“…Fiction that is Audaciously One’s Own”: An Interview with W.H. Pugmire

May 11, 2012 at 4:13 pm (H.P. Lovecraft, Short Stories, W.H. Pugmire)

Author W.H. Pugmire

I first stumbled across author W.H. Pugmire’s pale green visage on Thomas Ligotti Online a few years ago.  Shortly thereafter, I discovered his Youtube videos — exuberant video blogs (“vlogs”) that always strike me as part Lovecraftian documentary, part drag show, and part monster movie.   Indeed, in these 10-20 minute vlogs, Pugmire is just as likely to chat about the virtues of Mac cosmetics as he is to reminisce about the times he spent hanging out with pulp author    H. Warner Munn or corresponding with Robert Bloch.

Of course, W.H. Pugmire is also a damned good horror author who somehow manages to be both devotedly Lovecraftian and utterly unique.  I find that he particularly excels at the prose-poem, and I’m not alone in that assessment.  S.T. Joshi has referred to Pugmire as “the prose-poet of the horror/fantasy field; he may be the best prose-poet we have.”  Pugmire has been involved in the horror genre for about four decades, and has had stories reprinted in the Year’s Best Horror Stories series as well as multiple mass market publisher anthologies.  The small press, however, is Pugmire’s home.  Hippocampus Press has recently published his latest book, Uncommon Places, and Pugmire has many other small press books available as either collectible hardcovers or affordable trade paperback editions.

In our interview, we discuss his recent health problems, his correspondence with Robert Bloch,  and the significant changes he’s seen in the horror field over the last forty years.

Nicole Cushing:  First off, many readers may be aware of your recent poor health. How are you feeling these days?

W.H. Pugmire:  My health is precarious. I’m tired all the time, and often so weak that I’ve started to use my father’s old metal cane when walking. I want to think that much of it is mental and not real, but the weakness feels real indeed — the tightness in my chest, the difficulty in breathing. I am attending the Lovecraft Film Festival this week-end, and it will be a major “test” to see how well I survive among lots of activity. I plan on taking it easy, but I get so excited when meeting Lovecraftians that I may overdo it.

N.C.:  My understanding is that you once, in your late teens or early twenties, participated in an ongoing correspondence with Robert Bloch. Do those letters from Bloch still survive? What sort of things did you talk about? Is there any possibility of the letters finding their way to publication some time in the future?

W.H.P.:  All of my letters and postcards from Bloch are in a wee suitcase that I purchased in Ireland. The suitcase contains all of my correspondence with the original Lovecraft Circle. I have since given the suitcase to Greg Lowney, who is ye official Keeper of ye Pugmire Collection. I initially contacted Bob to write a tribute to Forry Ackerman for my horror film fanzine, Fantasia, in 1970. I was, at the time, convinced that I wanted to be a horror film actor, as I was obsessed with horror films as a teen. Then when I got shipped to Ireland to serve as a Mormon missionary, my superiors banned me from going to horror films, so I thought, “Screw you, I’ll read horror fiction instead.” I began to buy anthologies that contained stories by Bloch, and this served as my introduction to weird fiction. I was soon hooked and buying lots of paperbacks, and thus I bought that wee suitcase in which to carry them. Bob encouraged me to write, in an oblique kind of way. I never sent him my stories, as he sent his to HPL, because I didn’t want to bug him or “use” him. But he was always kind in encouraging my writing, and he helped me to meet other horror writers through correspondence.

N.C.:   In previous interviews you’ve said that you want nothing more for your career than to be considered a Lovecraftian writer – that you’re happy to dwell in H.P.L.’s shadow. However, since I’ve started reading one of your newest collections (Uncommon Places),I’ve come to suspect you might be selling yourself short. I think you have a voice distinctly your own. You may often play with plot devices and settings used in Lovecraft’s stories and poems, and it’s clear you have a passion for all things Lovecraftian. But you also play with the work of Edgar Allan Poe and Oscar Wilde. Moreover, your tales and prose-poems are innervated by a surreal energy and a sensuousness rarely seen in Lovecraft.

I’m curious what you think about this assessment of your work. Is it time to admit that you’re more than just Lovecraft-with-lip-gloss?

