tropes of Poe: revenge which may sometimes be justified (e.g., “Hop-Frog”), similes and analogies to sepulchers as reminder of inevitability of death (e.g., “The Premature Burial”), the complex relations among guilt, hatred, and revenge (e.g., “The Tell Tale Heart”), beautiful women who die from disease and bring despair to spouse due to loss (e.g., “House of Usher” and “Ligeia”), and so forth.

Top three favorite stories off the top of my mind: “The Fall of the House of Usher”, “The Man of the Crowd”, and “Manuscript Found in a Bottle”.

Top three poems: "A Dream within a Dream", "The Conqueror Worm", "The Raven"

>>19525580
>>19525586
Thanks, eloquent and precise. I agree with everything. The Fall of the House of Usher is such a phenomenal piece of writing - the connection between decrepit manor and insanity of its inhabitant has been copied a thousand times now.

I find that goth girl really pretty
but shes nothing special without her makeup

>>19525702
Thanks, I was doing reading a lot of weird fiction in the past. I've actually published one short story in a literary journal.
Do you want my analysis of Ligotti too?

>>19525702 #
Thanks, I was doing reading a lot of weird fiction in the past. I've actually published one short story in a literary journal.
Do you want my analysis of Ligotti too?

>>19526202
Yeah, post it

>>19526217
Ligotti's fiction largely revolves around the psychology of existential dread combined with symptoms of derealization or dissociation, and this exposes the world as one big looming, contaminated threat that is always collapsing.

Much of his fiction include phrases such as "grotesque metamorphoses behind the dream of earthly forms", “the oozing ichor that flows within all things”, “a melancholy half-existence consecrated to all the many shapes of death and dissolution”, and much more. His fiction focuses equally on the individual’s psychological state and the universe in a manner that is akin to a darker version of Poe's "The House of Usher", one in which the entire universe is a decrepit House of Usher that has always been collapsing as it mirrors the protagonist’s deteriorating psychological state. Many of his stories include corrugated, dilapidated towns, which are treated as shadows hinting of a deeper blackness, one in which the individual's personal identity or aspirations are treated as futile and ungrounded. Reality is only a "transformation of appearance, an incessant melting and molding of surfaces without underlying essence", which means the self and its aspirations are all founded upon illusion that when exposed point to an icy bleakness, a life devoid of intrinsic meaning where all are merely "puppets" manipulated by the strings of a malignant universe. Many of his stories from the "Clown Puppet" to "Nethescurial" focus on these ideas of man and Universe alike being akin to vapor or mist that haunts us with its false promises and illusions of comfort. Common tropes: human beings being akin to puppets (i.e., deterministic, hollow, controlled by forces beyond recognition, etc.), dancing colors against a sea of blackness (i.e., even the “spark” of life cannot escape the blackness), dilapidated towns as a reflection of one's true inner being, masquerades and pandemonium reflective of the blind chaos of the Universe and man, and so forth. Even if one does not agree with Thomas Ligotti’s metaphysical views, such as myself, his stories are still evocative and well-written.

Top three favorite stories off the top of my mind: “Nethescurial”, “The Tsalal”, and “The Last Feast of the Harlequin”

1. Henry James
2. Percy Shelley when he ghostwrote the good parts in Frankenstein
3. It's a gay genre so there's no #3

>>19524300
The major obscurity with the horror genre and lovecraft is specifically the genealogy of weird fiction.

In my mind, weird fiction is a very very specific genre, it isn’t necessarily horror though horror has been influenced titanically by it. If we look at the weird fiction writers, the main big guys, they have a commonality. This commonality is that they all have a very studied background in the classics and usually a fascination with the decadent/aesthetic art movements, usually to The point that their prose styles are almost entirely informed by romanticism and decadence. The three major weird fiction writers in my mind are lovecraft, clark Ashton smith and Robert e Howard for who all of this is true, but even if we go to obscure dudes like Henry S. Whitehead this is still true.

Weird fiction is what happens when you take the romantic fixation on the sublime, then it develops into the decadent fixation with the fabricated and the evil (see Baudelaire’s flowers of evil.) and finally they decide to make their own worlds out of this weirdness, one of my favorite Writers of all time, Dunsany, though he’s a father of fantasy what he’s actually doing is writing a fin de siecle mythology.

