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Nicholas said...
P.S. I bought his book on Ligotti, by the way, though I didn't buy any Roman coins.

I agree with you, Nathan, that Ligotti is fanastic, arguably the greatest writer WT has featured in probably a couple decades. A vision as singular as Lovecraft's, although more contemporary and disturbing.

I've tried my hand at a Ligottiesque story or two, but I just can't pull it off: my worldview just cannot go that dark, even when I try! I'm prone to see the silver lining, or the little glimmer of hope, or the last desparate shot at redemption (which is, incidentally, also a King trait. Even the sadistic tales of Clive Barker often offer some hint of potential redemption or goodness that resists the assault of utter darkness). No such comfort in Ligotti. His worldview is more nihilistic even than Lovecraft's. While I don't subscribe to such a worldview, I do recognize him as a master, and always perk up when a new issue of WT carries one of his stories.

That Ligotti is not a millionaire and enjoying vast celebrity is a bitter irony of writing. For myself I found him stunningly good.

I need to go look at the WT issue to get the story titles but the one I read where he got you to understand how a lonely little white boy was better off in a dilapidated old house in a violent black ghetto with circus freakish drug dealers than he was in his own house...WOW! And he took the mundane of that--which was horrific enough, but then added in a layer of mystery about the family make up and how the mother and sister where even more sinister in some unknown way than the serial killer father...he's THE best horror writer I've read.

But as powerful as that story was it was the three or four stories about the unrelenting paranoia of a vast unfocused conspiracy and being controlled in such a way that life was basically the metaphorical (and in some instances the literal) equivalent of one of those Hollywood town sets where everything is façade--again…wow. He’s a master.

And his work is very very very hard to find his net presence is almost nonexistent and he’s almost completely unheard of. Now I respect the hell out of WT, like it a lot. But it’s only a mid-rank magazine for horror. Cemetery Dance, say, is much “bigger” if you will. My point is that I have to suspect those powerful stories that wowed me (I did say “wow” once or twice right?) had to have been *rejected*. Meanwhile Bentley Little (who admittedly I do enjoy in his short forms) is treated like a pharaoh of horror.

I certainly hope WT paid TL more than 3-4 cents a word when you think about Dean Koontz getting 80-bucks a word. I think I’ve just accidentally descended into rant, but I’m ecstatic to finally find someone who’s read Thomas Ligotti as well.