W.H.P.:  I have often felt that it was expected of me to “grow up and stop trying to be H. P. Lovecraft.” Writing Lovecraftian fiction is seen as a youthful phase that we pass through on our way to writing our own thing. I reject that mindset. For me, writing Lovecraftian weird fiction IS my own thing, and I am never more MYSELF than when I am Lovecraftian. Being Lovecraftian is my identity as an artist, and it becomes more important the older I grow. I want my work to prove that one can dedicate oneself to writing Lovecraftian horror and yet still make a real solid vital contribution to the genre, with fiction that is audaciously one’s own. Part of my uniqueness is that I bring in all of the other writers with whom I am obsessed, Wilde and Shakespeare and Kafka and Henry James, and stir them into ye mix. And then I add a pinch of punk rock and drag queen fabulousness, and oh girlfriend, look what we have!

N.C.:  You have a dedication to working in the small press, and you’ve said you have no interest in being a commercial writer. But I have to ask: have you always felt this way? Has there ever been a time that you felt the temptation to write a novel, land an agent, and seek to make your living from your writing? What are some of the advantages of working in the small press? Some of the drawbacks?

W.H.P.:  When I first started writing I was obsessed with being a FAMOUS and SUCCESSFUL Mythos writer. Didn’t take me long to realize that it was a youthful fantasy. So many of us want to be KNOWN as a writer before we have actually produced much work. We want that special feeling that comes from saying, “I’m a writer.” So I went through my first youthful clueless phase, and then I stopped writing for several years and became heavily involved with the Seattle music scene. Then I started writing for Jessica Salmonson’s wee zines, Fantasy Macabre and Fantasy & Terror. I submitted “Pale, Trembling Youth” to Jessica, knowing she loves ghost stories, and she asked if she could work on it. Then she shocked me by selling it to Dennis Etchison for Cutting Edge. I was suddenly in a real book, a book that had a story by my hero, Robert Bloch! It felt amazing. I love being published. But I never had any desire to find an agent and make writing a boring profession. It was always to be “my art,” and writing for the small press made it possible for me to write what I wanted to write in the manner I wished to write it. I never go out looking for pro markets to write for, I just wait for editors to ask me for submissions. I want to be unique and do my own thang, I want to be Lovecraftian up ye arse. I don’t want to have to conform as a writer so as to write for some commercial market, to have to consider what sells and what doesn’t. Boring! The small press is the future of weird fiction, of that I have no doubt.

N.C.:  You’ve been around the horror fiction scene for decades. I’m sure you’ve observed many changes over the years. What’s the best change you’ve seen in horror during that time? What change gives you the greatest concern?

W.H.P. The biggest change is the Internet, I think. I refused to get online for years, until  S. T. Joshi became my main editor when I wrote my first book for Hippocampus Press. I typed that entire book on my electric typer, then made xerox copies of everything and sent it to S. T., who then had to scan the entire thing. When Jerad (Walters) said he wanted to publish a Centipede Press omnibus of my work, S. T. demanded I get hooked up and get email and thus send him my stories as Word docs. So my buddy and Savior Greg Lowney got me hooked up, and it completely changed my writing life. Too, the Internet has made it possible for more people to buy my books, through Amazon and such, and that has made a huge difference in book sales. And then I discovered that I can promote my books using YouTube, and I can dress up freaky and make a fool of myself as well! Sweet!

The downside is that the Internet has, I think, led to the death of the small press horror journal, those wonderful wee zines such as Deathrealm and Lore and The End. Lore is still going, I’m happy to see, but so many others have died. Too, we’ve lost the art of correspondence. I used to live for writing letters. I told myself that if I got online I wouldn’t let email stop me from real correspondence. But it has. And that is a real loss, I think.

***

Uncommon Places by W.H. Pugmire.  Available as a trade paperback from the Hippocampus Press website or Amazon.com

3 Comments

A Thank You to Readers of the Lovecraft eZine

April 2, 2012 at 7:25 pm (H.P. Lovecraft, Short Stories)

There are lots of days I wish I was a stand-up comic instead of an author of weird, dark stories. Sure, stand-up (even just starting-out) would probably pay better. But the real incentive is that I’m impatient, and stand-up would mean getting instant feedback on my work.

Just think about it: a stand-up comic gets instant gratification. She doesn’t even have to wait until after her performance to know whether or not she’s bombed. She knows right then and there whether the audience “gets”and appreciates her stuff. If the audience laughs, she’s succeeded.