I think weird fiction which strives to just lifelessly imitate lovecraft, lifelessly ape his philosophy or throw in tentacles or use his characters, I think that’s nothing but cheap and unrelated to what the historical genre is like for both the big names and for the lesser knowns like William M Ferrar, J.B Harris-Burland, and the fabulous MP-shiel (who really should be remembered, lovecraft certainly considered him an influence.)

I think the reason why so many people will read lovecraft and say he somehow has bad prose, is it’s often their first introduction to the decadent/aesthetician tradition of high focus on ornate prose. I like to think of weird fiction as basically serving the popular masses at the time as an alternative to the dominating trends of modernism. I say this because just consider how formal much of these guys writings are and how steeped both in reading the classics and in aping the classics. I think there’s no way to approach weird fiction but as an extension of the aforementioned movements.

So I agree with the romantic and gothic origins of horror and weird lit, through decadent literature. It’s clear when you consider the relation of stuff like orientalism to all this. So in this regard ligotti is 100% a horror writer in the weird fiction-decadent tradition, his fixation on melancholy and emptiness are actually common traits of both genres.

>>19527571
>The major obscurity with the horror genre and lovecraft is specifically the genealogy of weird fiction [such as decadence/aesthetic/classics/Romanticism]
Interesting. I think you're right. But I think Lovecraft was also inspired by Poe (who was, yes, all those things, but also more) to the extent of even using science fiction (which Poe was a pioneer of).
>The three major weird fiction writers in my mind are lovecraft, clark Ashton smith and Robert e Howard for who all of this is true, but even if we go to obscure dudes like Henry S. Whitehead this is still true.
I need to read more Clark Ashton Smith (got any recs?) but I feel like Howard is perhaps the most Classicist out of them because his stories are like an Archaeologist digging up and telling a story, or something akin to Herodotus' histories. On the other hand, I really like Soloman Kane as it feels more like a Romantic work recapturing the past, with all its emotions and passions.
>Weird fiction is what happens when you take the romantic fixation on the sublime, then it develops into the decadent fixation with the fabricated and the evil
I agree. I tried to bring up something similar to this about Lovecraft with an academic and they kinda didn't listen. I thought Kant's Sublime was inverted or made Dark by Lovecraft, who tries to find the Evil within the incalculable. I think it's very interesting Lovecraft does this as I said before he explores science fiction, which is a speculation about technology (broadly construed).
>Dunsany's fin de siecle mythology
I think that's a very Romantic project. Have you read William Blake's mythopoeia? I really like it but I don't understand it fully; it could very well be seen as the same as the 1700s were ending and the Age of Reason was emerging.
>I think weird fiction which strives to just lifelessly imitate lovecraft, lifelessly ape his philosophy or throw in tentacles or use his characters, I think that’s nothing but cheap and unrelated to what the historical genre is like for both the big names and for the lesser knowns like William M Ferrar, J.B Harris-Burland, and the fabulous MP-shiel (who really should be remembered, lovecraft certainly considered him an influence.)
Yeah, I think he would turn in his grave to see he is only known for Cthulhu (with all its games, plushy toys, and merchandise), but I think Lovecraft was bound to be a tragic figure; he'd a shit life and tarnished legacy ("problematic white author" in geek culture).
>I think the reason why so many people will read lovecraft and say he somehow has bad prose
I only thought this when I picked up his juvenalia (like the story with the man-beast in the cave and the immortal alchemist), but to be fair every writer goes through a learning process. I do agree that he's much more erudite than people give off, and it's a fault of the people who don't read.
>Ligotti in weird tradition
I'll try to reread it more thoroughly.

>>19527905
Oh I 100% agree, lovecraft goes in depth about his influences (and Poe’s in particular) in his supernatural horror essay, definitely check it out.
> very interesting Lovecraft does this as I said before he explores science fiction, which is a speculation about technology (broadly construed).

