American horror author
Thomas Ligotti
(born July 9, 1953) is an American
horror
writer. His writings are rooted in several
literary genres
? most prominently
weird fiction
? and have been described by critics as works of philosophical horror, often formed into short stories and novellas in the tradition of
gothic fiction
.
[1]
The worldview espoused by Ligotti in his fiction and non-fiction has been described as
pessimistic
and
nihilistic
.
[1]
[2]
The Washington Post
called him "the best kept secret in contemporary horror fiction."
[3]
Career
[
edit
]
Ligotti started his professional writing career in the early 1980s with
short stories
published in American
small press
magazines. He was contributing editor to
Grimoire
from 1982 to 1985.
[4]
In 2015, Ligotti's first two collections,
Songs of a Dead Dreamer
and
Grimscribe: His Lives and Works
, were republished in one volume by
Penguin Classics
as
Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe
.
[5]
Michael Calia of
The Wall Street Journal
wrote of the reprint that "Horror writer Thomas Ligotti is about to enter the American literary canon. Penguin Classics published a volume of Mr. Ligotti’s short stories, making him one of 10 living writers, including
Thomas Pynchon
and
Don DeLillo
, among the hundreds the imprint has published in the U.S."
[6]
Ligotti's work received high praise following the publication from the likes of
The New York Times Book Review
,
[7]
the
Los Angeles Review of Books
,
[8]
The Washington Post
,
[9]
and
The New Yorker
.
[10]
Terrence Rafferty
contrasts Ligotti with
Stephen King
, observing, "King, the great entertainer, needs the story as the comedian needs the joke, and when he can’t quite deliver it he dies (in the comedian’s sense). King is a master of horror, though. When inspiration fails, he has the technique to fake it. Thomas Ligotti is a master of a different order, practically a different species. He probably couldn’t fake it if he tried, and he never tries. He writes like horror incarnate."
[7]
Ligotti collaborated with the musical group
Current 93
on the albums
In a Foreign Town, In a Foreign Land
(1997, reissued 2002),
I Have a Special Plan for This World
(2000),
This Degenerate Little Town
(2001) and
The Unholy City
(2003), all released on
David Tibet
's
Durtro
label. Tibet has also published several limited editions of Ligotti's books on Durtro Press. Additionally, Ligotti played guitar on Current 93's contribution to the compilation album
Foxtrot
, whose proceeds went to the treatment of musician
John Balance
's alcoholism.
[11]
Personal life
[
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]
He has cited
Thomas Bernhard
,
William S. Burroughs
,
Emil Cioran
,
Vladimir Nabokov
,
Edgar Allan Poe
,
Giacomo Leopardi
,
Samuel Beckett
,
Franz Kafka
, and
Bruno Schulz
as being among his favorite writers.
H. P. Lovecraft
is also an important touchstone for Ligotti: a few stories, "The Sect of the Idiot" in particular, make explicit reference to Lovecraft's
Cthulhu Mythos
, and one, "The Last Feast of Harlequin", was dedicated to Lovecraft. Also among his avowed influences are
Algernon Blackwood
,
M.R. James
, and
Arthur Machen
, all
fin de siecle
horror authors known for their subtlety and implications of the cosmic and supernatural in their stories.
[1]
He has also invoked the influence of philosophers such as
Arthur Schopenhauer
and
Peter Wessel Zapffe
.
[1]
Ligotti has suffered from
chronic anxiety
and
anhedonia
for much of his life; these have been prominent themes in his work.
[1]
Ligotti avoids the
explicit violence
common in some recent horror fiction, preferring to establish a disquieting, pessimistic atmosphere through the use of subtlety and repetition. Ligotti has stated he prefers short stories to longer forms, both as a reader and as a writer,
[1]
though he has written a
novella
,
My Work Is Not Yet Done
(2002)
[12]
Ligotti's ancestry is three-quarters
Sicilian
, one-quarter Polish, a genetic combination he likes to think "contributed to the bizarre quality of my imagination and to what has been called its 'universality'." He says that his Polish grandmother's stories, though not horrific, "put me in touch with an older and stranger world than I would otherwise have known and that emerged when I started writing stories so many years later".
[13]
Ligotti attended
Macomb County Community College
between 1971 and 1973 and graduated from
Wayne State University
in 1978.
[14]
For 23 years Ligotti worked as an Associate Editor at Gale Research (now the
Gale Group
), a publishing company that produces compilations of literary (and other) research. In the summer of 2001, Ligotti quit his job at the Gale Group and moved to south Florida. Politically, he identifies as
socialist
.