 Not so with a writer. I spend weeks/months on a story. Revise it. Send it out to folks for critique. Revise it again. Revise it, sometimes, many, many times until I’m satisfied that it’s as good as it can possibly be. Then I send it out to an editor. After a few months, the editor lets me know if the story has been accepted or rejected. Then another few months (or longer) until it gets published.

 Then (maybe, not all the time, but sometimes) I’ll get some reader response.

 Reader response is important to me, not just because I have an ego of about the same magnitude as that of any other writer (that is, roughly the size of Godzilla on steroids), but also because I don’t think a story really “happens” until someone reads it; art without an audience is just mental masturbation.

 A little over a week ago one of my stories (a little 2600 word tale called “A Catechism for Aspiring Amnesiacs”) was published in The Lovecraft eZine. The eZine maintains a comments thread under each piece, so that readers can provide feedback, dissect the stories, criticize them, etc. So far, the reader response for “A Catechism…” has been quite positive.

 In fact, I’ve been overjoyed to find that in addition to reader feedback, the story has been praised by a few long-established and critically-acclaimed Lovecraftian authors. People like Wilum Pugmire, Joe Pulver, and Ann K. Schwader have taken time to post positive remarks in the comments thread underneath the story.

 Their praise (along with the praise of several readers) has just bowled me over. I really don’t know what to say. So, I’ll just keep it simple and say, “Thank You”. Thank you for reading my story and letting me know what you think of it. Thanks, also, for contributing to The Lovecraft eZine during its recent financial stress, as that support ends up helping authors, too.

 Little zines have always exerted disproportionate influence in Lovecraftian fiction, going back to the days of H.P.L., himself, and his participation in the amateur journalism movement. Zines like Crypt of Cthulhu and Nyctalops helped foster an environment in which Lovecraftian fiction not only stayed alive, but thrived and evolved, in the ’70s ,’80s, ’90s. It’s my hope that Mike Davis’ Lovecraft eZine can play a similar role in our present day.

1 Comment

All I Really Need to Know (About Self-Assessment) I Learned From D&D

August 19, 2011 at 5:23 pm (Dungeons & Dragons, H.P. Lovecraft, Jeff Vandermeer, Self-Assessment)

"But Mom! It has Pegasuses (Pegasai?) on the cover. Pegasuses aren't 'demonic', are they?"

Those of you who’ve read Laughing at the Abyss in the past may remember that my mother was one of the millions of Americans during the ’80s who were brainwashed by Pat Robertson into considering Dungeons & Dragons “demonic”. (Don’t laugh, those of you in Generation-Y or younger, there was a real hysteria in the Reagan years about this sort of thing. Before Tom Hanks was the new James Stewart, he starred in a made-for-TV movie called Mazes & Monsters, about a young man’s descent into madness due to being unable to differentiate the game from reality). I’ve actually never seen the whole thing, but it strikes me as the heir to the ’50s delinquency films and catastrophizing cinema a la Reefer Madness.

Nonetheless, I worked around her prohibition by playing the game after school with a group of friends. In the process, I came into possession of a borrowed copy of the AD&D Monster Manual. I hid it under my bed so she wouldn’t discover it. I came off the bus one day to find the aforementioned terato-tome on top of my bed, and my mother poised to ambush me with a Kafkaesque interrogation. She treated AD&D like some parents treated a dime bag of weed. As a result, the only thing I actually remember about D&D was rolling the dice to create my character’s ability scores. You know, strength, dexterity, constitution, charisma, and all that jazz.

By now you may be asking: “What does this have to do with writing?”

 Jeff Vandermeer’s Booklife: Strategies and Survival Tips For The 21st Century Writer is one of my favorite books about the publishing business. In it, he recommends writers undergo a process of honest self-assessment (of strengths, weaknesses, and gray areas) as a step along to the way to self-improvement. For example, an author might excel at face-to-face networking at conventions, but struggle with adapting to new platforms and technologies. Short of some unforeseen genetic engineering that produces a “super writer”, none of us are perfect. Our professional lives are built from the scaffold of our character. Some wood in the scaffold is strong and helpful. Some wood in the scaffold is weak and detrimental. Some wood in the scaffold is in-between.

Recently, I’ve had the idea of merging Vandermeer’s self-assessment idea with the gone (but not forgotten) D&D character I created before Momma put the kibosh on my gaming career. Imagine using the D&D abilities as a schema for self-evaluation of one’s writing career.

