/lit/ - Literature

The Call of the Crocodile of its time

>>20745965
i thought a lot of the stories were hit or miss, the ones that hit are pretty good tho

>foreword by vandemeer
pottery. overhyped kafka ripoff with a foreword by an overhyped uninteresting fartpusher.

I've read The Last Feast of Harlequin and I enjoyed it, don't know any of his other work.

Page 73 contains a screamer. Scared the shit out of me. I will let everyone know because I don't support that kind of cheap scare.

>>20745965
some good 80s horror fiction followed by some good 90s horror fiction

Good book

Densely written horror clearly inspired by Lovecraft

>>20745965
Some of the best existential nightmares you've ever read, interspersed with some meandering shit that won't make any impact whatsoever. It depends what sort of person you are.
>>20746988
This is true, but - I actually agree with Vandermeer in the introduction, Ligotti manages to consume Lovecraft and overcome him, unlike so many authors who seem content to live in his shadow. Looking at his later collections, Lovecraft could never write a story like "The Red Tower," for example.

If you arrived through the lovecraft pipeline, fewer monsters, more atmosphere, better writing generally. One of my favorite stories and I feel a very good example of what sets ligotti apart from other wf authors is The Mystics of Mullenburg. More worldly experience than HPL but just as misanthropic, from a shitty Detroit rust belt upbringing instead of the sheltered gentry life that lovecraft larped.

>>20746023
I don't remember that
>>20745965
I liked the one about the cosmic pedophile and the dolls

>>20745965
I thought a lot of the stories were hit or miss, the ones that hit are pretty good though

Masterpiece, genuinely unhinged horror. Knowing Ligotti is incredibly mentally ill enhances the experience.

I adore this book and Ligotti is an incredible writer but let me go off on a tangent about the guy who wrote the introduction. Jeff Vandermeer has always had this retarded hate boner for Lovecraft. He does this backhanded thing where he only mentions Lovecraft's influence on Ligotti very flippantly a single time. He pushed for the World Fantasy Award to change the award from the Lovecraft bust. He says weird fiction needs to "move past Lovecraft". He's a very sad little man who despite coining The New Weird refuses to acknowledge one of weird fiction's key founders and when he does it's with an air of disgust. Is it great that the Vandermeers are publishing those big tomes of weird fiction? Absolutely. But Lovecraft's legacy will continue to be far stronger from Jeff Vandermeer and no matter how hard he tries to escape he will always be in Lovecraft's shadow. I think it's always insanely funny when everyone compares his work to Lovecraft or calls it Lovecraftian (and it happens A LOT) because I know it makes him seethe.

I like it so far
Should i read the conspiracy against the human race after this, is it any good?

>>20748610
no its dangerous (not "cool" dangerous, "depression" dangerous). read teatro grottesco; safe to say the quality doesnt let up

>>20748504
Sounds like some character from weird fiction, the virgin literary academic vs the Chad racist loon

>>20748504
>weird fiction needs to "move past Lovecraft"
his problem is that weird fiction doesn't exist
Cosmic horror does, and ghost stories, xenofictiom, absurdism and other even more nebulous categories, but vandermeer seems obsessed with the idea of there being a throughline in literature that includes Lovecraft AND Poe AND Kafka AND Schulz literally only because one "lovecraftian" writer, Ligotti, listed the latter two as influences. Frankly Cormac McCarthy writes more similarly to Lovecraft than Schulz does, or even Ligotti

>>20748610
Conspiracy is a long essay on philosophical pessimism and horror fiction. If you're interested in Mainlander, Cioran, Schopenhauer and the like, it's a good read.

>>20745965
13 year old thinking

>>20749884
this. i'll never comprehend how a supposedly smart board like /lit/ still falls for adolescent memes like genre fiction, atheism or antinatalism. grow up!

>>20749892

>>20745970
Just kill yourself

>>20749892
so this is the power of being chud.

>>20745965
>What am I in for?
Read it when it comes.

>>20745965
boring "horror" stories written by the blandest accountant in the world

>>20745965
Lovecraft for Democrat voters

>>20750744
Go back to /pol/.

>>20750775
>muh antiracist horror

>>20750744
Unironically, because despite dwelling on urban decay all the timr he always leaves out one of the major contributing factors

>>20745965
Crapola

>>20748480
Stop that mf.

I've had this book for years and have yet to get around to reading it. Short stories in the horror genre tends to drag for me.

It's very good but don't expect lovecraft, which is who he's often compared to (because lovecraft became a meme).
Ligotti's stories don't hold the same sense of scientism, and instead give off the sense that the universe is a hideous cartoon

the literary equivalent of Rick and Morty

idk. havent read it yet

I haven't read everything in that collection but his best stories so far have been Masquerade of a Dead Sword and Dr. Locrian's Asylum.
The Town Manager is also great, but not scary

>>20752404
No that's Chuck Wendig

>>20745965
goofy ahh cover

>>20753001
I love all of the stories, Notes on Writing Horror is one of the best meta stories I've read. Still slapping myself that I never got to go to the Florida reading with Padgett

>>20748504
Left-leaning people can't stand that Lovecraft had views they find abhorrent, to the point of wanting to pilfer his creative output and shame his memory into obscurity. A deranged cult of conformity, they are.

