Laughing at the Abyss

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 18^th 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)

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.