How?

Okay, let’s take a look at the old D&D abilities (for the uninitiated, these are Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution, and Charisma). What would these mean if translated to the context of the craft of writing and building a writing career? What follows is my attempt to perform just such a translation. All ability score definitions are quoted from the D&D Player Handbook as quoted by Wizards.com.

Strength – In the game, this refers to “muscle and physical power.” As a self-assessment of your writing career, this will boil down to an honest assessment of the strength of your work. Of course, this is one of the most difficult areas of self-assessment, because none of us can accurately measure it except in retrospect. But here are some ideas to start this assessment off. If you’re a newer writer, are you involved in a formal (or informal) critique circle? Are you taking writing classes from professionals, when they’re available (as they often are, at conventions)? If you’ve been around for awhile, do you have a subjective sense that your writing is changing or do you feel like things have gotten stale?

Intelligence – In the game, this refers to “how well a character learns and reasons”. We all make mistakes along the way of building our writing careers. Maybe we’re too imitative of our literary heroes and heroines. Maybe we over-think the market and try too hard to chase trends. Or maybe we still haven’t mastered the distinctions between lay and lie. For the purposes of this blog, an author with high “intelligence” learns from his mistakes (both in terms of craft and career). He is able to honestly see when he’s wrong so he can then take corrective action.

Wisdom – In the game, this refers to “a character’s willpower, common sense, perception, and intuition”. Translated to building a writing career, this amounts to savvy (regarding your work, the market, and where you believe the best opportunities are for the twain to meet). The wise writer knows what she can and can’t control. The wise writer creates a set of goals and sticks to them throughout the year. The wise writer keeps an ear to the industry grapevine (knowing that not all rumors are accurate, but also knowing that word-of-mouth is often the best way to determine the relative health of publishers and relative professionalism of agents). Perhaps most importantly, the wise writer understands that it’s important to be himself. The wise writer knows that chasing trends is folly.

Dexterity – In the game, this refers to “a character’s hand-eye coordination, agility, reflexes, and balance”. Translated to building a writing career, the dexterous writer is a writer who is in a position to respond to market dynamics effectively. Often, this amounts to not having all of one’s eggs in one basket. Rather than working with one publisher exclusively, it’s far more dexterous to work with two or more. Opportunities in publishing emerge from interaction with others. So it behooves an author to interact with as many like-minded folks in the business as possible. Dexterity also applies to formats. For example, are you preparing to explore e-publishing opportunities, when they make sense in the context of the rest of your goals?

Constitution – In the game, this refers to “a character’s health and stamina”. Translated to the craft and business of writing, the writer with a high constitution is a writer who is able to approach her career with a long-term perspective. Obviously, this means the ability to forgo the temptation of grabbing at low-hanging fruit. Being poorly published is worse than not being published at all. The writer with a high constitution score also works at a sustainable pace, neither slipping into workaholism nor suffering extended writer’s block. The writer with a high constitution takes care of herself, her friends and family, and her health. This means putting real thought into writing goals to make certain they’re aggressive but also realistic, given the multitasking most writers have to do given the responsibilities of day jobs, families, and keeping up with what’s being written in her field.

Charisma – In the game, this refers to “a character’s force of personality, persuasiveness, personal magnetism, ability to lead, and physical attractiveness”. This definition could be used almost as-is when applying “charisma” to a writing career. But to flesh it out a little more, consider this. Are you comfortable at conventions? Are you considered likable? Are you at home with self-promotion and wear the “public figure” aspect of being an author like a comfortable garment? Think physical attractiveness doesn’t matter? I dunno…China Miéville’s photo takes up an awful lot of room on the hardcover edition of The City & The City.

Okay, so now the fun part begins…

You can take these ability scores and use them to create D&D-style character profiles of your favorite authors. For the sake of good manners, let’s restrict this to authors who’ve gone on to the big Con in the sky.

H.P. Lovecraft

Strength – The strength of Lovecraft’s actual writing varied significantly over his career. He’s a prime example of an author whose work (from my perspective) often struggled at the micro level but excelled at the macro level. In fact, “excelled at the macro level” just doesn’t do him justice. He changed horror forever by introducing the cosmic perspective. So we’ll estimate this ability level at 15.