>>20754040
tbf lovecraft was a raging chud, toxic even for his time

>>20752404
Retard

>>20754040
>Left-leaning people can't stand that Lovecraft
Kek, Ligotti is left leaning and he is the greatest Lovecraft simp alive. It's almost like Ligotti absorbed Lovecraft and became one, very uncanny.

>>20754046
Doesn't matter, guy could've been known for screaming FUCK SPEAR CHUCKING MOON CRICKET SAMBO PAVEMENT APE NIGGERS in public every day but that still doesn't give anyone the moral ground to handwave away an author with so much influence

>>20754065
true

>>20754064
>he is the greatest Lovecraft simp alive
Not even close. That would be that idiot Joshi. Ligotti actually doesn't seem so enthusiastic about lovecraft compared to Poe or Kafka, but he is a huge Bruno Schulz fanboy

>>20754331
>Joshi
He is a simp in biographical or scholarly sense. But Ligotti is the greatest simp in the soul sense and that he can easily shit out a good Lovecraft story. See Ligotti's tribute to Lovecraft: The Last Feast of Harlequin

>>20750744
>>20754064
Where does this show up? Does he talk about his politics in an interview? I would've figured the guy that wrote TCATHR would be the apolitical at best, abhorring policy at worst

>>20755935
just dumb anons projecting as usual

>>20755935
I think it's because he has a strain of "Corporate Horror" stories about nightmarish workplaces, and giant companies that seem almost like gods, so that could seem kind of Marxist. (But it would be a Marx with zero hope of revolutionary change ever occuring, so quite different in that way.)

>>20754064
>he is the greatest Lovecraft simp alive
Nah that's Edward Lee. Self-admitted simp, even wrote Lovecraft into his "redneck" mythos.

He made Lovecraft fuck a load of albinos

>>20745965
Is it actually real, I thought it was a meme.

>>20756820
Are you asking if the book real?

>>20748647
This, seriously. You better get book as a joke or...
Search for more philosofy

>>20755935
>I politically self-identify as a socialist. I want everyone to be as comfortable as they can be while they’re waiting to die. Unfortunately, the major part of Western civilization consists of capitalists, whom I regard as unadulterated savages. As long as we have to live in this world, what could be more sensible than to want yourself and others to suffer as little as possible? This will never happen because too many people are unadulterated savages. They’re brutal and inhuman.

>>20757444
nothing more comfy than starving to death because someone with a liberal arts degree is in charge of food distribution

>>20748504
>I think it's always insanely funny when everyone compares his work to Lovecraft or calls it Lovecraftian (and it happens A LOT) because I know it makes him seethe.
Same as me when I make sure to mention how racist and problematic Lovecraft was whenever a thread about him comes up. Makes the chuds seethe and is always guaranteed to get several responses.

>>20757793
It's no mystery Lovecraft was a racist. Everyone knows about that by now. His work is still incredible, and he's a fascinating literary figure

>>20758023
>His work is still incredible
eh, it's okay

Ligotti is 100% right about schizos making the best fiction writers

>>20756543
I still think it's incredibly funny that the writer who leaves the least to the imagination and talks about gross fucking all the time loves the writer who intentionally wanted the reader to conjure up their own images of the monsters and hates sex

>>20748504
>Jeff Vandermeer has always had this retarded hate boner for Lovecraft.

Also Clark Ashton Smith. In the collection he introduced, he actually insults Smith and implies that Smith is somehow miraculously good in spite of his shittiness. He and his wife turned Weird Tales into a crapfest that printed romantic vampire chick-lit and he once said words to the effect that new Lovecraftian stories should be about striving to understand Cthulhu so we could build bridges and foster mutual understanding.

>>20758326
>He and his wife turned Weird Tales into a crapfest that printed romantic vampire chick-lit and he once said words to the effect that new Lovecraftian stories should be about striving to understand Cthulhu so we could build bridges and foster mutual understanding

>>20745965
Wanted to like it more than I liked it. Constantly waiting to be weirded out/shocked/anything. His stories make me tired.

>>20758326
I had no idea about the Smith shit, that's disgusting. I agree 100% on Vandermeers not being the right people to chart the future of weird fiction. The real future of weird fiction lies elsewhere, and there are plenty of excellent authors, Vandermeer may be the most mainstream but he's also the one who has the weakest grasp on what makes it so great. I have heard many people say that the Garland adaptation of Annihilation is superior to the Southern Reach trilogy. I think it's really funny how Laird Barron basically said in an interview that Vandermeer shouldn't bite the hand that feeds and should shut the fuck up.

