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Maremidon posted:Finally someone who agrees. When an interviewer asked him what sorts of things make him smile Ligotti gave possibly the gooniest reply I've ever read: quote:I think that if I could walk from one end of the world to the other and see nothing but annihilated landscapes, that would make me smile. I kind of wish I hadn't read his interviews, because after enough poo poo like that a lot of his stories end up feeling less like pieces of fiction to be read and thought about and more like some guy clumsily presenting his ideology and saying "I bet you disagree with me, don't you, but that's just because it's too EXTREME for regular minds to comprehend!" Maybe that's unfair to him--I know he suffers from intense depression and panic disorders, so it makes sense he'd come off as less than socially comfortable--but drat, he just seems so smugly "above the intellectual plebs" in all his interviews.
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Jun 25, 2013 10:50
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Having recently finished The Imago Sequence and made it a third of the way through Occultation before returning it to the library, I can safely say that I don't really like Laird Barron.
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Sep 21, 2013 21:35
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Neurosis posted:Could I ask what it is you disliked about his stuff? Not every Barron story is genius, but some of them (Hallucigenia, The Light is the Darkness I would put right at the top) are terrifying and amazing. It's hard to put a finger on it--I just couldn't get interested in his writing, really. It just became apparent that more often than not a story was going to be about gradually slipping into a dream-like psychosis where reality broke down around a character, and none of the stories really ever gave me a reason to care. The only story that stands out in my memory is "Strappado" because it broke from that formula, but it still didn't feel particularly compelling. It feels like a lot of his writing is just kind of presenting an image or concept that the author felt would be unsettling, surrounding it with overly flowery language and just leaving it there--like reading a summary of what the story's about would feel exactly the same as reading the story itself.
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Sep 23, 2013 04:49
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I can't imagine Barron's version of Thomas Ligotti is any less flattering than the one the man himself gives in interviews. It's hard to caricature a caricature.
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Nov 20, 2013 03:54
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It's been about five or six months now since I read The Imago Sequence and I legitimately can't remember anything from a single one of the stories except the bit in the barn in "Hallucigenia." The stories all felt exactly the same. I really do not understand the love for this author.
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Feb 25, 2014 00:04
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Ornamented Death posted:Maybe you just don't like Barron? You can not like an author without having to conclude they are terrible. For example, I'm not really fond of Clive Barker, but I recognize that's more a matter of my personal tastes than any failing of his. I don't think he's terrible, I just don't understand what people like about him. I've heard him praised for many different things that I have not actually perceived in his writing. He seems to be a very talented surrealist but that's not what I've heard him praised for, nor is it the genre in which his writing is marketed; as a horror writer his writing does nothing for me whatsoever. Neurosis posted:There are certainly some major similarities between his work. He is fond of ultra-masculine, whisky swilling heavy smoking protagonists. Even the protagonist of The Croning, an erudite geologist, has a past as a bit of an adventurer and drinks like a fish. Despite that, I think there are enough variances to make each story interesting. More recently he has begun branching out a bit more - female protagonists, a sociopathic protagonist, that odd Lovecraft mythos story (which a lot of people didn't like but I thought was pretty good), the Ligotti story, and reaching back further the story written by an actual eldritch abomination and Proboscis, the latter of which which was quite strange and which I did not like much or understand at the time but which grew on me as I thought about it more. I get why people wouldn't like him, but I don't think his stories are as similar as you suggest. It's not just stylistic homogeneity, though, it's subject matter--like, Lovecraft and Ligotti have their own very distinctive voices but they use them to tell distinct and memorably different stories, whereas to me most Barron stories seem to be about a bitter loner investigating something seemingly-normal and gradually having their perception of reality break down around them until they break through to some terrible and unexplicated understanding of *SOMETHING* as the story ends. Just about everything I've read of his seems to be a slightly different setting for that same series of events to happen in. I'm aware that I've read stories called "Proboscis" and "Bulldozer" and "Procession of the Black Sloth" but I couldn't tell you anything that happens in them. "Strappado" is the only story of his that really sticks out in my head and it doesn't follow that general formula--but I also didn't think it was terribly interesting, either. He's definitely not for me, and I don't really see what he's doing that puts him at the forefront of modern horror fiction where so many critics and readers have placed him. If he does something for you, great, but I don't get anything out of his writing. Maybe I'm missing something.
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Feb 25, 2014 08:09
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Ornamented Death posted:I figured out what bothers me about your last few posts. You're not consistent. Dude, not everybody likes Laird Barron. That's okay. Nobody is saying that you're wrong for liking him. Different tastes.
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Feb 26, 2014 08:57
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Helical Nightmares posted:Does Ligotti have some chronic pain condition or something? I believe he would say that he does, and that it's called consciousness.
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Mar 28, 2014 07:32
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Friendless posted:Both were put out by ChiZine, a press dedicated to promoting Canadian writers of weird fiction, which is something I can get behind. Isn't Lebbon British?
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Apr 26, 2014 08:01
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Robert Jackson Bennett is in fact the SA forums' own Spiny Norman, who hasn't posted since 2010 or '11 but who announced Mr. Shivers's publication with a thread in this 'yere very same Book Barn.
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May 25, 2014 08:46
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 18:47 |
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I read Mr. Shivers when it came out on the basis of the recommendations it was getting. It wasn't fantastic, but it was a somewhat promising first novel. I've never picked anything else of his up since then, but I don't think I'd be averse to it. I don't remember anything about fedoras in that book, but considering it took place in the 1930s I don't think it'd be "fetishism" to have people wearing them.
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May 25, 2014 23:10
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