Intelligence – Hmm…did Lovecraft learn from his mistakes? This is probably a question better answered by a biographer like S.T. Joshi. His later work seems to hold more appeal than his earlier work, for many. But I don’t think he ever really nailed dialogue. So I’m going to give him a middling score of 11 (in honor of Nigel Tufnel).

 Wisdom – This is another one that I can’t decide on. On the one hand, Lovecraft certainly knew himself, knew what he wanted to do, and stuck to his guns. He got that part of wisdom down. He seems to have not done as well as far as market savvy goes. The documentary Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown states that even as a ghost writer, he didn’t charge the going rates for his services (and as a result sold himself short). However, I feel that the knowing yourself element of this is probably even more important than the knowing the market aspect (as least, in terms of evaluating Lovecraft). So I’m going to give him a score of 17 on this one.

Dexterity – I don’t think Lovecraft can be rated as a very dexterous writer. He sold much of his fiction to Weird Tales and maybe one or two other pulp magazines (correct me if I’m wrong). He never had an actual collection of his stories printed in his life time. He could have benefited from sound business advice. On this score, I’m going to give Lovecraft a lowly 6.

 Constitution – One gets the sense that Lovecraft had a long-term perspective toward his publishing goals, but he earns low points in this one for neglecting his health. Had he taken care of himself, ate well, and gotten treatment for his cancer much sooner, he may have lived much longer than he did. On this score, he gets an 9.

 Charisma – In this area, Lovecraft is bound to rate rather low. Although he did have acquaintances who were attracted to him on the basis of his brilliance, it doesn’t sound like he was a natural schmoozer. Cynical, aloof, and racist Lovecraft earns the lowest score in this ability area, a meager 5.

 Now it’s your turn. Your assignment is to score the D&D-style “abilities” of various authors of your own choosing. The only rule is they have to be deceased. The goal is to get us thinking about self-assessment (not to hurt the feelings of living authors by dissing them through this exercise). Feel free to give your own scores for Lovecraft, too. I’m wondering if other folks would substantially disagree with any of my rankings.

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Reality Bites: “Terrifying Vistas” In The Work Of Lovecraft & Phillip K. Dick

September 23, 2010 at 3:40 am (H.P. Lovecraft, Phillip K. Dick)

Fall 2010 Issue of Zoetrope: All-Story

“Ed rubbed his forehead wearily. ‘I – I got in on something. I saw through. I saw something I wasn’t supposed to see.’”

– Phillip K. Dick, “Adjustment Team”

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age. “

– H.P. Lovecraft, “The Call Of Cthulhu”

Warning:  This essay includes spoilers for the Phillip K. Dick novels A Maze Of Death and Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?

* * *

Last evening I read Phillip K. Dick’s short story “Adjustment Team” (Zoetrope: All Story published it in their most recent issue; a film loosely based on the story is slotted to debut next spring).

I’ve not read a huge amount of Dick’s work yet (besides the story, I’ve only read three of the novels). But I’ve read enough to wonder if there aren’t certain thematic similarities between his fiction and that of another of my favorite authors, H.P. Lovecraft.

Specifically, both Dick and Lovecraft write fiction in which the ignorance is bliss, and knowledge is terror.

In Dick’s work, this is illustrated by Ed Fletcher’s statement “I saw something I wasn’t supposed to see”; but also in Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? – in which we encounter Rachel Rosen; the woman who is in fact a machine merely passing for a woman. It’s a theme also evident in A Maze Of Death, in which the entire first 90% of the book turns out to only have been a virtual reality mind game played by a doomed crew to kill time as their crippled ship orbits a dying star. The crew measures the success of each shared mind game by how much time they consumed before awakening to the grim awareness of their true situation.

A Maze Of Death may take place in outer space, but the real setting for it (and, arguably, most of Dick’s work) is the mind.

In Lovecraft’s fiction, a similar theme is played out on a stage no smaller than the cosmos itself. An astronomy buff from an early age, Lovecraft wrote fiction that reflected his understanding of a universe dwarfing all human concerns; a state of affairs that – if known and fully understood – robs humanity of any sense of significance.

The similarity in theme is countered by some distinct dissimilarity in lifestyle. Lovecraft barely married once; PKD married several times. Lovecraft comes across as up-tight, PKD as a bit of an unhinged 60s counterculture libertine. Lovecraft “was” Providence. PKD grew up a Bay Area boy.

