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Someone who writes like Ligotti just has to be the most miserable person alive. Don't get me me wrong, I'm an unreasonably miserable gently caress too (and I happen to like The Conspiracy), but any fear that I'm too far gone can always be assuaged by just knowing that Thomas Ligotti exists. Thomas Ligotti posted:I couldn’t possibly write something that would reflect the true depths of my aversion to everything that exists. I mean, Jesus.
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Jun 23, 2013 07:31
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 09:21 |
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Of course it would take something like "severe physical trauma" to elevate Ligotti's mood. I guess if there's hope for him, there's hope for anybody.
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Jul 4, 2013 02:18
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Are there any modern weird writers that use florid prose? I know Lovecraft was the king of purple, as well as Poe, but these days it seems writers stick to the most common words and terms, and are terrified of adjectives. The reading I enjoy the most is done in admiration of a particular identifiable writing style, and so many new writers seem interchangeable.
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Oct 2, 2014 11:09
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Is there a place where I can see side-by-side comparisons of the original and revised versions of Ligotti's stories? I've heard the revisions are for the worse, but would like to see some examples. I've read most of the stories in Teatro Grottesco, as well as a few others like "The Shadow at the Bottom of the World" and have no idea which versions I've read.
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Oct 18, 2015 01:22
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Thanks for that link. After doing some more reading, I've learned that Ligotti has revised some of his stories every time they've been republished. Some stories from "Grimscribe", for instance, have been revised three times now. And apparently, for the brand new Penguin Classics edition of "Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe", he's revised them yet again (not sure what the new revisions are yet, but they're supposedly very minimal). From what I've seen, the changes made for the Subterranean press versions in 2011 run the gamut. Some are small revisions that more overtly stress Ligotti's philosophical pessimism. Example from "Drink to me with Labyrinthine Eyes": 1989 version: “They wanted the death stuff, the pain stuff. All that flashy junk. They wanted cartwheels of agonized passion; somersaults into fires of doom; nosedives, if you will, into the frenzied pageant of vulnerable flesh.” 2011 version: "They wanted the death stuff, the pain stuff. All that flashy junk. They wanted cartwheels of agony; somersaults through fires of doom; nosedives of vulnerable flesh into the meat grinder of life." Other times, the revisions are far more substantial, where the exposition is overhauled. Example from "The Frolic" 1989 version: "Their daughter Norleen was upstairs asleep, or perhaps she was illicitly enjoying an after-hours session with the new color television she’d received on her birthday the week before. If so, her violation of the bedtime rule went undetected due to the affluent expanse between bedroom and living room, where her parents heard no sounds of disobedience. The house was quiet. The neighborhood and the rest of the town were also quiet in various ways, all of them slightly distracting to the doctor’s wife." 2011 version: "Their daughter Norleen was upstairs asleep, or perhaps she was illicitly enjoying an after-hours session with the new television she'd received on her birthday the week before. If so, her violation went undetected by her parents in the living room, where all was quiet. The neighborhood outside the house was quiet, too, as it was day and night. All of Nolgate was quiet, for it was not a place with much of a nightlife, save perhaps at the bar where the prison's correctional officers congregated. Such persistent quiet made the doctor's wife fidgety with her existence in a locale that seemed light-years from the nearest metropolis." I guess whether or not these and the rest of the revisions are for the better all depends on your sensibilities.
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Oct 21, 2015 07:23
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The Repairer of Reputations is a great story, what the hell.
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Oct 24, 2015 20:25
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 09:21 |
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Barker's quality runs the gamut, and it's been a mostly downward trajectory since he started. "The Hellbound Heart" is a fantastic little book. "The Books of Blood" is really fun horror. "Cabal" and "The Damnation Game" were decent. I've mostly avoided his fantasy stuff, which was the majority of work he published post 80's, but his recent return to horror is not good. "The Scarlet Gospels" is full of great imagery, but is so poorly conceived and written that I'm still in disbelief that Barker actually wrote it (if any book ever needed illustrations to keep you interested, it was this one). All the more disappointing if you had been waiting for it for well over a decade like many Barker fans were. Just terrible.
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Feb 8, 2016 01:32
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