Laughing at the Abyss

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 18^th 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…