Part of me wonders, though, if Lovecraft was just some sort of “PKD without the drugs”. Had Lovecraft been at a time and place to cross paths with someone like Timothy Leary, and had he experimented with LSD and amphetamines, would his fiction have turned out even more similar to PKD’s?  Would he have learned to enjoy and  get lost in the false-face that  hides reality rather than rip it away?

Alas, the world will never know. But that doesn’t mean we can’t speculate. And, apparently, I’m not the only one to look at the connections between HPL and PKD.

This year, at the first annual Phillip K. Dick Festival, one of the presenters named Erik Davis gave a talk about this very subject. He didn’t touch on the shared theme of blissful ignorance/terrifying knowledge but he did have many other interesting observations to make. I didn’t travel to the PKD festival to hear these remarks, but they are conveniently posted online for your listening pleasure.

Check them out at http://philipkdickfestival.bandcamp.com/track/erik-davis-on-dreaming-pkd-lovecraft

And please do leave me your thoughts on this topic. I’m interesting in hearing if others have sensed a kinship between these two great authors.

5 Comments

CONSPIRACY Loves Company: More Books For Ligotti Lovers

August 5, 2010 at 2:51 am (Albert Camus, H.P. Lovecraft, Miguel De Unamuno Y Jugo, Pessimism, Tamler Sommers, Thomas Ligotti)

So you’ve read Thomas Ligotti’s The Conspiracy Against The Human Race and didn’t find it necessary to kill yourself as a result?

Good! You’ll need to be alive to keep on exploring the haunting philosophy of pessimism, in both its scholarly and literary manifestations. After finishing the book, it occurred to me that the natural next step would be to blog about related works – books by authors that Ligotti references, or books that hit on similar themes.

During our pessimistic “book safari” please keep your hands inside the vehicle. These books are not tame, and they have sharp teeth.

A Very Bad Wizard: Morality Behind The Curtain by Tamler Sommers (Believer Books, 2009; 231 pages)

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents…The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein…” – H.P. Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu”

In Ligotti’s fiction, we human beings are uncanny puppets – beings who think that we think, but really don’t. Beings who believe we are motivated by free will, when we are – in fact – merely animated by amoral (if not out-and-out monstrous) outside forces. Ligotti says our yearning to believe in an eternal soul possessing free will is nothing more than “the pain of Pinocchio” – we all want to be the proverbial “real boy”. Almost all of us deceive ourselves into believing it. Sure enough, it’s dread-inducing stuff.

But the only thing more dread-inducing than Ligotti’s fiction is Tamler Sommers facts.

A Very Bad Wizard is Sommers’ collection of several interviews with his fellow-philosophers as well as primatologists, social and cognitive psychologists, and even a stray law professor. The scholars all work apart from each other, but present research results that support similar conclusions challenging the very existence of free will and objective morality.

Sommers pieces together dissociated knowledge. He correlates the contents.

The result isn’t perfect. After all, these are all interviews previously published in Believer magazine, then collected after the fact – so there is a wee bit of that “stitched together Frankenstein” feelng one gets when reprinted material is assembled in a book. But this is still a decent enough read, and Ligotti fans who would like to explore a scientific basis for pessimism would do well to read this slim volume.

Supernatural Horror In Literature by H.P. Lovecraft (Introduction by E.F. Bleiler; Dover Publications, 1973; 106 pages)

Okay, the truth of the matter is I haven’t read this one yet, so there’s only so much I can write about it.

Comment #1: It does have some of the oddest cover art ever. The gentleman on the front looks like the “The Elephant Man” dolled up like Greg-Brady-as-Johnny-Bravo.  But weird cover art alone did not get me to buy this book (see Comment #2).

Comment #2: I am enthused by the idea of following Ligotti’s literary genealogy even further back than I have so far. He spends some time in The Conspiracy… remarking on the roots of cosmic horror, covering his predecessors: Lovecraft, Poe, and the 18th century novelist Ann Radcliffe. I’ve skimmed a little of this book, and it’s exhilarating to see Lovecraft’s take on a similar project, many years earlier. He mentions Radcliffe, too – as well as many, many other authors from Europe and America.

Just writing about it is making want to read it, which means that I may have to do so and post a review as soon as possible.

Basic Writings Of Existentialism, Edited and with an Introduction by Gordon Marino (The Modern Library, 2004; 505 pages)

Haven’t read this one, either. And, given the book’s length and my busy schedule, chances are I will never read this book in its entirety.