>>20758999
“Let's say it once and for all: Poe and Lovecraft - not to mention a Bruno Schulz or a Franz Kafka - were what the world at large would consider extremely disturbed individuals. And most people who are that disturbed are not able to create works of fiction. These and other names I could mention are people who are just on the cusp of total psychological derangement. Sometimes they cross over and fall into the province of 'outsider artists.' That's where the future development of horror fiction lies - in the next person who is almost too emotionally and psychologically damaged to live in the world but not too damaged to produce fiction.”

― Thomas Ligotti

>>20759020
I post this quote quite frequently here and I completely agree, the mentally ill are the greatest writers of the weird

LIGOTTI-SAMA FUCKING ACKNOWLEDGED US IN AN INTERVIEW AND HE IS PROUD OF US

>BASED
BASED
>BASED
BASED

>Neddal Ayad: Incidentally, do you notice much of a gender split in your readership?
>Thomas Ligotti: It’s pretty much all maladjusted guys with advanced university degrees, although there are some outstanding female exceptions with advanced degrees and literary talents. They’re not what people think of as nerds living in their parents’ basements. The ones with whom I’ve been in contact over the years live far more normal lives than I do. In any case, I’d like to put in a good word for nerds living in their parents’ basement — they’re an undeservedly maligned subculture that I’m proud to count among my readers if they’re out there.

>>20759044
Based Ligotti

>>20758062
To be fair, Lee is pretty open about writing purely to entertain people. He's a massive fan boy of Lovecraft, though. Literally spends most of his free time rereading his works.

>>20758326
>new Lovecraftian stories should be about striving to understand Cthulhu so we could build bridges and foster mutual understanding.

This reminds me of what happened to the SCP foundation - a sci-fi/horror writing project that somehow got taken over by people who wanted to re-write everything to fit their personal politics. I don't understand why you you take cosmic horror, a genre that is about the universe being horrifying and uncaring, and use it to push some kind of progressive message.

>>20745965
It gets progressively better. From what I remember it's chronologically ordered so in the beginning it's mostly just off the mill horror stories he wrote before he found his own style. The second half contains a lot of gems though. If you want a collection that's consistently good from cover to cover get Teatro Grotesco

>>20759044
how kind of him

>>20758999
>Laird Barron
hack

>>20759744
I dunno. I'm reading through it and I'm liking Songs of a Dead Dreamer a lot more than Teatro Grottesco. His older stories feel more fleshed out while a lot of TG is so vague as to be underwritten.

>dude boring corporate shit and shitty writing
why the fuck does this board and "weird literature" fans in general love this hack so much? his writing is fucking boring. meanwhile actual inheritors to lovecrafts legacy are forgotten about and never mentioned
ligotti doesnt even understand lovecraft

>>20757444
Liggotisisters...

>>20760546
>why the fuck does this board and "weird literature" fans in general love this hack so much?
the first half of this thread is just people shitting on him
>meanwhile actual inheritors to lovecrafts legacy are forgotten about and never mentioned
then mention one
>Ligotti doesn't even understand Lovecraft
he probably does but he wasn't trying to write like him like you're saying. His biggest literary influences were Nabakov, Poe and Schulz

>>20760546
>ligotti doesnt even understand lovecraft
OH NO NO NO NO NO

Read The Last Feast of Harlequin

>>20760607
>then mention one
KEW
>>20760607
>he probably does but he wasn't trying to write like him like you're saying. His biggest literary influences were Nabakov, Poe and Schulz
He literally doesn't understand lovecraft as a person. lovecraft wasn't a delusional maniacal lonely schizo pessimist hermit who hated humanity, he was sociable and well liked and his "cthulhu mythos" wasn't written to be taken seriously

>>20760648
>KEW
Karl Edward Wagner?

>>20760672
yes
sticks and 220 swift are far more """lovecraftian""" than anything ligotti has ever written

>>20760722
okay, but who cares?

>>20760726
>okay, but who cares?
Because Ligotti isn't lovecraftian so why do you keep shilling him so?

>>20760775
>Because Ligotti isn't lovecraftian so why do you keep shilling him so?
I've said multiple times itt that he isn't like lovecraft outside a couple specific homage stories

>>20760607
>>20760775
Ligotti said that lovecraft influenced him to get published and become a writer in the first place, that said he absorbed his influences and then evolved into something different quite fast. Ligotti makes a lot more sense once you see him as coming from the central/eastern european literary tradition instead of an american one, he has way more in common with bernhard, kafka, schulz, max blecher etc than any american author except poe and hpl

>>20760639
>The Last Feast of Harlequin
he dedicated that one to lovecraft, but he has more overt lovecraftian stories. to wit, the sect of the idiot (which is literally about azathoth), nethescurial, and in the shadow of another world

>>20745965
1)I read it
2)I read some of it
3)I didn’t read it

>>20761628
Fuck wrong thread

>>20756856
Yes

>>20761846
okay, the answer is yes

>>20761628
Surprisingly Ligottian answer

>>20759044
Damn, that made me smile. You're alright Tommy.

>>20759044
NO WAY

>>20759044
No one's ever been this nice to me. My basement seems a little brighter.