[15]
[16]
Influence
[
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]
He has been influenced by the "first-person voice in which
Nabokov
wrote" and the "densely metaphorical style of
Bruno Schulz
".
[17]
In 2003,
Wildside Press
published
The Thomas Ligotti Reader: Essays and Explorations
, a collection of essays about Ligotti's work edited by
Darrell Schweitzer
.
Author
Jeff VanderMeer
has penned numerous pieces praising Ligotti's writing, including the introduction to the
Penguin Classics
edition of
Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe
.
[18]
[19]
[20]
In 2014, the
HBO
television series
True Detective
attracted attention from some of Ligotti's fans because of the resemblance of the pessimistic,
antinatalist
philosophy espoused in the first few episodes by the character of
Rust Cohle
(played by
Matthew McConaughey
) and Ligotti's own philosophical pessimism and antinatalism, especially as expressed in
The Conspiracy Against the Human Race
. After accusations that dialogue from Cohle's character in
True Detective
were lifted from
The Conspiracy Against the Human Race,
[21]
[22]
the series' writer,
Nic Pizzolatto
, confirmed in
The Wall Street Journal
[23]
[24]
[25]
that Ligotti, along with several other writers and texts in the weird supernatural horror genre, had indeed influenced him. Pizzolatto said he found
The Conspiracy Against the Human Race
to be "incredibly powerful writing".
[25]
On the topic of
hard-boiled detectives
, he asked: "What could be more hardboiled than the worldview of Ligotti or [Emil] Cioran?"
[25]
The writing of Ligotti and
Eugene Thacker
is cited as an influence on the 2021 album
The Nightmare of Being
by the Gothenburg melodic death metal band
At the Gates
.
[26]
Bibliography
[
edit
]
- Songs of a Dead Dreamer
(1985, rev. & exp. 1989)
- Grimscribe: His Lives and Works
(1991)
- Noctuary
(1994)
- The Agonizing Resurrection of Victor Frankenstein and Other Gothic Tales
(1994)
- The Nightmare Factory
(1996). Essentially an omnibus of selections from Ligotti's first three collections, with a concluding section containing new stories. All of the stories in the concluding section were later printed in
Teatro Grottesco
.
- In a Foreign Town, in a Foreign Land
(1997, accompanying CD by
Current 93
)
- I Have a Special Plan for This World
(2000, accompanying CD by Current 93)
- This Degenerate Little Town
(2001, accompanying CD by Current 93)
- The Unholy City
(2002, accompanying CD by Current 93)
- My Work Is Not Yet Done: Three Tales of Corporate Horror
(2002)
- Crampton: A Screenplay
(2003, with Brandon Trenz)
(Unproduced screenplay written in 1998 for an episode of
The X-Files
)
- Sideshow, and Other Stories
(2003)
- Death Poems
(2004)
- The Shadow at the Bottom of the World
(2005)
- Teatro Grottesco
(2006, reprinted in 2008)
- The Conspiracy Against the Human Race
(2010)
- The Spectral Link
(2014)
- Born to Fear: Interviews with Thomas Ligotti
(2014), edited by Matt Cardin
- Songs of a Dead Dreamer & Grimscribe
(2015)
- The Small People (2021). A chapbook reprint of a single story previously collected in
The Spectral Link
.
- Paradoxes From Hell (2021). A chapbook reprint of a previously uncollected story and two poems.
- Pictures of Apocalypse (2023). A collection of 20 new poems.
Adaptations
[
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]
Graphic novels
Awards
[
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]
References
[
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]
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
Interview with Thomas Ligotti
? web interview from Published in The New York Review of Science Fiction Issue 218, Vol. 19, No. 2 (October 2006).
- ^
"Thomas Ligotti"
.
Dark Moon Rising
. Archived from
the original
on 2007-09-29.
- ^
Blurb from Ligotti's
The Nightmare Factory.
- ^
Schweitzer, Darrell, ed. (2003).
The Thomas Ligotti Reader
. Holicong, PA: Wildside Press. p. 178.
- ^
Ligotti, Thomas (2015).
Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe
. New York, NY: Penguin Classics.
ISBN
978-0143107767
.
- ^
Calia, Michael (September 21, 2015).
"Penguin Classics to Publish Ligotti Stories"
.
The Wall Street Journal
.
- ^
a
b
Rafferty, Terrence (October 29, 2015).