Then why does it earn a place on this book safari? Because it collects, all under one roof, some of the philosophical works discussed in The Conspiracy…. This is helpful because Ligotti’s thesis is a despairing one. Before I buy his thesis (and its implications) lock, stock, and barrel, I want to read Camus’ essay The Myth of Sisyphus. I want to read Miguel De Unamuno Y Jugo. I want to decide if their arguments are as lacking as Ligotti says they are.

This book isn’t really meant to be read cover-to-cover. It’s a survey. Read what you like and leave the rest. But it sounds like there’s an awful lot to like.

Tales Of Mystery & Imagination by Edgar Allen Poe, Illustrated By Harry Clarke (Chartwell Books; 2008; 384 pages)

Not The Book Cover, Just a Poe Pic

This might just be the most beautiful book I’ve ever owned: a lavishly illustrated coffee-table book of some of Poe’s most appreciated stories. Included here since Poe is the literary grand-daddy of Ligotti (and perhaps also to point out that it’s not always true that collections don’t sell). ;)

So there you have it, folks.  Enough pessimism to last a lifetime (or, if you want to be an optimist…maybe not quite that long).  I picked up almost all of these books at my local Half Price Books store, stumbling onto them almost by accident. The only exception is the Sommers book, which I picked up at my local indie bookstore. But I’m sure they’re also all available at Amazon.com.

4 Comments

All Hear The Dark Gospel of Thomas Ligotti

July 19, 2010 at 11:01 am (Edgar Allen Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Pessimism, Thomas Ligotti)

Warning: May Lead To Unfathomable Despair

Thomas Ligotti is not out to make a name for himself, which is perhaps the reason why his name is not better known. He is, sad to say, a poor self-promoter. You will not find him posting messages on Shocklines or Goodreads, suggesting you buy his latest book. He doesn’t even maintain his own website (though a group of fans maintain a site devoted to discussion of his works, Thomas Ligotti Online, at www.ligotti.net). An appearance on The Funky Werepig is not likely in the foreseeable future, and I wouldn’t look for him at any upcoming convention.

He is un-funky, not to mention, un-conventional.

As comfortable as Thomas Ligotti himself seems to be with this arrangement,  it can be annoying to his most passionate fans (those of us who find his works of philosophical pessimism indispensable to our existence). To alleviate this vexation – if only momentarily – I thought I would post a blog to shine a spotlight (however dim) on Ligotti’s work and place in the annals of dark fiction, with a focus on his latest book (and first work of non-fiction) The Conspiracy Against The Human Race.

How I Came To Know The Bad News

I first came across Ligotti’s name almost ten years or so ago, when I stumbled across his story “Our Temporary Supervisor” in an issue of Weird Tales.

I have to confess that, on reading Ligotti the first time (in my late twenties) I didn’t get him.

Perhaps, at that stage of life (still a bit naive) I just couldn’t. If you are in your late twenties, I am not saying you should stop trying to read Ligotti and understand the despair lurking in his pages. I’m just saying that you’re more likely to connect with that despair after you’ve served a few more years of your sentence on this planet.

Don’t worry, you’ll get there.

In my case, it wasn’t until many years later (seven or eight, to be approximate) that I was able to read, and to get Ligotti. It turned out that in order for me to get Ligotti, I had to first get Lovecraft, which meant that I had to read Lovecraft. In the past I’d found Lovecraft’s purple prose impenetrable and really didn’t see much of a pay-off for wading through it. After all, it was all just about running from a big giant squid-god that had been immortalized in con dealer rooms in the form of plushy, tentacled stuffed animals. Right?

Well…no. When I finally approached Lovecraft (a few years ago) I discovered that to really get him, I had to read him in the context of cosmic horror.

Now, what is “cosmic horror”?

Here’s a hint, contrary to what one author acquaintance of mine suggested, it is not simply a cross-genre pairing of horror and science fiction. It’s a lot more complicated (and soul-shattering) than that.

Cosmic horror is perhaps best understood when compared to traditional horror. In traditional horror, there is a protagonist who is deemed “good” (or at least “good enough”) countered by a malevolent force that threatens to end his existence. More often than not, the protagonist wins, and existence is preserved. This is interpreted as a victory.

