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/lit/ - Literature

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11124402 No.11124402 [Reply] [Original]

Should I read Ligotti if I want good old fashioned horror? Or is it going to be over the top artsy self aware genre blending experimental shit?

I just want spooky ghosts and good old lovecraft horror, not tryhard gay fag shit

>> No.11124420
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11124420

>googling ligotti right now to find out
>"HE WEAVES INTERTEXTUAL DREAM NARRATIVES INTO META-FICTIONAL PHILOSOPHY AND HAS A PENCHANT FOR INCLUDING CLOWNS, SINISTER PUPPETS, AND ALTERNATIVE ART SCENE PEOPLE IN HIS BOOKS"

Oh my god it sounds so fucking horrible

>> No.11124444
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11124444

Don't know about Ligotti, but I recommend Hodgson's "The House on the Borderland".

>> No.11124493

Ligotti is good, probably the "best" out of those (admittedly few) contemporary horror writers I've read. He's a skilled prose stylist in a Lovecraftian sense, so if you like your stories wordy and adjective-laden, sometimes even obnoxiously so, he's your guy. Other than that, you can take one of his tales and spend a few dozen hours smashing your head against it in order to find (read, mostly create out of a few vague clues) whatever complex, nihilistic and metaphorical social/existential commentary you want out of it or you can just appreciate them on a surface level as "good old horror stories".

All in all, pick up one of his collections on libgen, read a couple of his stories (I recommend The Clown Puppet in Teatro Grottesco, The Last Feast of the Arlequin, Nethescurial and The Shadow at the Bottom of the World in Grimscribe) and see for yourself. Won't take you more than a couple hours.

>> No.11124545

>>11124402
>>11124493
This is a good post. Hear this guy. I'd recomend to start with Teatro Grottesco and / or The Conspiracy Against The Human Race and if you like it then start reading his other collections. All his stuff is kinda samey but he's usually pretty nice to read if you like this kind of utterly desparing, nihilistic kind of horror. If you don't like Teatro Grottesco don't bother reading his other stuff. Also, I would recomend to avoid My Work Is Not Yet Done, or leave it to last place if you're a completionist. Except for The Nightmare Network, the other two stories are pretty bland and shows why Ligotti prefer the shorter stuff.

>> No.11124601

Songs of a Dead Dreamer is the most traditional horror he's written. It gradually ascends from psychological toward philosophic horror, but is free of over the top self aware genre blending experimental shit... well, in seventeen out of twenty of the pieces.

Grimscribe and Teatro Grottesco I would not even describe as horror. They are nihilism stories where the occasional horrible object appears and then disappears; the ultimate effect is to leave you numb because they are meaningless products of a feverish, highly degenerated world.

>> No.11124642

Afaik, he's only written short stories (apart from Conspiracy), so you won't waste too much time if you read some of them, even if it turns out they're not for you. Try 'Purity', for example.

>> No.11124677

I'm halfway through his Teotro Grotesco collection desu.

It's pretty good, but I agree that Ligotti is a philosophical horror writer, though I would argue he's a politico-philosophical writer, rather than just being a racist life-denying autist like Lovecraft.

Some stories I remember from the collection thus far:

1. A family move to a rented home. His father makes a long speech to them about how it's important they always rent their home, since everything in the world is rented (ideas, etc). His father spends all day in the basement working on the problem of Purity, while the mother and sister dissappear for unknown reasons on occasion. One day the boy's father invites a religious doorknocker down to his basement, and the boy goes to the house of a friend, a black woman living in a run-down house on the shit side of town. While visiting, a police officer arrives and tries to snatch the boy, who stabs him with a special needle his father gave him. Some blacks strip the police officer and discover he's an hermpahrodite, then the boy throws the body down the toilet chute. At the end of the story the boy enters his father's basement, to find the religious doorknocker tied up and his "impure" thoughts being funneled from his head into a vial. Then his mother and sister turn up, and the sister asks her brother if he knows what a hermaphrodite is, before realizing she has said too much about she and her mother's secret trips away from the family. The story ends with the mother explaining to the son what the final "impurity" is that his father hadn't told him about, which is family - thus suggesting she is the one who led to her son almost being snatched by the officer.

>> No.11124680

His unfilmed script for The X-Files is good.

>> No.11124972
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11124972

>>11124402
most literary horror writer ever, next to aickman.
fuck spooky shit and monsters, this is horror by someone who read borges, gass, bernhard, schulz. genre faggots fuck off.

>> No.11125004
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11125004

What does /lit/ think of I Have a Special Plan for This World? It's the first I've heard of Ligotti, are his actual stories better?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxZpEFJhO6k

>> No.11125151

>>11125004
try this, The Bungalow House. one of my favorite short. kino narration and voice works too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Fteka44kbY&t=42s

>> No.11125250

>>11124545
I liked My Work is not yet done. Sure it gets a bit too over the top in a couple scenes but I really like where the story is coming from philosophically, and the ending gives you enough to chew on

>> No.11125348

>>11124493
>I recommend The Clown Puppet in Teatro Grottesco
It's all BULLSHIT

>> No.11125373

>>11124642
>>11124677
Purity, the story. What did he mean by this?

>> No.11126015

Ligotti isn't really a try hard, but neither is he old-fashioned. Here's a good story of his. Other than the narrator, there isn't a single human character in it.

http://weirdfictionreview.com/2011/12/the-red-tower-by-thomas-ligotti/

>> No.11126479

>>11126015
This is my favourite Ligotti story. Nice taste.

>> No.11126756

>>11124680
Link me. Now.

>>11124972
>most literary horror writer ever,
Algernon Blackwood would like a word with you

>> No.11128047

>>11126756
Here ya go

https://pastebin.com/raw/yza7kgh3

>> No.11128065

i like Ligotti

>> No.11128074

>>11128047

MULDER
So, seriously, you never saw Star
Wars?

SCULLY
Nope.

MULDER
Never?

SCULLY
What did I just say?

MULDER
How could you not see Star Wars?

SCULLY
I was a little more into Grease at the
time.

MULDER
Jeez, Scully, it’s only like the most
popular movie ever.

SCULLY
No, that’s Titanic--which you never
saw.

MULDER
Yeah, well, I know how it ends.

>this is horror at its most horrifying