Smith and MP shiel do this, check out smith’s devotee of evil and Shiel’s house of silence. I can’t stress enough how refined shiel’s work is. As for Howard as the most classicist, I would say definitely read smith such as the white worm, you’ll see influences from ancients to the French lit filling his style.


> William Blake's mythopoeia?

Blake’s the first poet I ever read as my lit studies began as an extension of my religious/mysticism studies, so I’ve studied Blake, Blake is great, I consider one of if not the best poets in English, I would say though his mythology is genuinely too spiritual in nature to compare to the production of Dunsany and later fantasists, blake shares more with the mystic producing a cosmological map than with Tolkien for example.

>ligotti

Oh dude, ligotti is constantly shilling himself as a weird fiction writer also, it’s 100% his intent.

>>19527948
>Oh dude, ligotti is constantly shilling himself as a weird fiction writer also, it’s 100% his intent.
Why do these weird fiction/horror writers like Ligotti, Lovecraft act so elitist and pretentious? I think they like to jerk around decadent autism and hold extreme disdain for modern literary trends.

A red from my man b e Ellis

>>19527975
> Ligotti, Lovecraft act so elitist and pretentious? I think they like to jerk around decadent autism and hold extreme disdain for modern literary trends.

Different literary canon, the decadent and weird fiction group (and I broadly agree) thinks the classic and baroque forms of writing were completely good and the only problem is on a content level, Arthur symons calls decadent lit a disease of form, which is imo a way of saying that the manner of construction has been infected in such a manner that an obsession of what good quality is, and it being principally defined as artificial and ornate is the key to it, now consider how content wise modernism (with some decadent influences sure but mostly not) glorified the mundane whereas the decadents sought the oriental, the extreme, the lavish, and with weird fiction, the strange, the impossible, the insane and so forth. Basically you have polar opposite approaches both to the form of literature and to the content of literature, but I would say the weird fiction crowd is snobbish towards modern literary trends but not to the common reader, as everything in it is designed to appeal to the most people, action, adventure, strange sights, it’s like fire works, this is why lovecraft and Howard are a few of the only names which can get the youth reading and some of the few authors with living influence over the culture that’s expanding not retracting. And it’s not because of academia either but rather in spite of it.


But again to summarize, polar opposite ideals and approaches.

>>19527571
Based effort post

>>19523901
i wish i could shrink myself down to the size of an ant and live inside her butthole for the rest of my days

>>19528048
Damn, that's based

>>19528111
Kek

>>19525996
Nothing special without her filters more like. But she still has mad style and is peak gf material just for that.

>>19528303
crazy how big her tits are for such a slim figure

>>19523901
>Name top 3 horror authors
Kant,
Hegel,
Engels.

>>19523940
Aesthetic doesnt mean ornate. Being scared in the spooked sense is very closely related to being mystified/intrigued which id say are closer to what an “aesthetic experience” refers to

>>19527905
Weird fiction is very much interconnected with the decadent and symbolist movements since its inception, Lovecraft and Machen were definitely decadents. Even the good "modern" weird writers have those influences, Ligotti and Aickman have a stylized symbolist approach to writing, Caitlin Kiernan a highly decadent one etc.

What are the best horror stories that don't revolve around the main character(s) being in mortal danger?

>>19528303
>Nothing special without her filters more like.

guess youre right
And even if she sometimes tries to hard, I like her style

>>19524193
I just read a bunch of Grady Hendrix. It got me back into reading horror. I also read a couple John Ajvide Lindqvist recently, some Stephen King and Edgar Cantero recently.

>>19528985
Scifi and surrealism as well. Jules Verne for example

Short but lingers like a ghost long after.

>>19532027
The heat woke me just before midnight. And the sweat. The woman's body was made of earth, layered in crusts of earth; it was crumbling melting into a pool of mud. I felt myself swimming in the sweat streaming from her body, and I couldn't get enough air to breathe I got out of bed. She was sleeping. From her mouth bubbled a sound very like a death rattle.

I went outside for air, but I could not escape the heat that followed wherever I went

There was no air, only the dead, still night fired by the dog days of August

Not a breath I had to suck in the same air I exhaled, cupping my hands before it escaped. I felt it, in and out, less each time un it was so thin it slipped through my fingers forever.

I mean, forever