In cosmic horror, horror is woven into the very fabric of existence. It may (as in the case of Lovecraft’s work) be a horror that has been with us forever but lay dormant and undetected until the “sciences each straining in their own direction” find traces of it. Through a plot in which “pieces of dissociated knowledge” are gradually assembled, vacant parts of the puzzle are filled in, and there comes a realization that the way the universe is assembled is intrinsically horrific, and there is no escape from it. Victory exists only as an illusion.

Cthulhu is not cut from the mold of a classic monster like Dracula or Frankenstein. The horror in Lovecraft is that Cthulhu and his kin are human-nullifying forces. The horror rests not in that they render us dead, but rather in that they render us insignificant.

Not to get all high hifalutin, but it’s a sort of existential horror. Horror of a very different stripe. It’s a sort of horror that Ligotti acquaints with atmospheric horror traced all the way back to the late 18th century novelist Ann Radcliffe and from there on to Poe.

And so Ligotti is the heir to Lovecraft, who was the heir to Poe. And all three may be heirs of Radcliffe.

Having heard the Dark Gospel According to Lovecraft, I decided to once more check out Ligotti. I started with Teatro Grottesco (a collection which is as good an introduction to Ligotti as any, focused – as I read it – on the themes of creativity and nihilism). From there, I went on to read the short novel My Work Is Not Yet Done (which had won the Bram Stoker Award for long fiction in 2002). Both of these are now available in mass market editions from Virgin Books.

I am not at all the best authority on Ligotti, of course. Matt Cardin knows so much more about the man and his works than I do. There are many, many other books, going all the way back to the 80s. But I can only speak to the books I know.

And just what can I say about these books? They are chock full of dark poetry. I have yet to find any writer who can match Ligotti as a prose stylist. At first, they can strike a reader as being “dense”. Sometimes, I found myself having to re-read them, but that is a pleasure not a pain. Often, dialog is sparse (at times, verging on non-existent). The settings are more often than not the type of dank, decrepit cities one is likely to find in the rustbelt midwest.

The books are unlike anything else out there.

It is as though Ligotti is standing on Lovecraft’s mouldering shoulders, tearing away at heights of human delusion in new and ever-more-haunting ways. While Lovecraft’s Great Old Ones were of exotic, extraterrestrial origin, the quintessential Ligotti horror is often presented as a puppet: something that thinks that it thinks, but really doesn’t. Something that believes it exists and has free will, but is in fact merely animated by an outside force. Something, says Ligotti, like you and me.

The Conspiracy Against The Human Race

All of this brings me to the reason why I started this blog in the first place: to tell you about Ligotti’s new non-fiction book, The Conspiracy Against The Human Race. With over two hundred pages of philosophical argument and literary theory, it comes across as a little indulgent. But then again, if anyone deserves to be indulged it is Ligotti.

The Conspiracy Against The Human Race allows Ligotti to put all of his cards out and show us his hand. He comes across as a man of extreme erudition, whose mind can jet from Classical playwrights to mid-twentieth century existentialists, from Buddhism to the latest neuroscience, all in the space of a few pages.

Perhaps his biggest contribution is introducing the reader to a whole cadre of thinkers classified as “pessimists” (though most people would refer to them as “nihilists”). In bouncing their ideas off of his own (and a slew of others), he builds a compelling case that existence is a nightmare, that horror is more real than any of us are, and thus existing (and bringing others into existence) is “not all right”.

The “conspiracy” in the title refers to games Ligotti says we play to minimize our consciousness of reality (in particular, the reality that one day we will cease to exist). We compartmentalize our death-consciousness into a distinct part of our awareness that is sealed off from our day to day lives. We anchor ourselves away from death-awareness, in ultimately ephemeral institutions (family, country, religion). We distract ourselves from our death-awareness by watching sports or fretting over soap operas or politics. We sublimate our death-consciousness by putting it out for general consumption, for open display; sometimes laughing as we point at it.

From this foundation, the author goes on to explore the meaning of the uncanny and how all of this relates to the history of horror fiction.

Needless to say, this book isn’t for everyone. I suggest a heavy dose of distracting from the book’s themes before, during, and after your time with it (watching old Mystery Science Theater 3000 shows worked for me). But, if you’re the sort that’s prepared for the brutal message within, you must read this book. Read it, and if you are a member of the Horror Writers Association (I am not), I recommend that you recommend it for best non-fiction book of 2010.

I doubt that will happen. Too few people seem aware of Ligotti these days for him to get much in the way of awards. But then again, one must hold onto hope…

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