"Stephen King's 'The Bazaar of Bad Dreams' and More"
.
The New York Times Book Review
.
- ^
Clune, Michael W (January 27, 2016).
"Loving the Alien: Thomas Ligotti and the Psychology of Cosmic Horror"
.
Los Angeles Review of Books
.
- ^
Dirda, Michael (October 27, 2015).
"Michael Dirda's picks for Halloween chillers: Get ready to be grossed out"
.
The Washington Post
.
- ^
Bebergal, Peter (October 29, 2015).
"The Horror of the Unreal"
.
The New Yorker
.
- ^
Smith, Richard (11 December 2004).
"Obituary: John Balance"
.
The Guardian
.
Archived
from the original on 10 January 2014.
- ^
Ligotti, Thomas (2002).
My Work is Not Yet Done
. Poplar Bluff, MO: Mythos Books.
ASIN
B003U2ENPI
.
- ^
"An Interview with Thomas Ligotti Born to Fear"
. The Teeming Brain. February 23, 2015
. Retrieved
March 2,
2017
.
- ^
Thomas Ligotti (24 November 2009).
Teatro Grottesco
. Ebury Publishing. pp. 3?.
ISBN
978-0-7535-2517-3
.
- ^
"Author Thomas Ligotti"
.
The Damned Interviews
. July 16, 2011. Archived from
the original
on July 16, 2011.
- ^
Hall, Tina (2015).
The Damned Book of Interviews
. Crossroad Press.
- ^
"Wonderbook Interview with Thomas Ligotti"
.
Wonderbook
. 2013-10-11
. Retrieved
2024-03-08
.
- ^
Jeff VanderMeer (13 August 2014).
"Thomas Ligotti 101: A Guide to the Cult Writer Now Linked to True Detective"
. Vulture
. Retrieved
8 October
2020
.
- ^
Ligotti, Thomas (October 6, 2015).
Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe
. London: Penguin Classics. p. xiv.
ISBN
978-0143107767
.
- ^
Jeff VanderMeer (5 October 2015).
"The Legacy of Thomas Ligotti"
. Jeff VanderMeer
. Retrieved
8 October
2020
.
- ^
Todd Leopold (8 August 2014).
"
'True Detective' writer accused of plagiarism - CNN.com"
.
CNN
. Retrieved
2016-05-26
.
- ^
Davis, Mike (2014-08-04).
"Did the writer of "True Detective" plagiarize Thomas Ligotti and others?"
.
Lovecraft eZine
. Retrieved
2016-05-26
.
- ^
Calia, Michael (January 30, 2014).
"The Most Shocking Thing About HBO's 'True Detective'
"
.
WSJ Speakeasy
.
- ^
"The Arkham Digest: Interview: Nic Pizzolatto, creator/writer of HBO's True Detective"
.
Arkhamdigest.com
. Retrieved
2016-05-26
.
- ^
a
b
c
Calia, Michael (February 2, 2014).
"Writer Nic Pizzolatto on Thomas Ligotti and the Weird Secrets of 'True Detective'
"
.
WSJ Speakeasy
.
- ^
"At the Gates: The Nightmare Of Being"
. Pitchfork.com. 8 July 2021
. Retrieved
14 August
2021
.
- ^
"Ligotti, Thomas (Robert) 1953- - Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series | HighBeam Research"
. September 24, 2015. Archived from
the original
on September 24, 2015.
- ^
"Rhysling Anthology and Awards: 1986"
. Sfpoetry.com. 2003-11-08. Archived from
the original
on 2016-03-05
. Retrieved
2015-09-19
.
- ^
a
b
c
"World Fantasy Awards - Complete Listing"
. Worldfantasy.org. Archived from
the original
on 2013-10-15
. Retrieved
2015-09-19
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
"Horror Writers Association - Past Bram Stoker Award Nominees & Winners"
. Horror.org. 2000-06-15
. Retrieved
2019-10-18
.
- ^
"The Locus Index to SF Awards: British Fantasy Awards Winners By Year"
. Locusmag.com. Archived from
the original
on 2002-04-24
. Retrieved
2015-09-19
.
- ^
":: ihg :: International Horror Guild :: ihg ::"
. Horroraward.org
. Retrieved
2015-09-19
.
- ^
"HWA announces 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award winners Owl Goingback and Thomas Ligotti"
. Retrieved
2020-04-17
.
External links
[
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Short stories
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Story collections
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Other works
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Adaptations
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Miscellaneous
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