| Author | Message | ||
     Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
I've been reading more of the wonderful "Teatro Grottesco". Ok, is it just me, or is Ligotti's work actually very funny? It's his near-ponderous use of repetition, coupled with some of his imagery (which often treads the line between the disturbing and the comical). I find myself smiling with mirth at certain points during the stories, yet am deeply unnerved at the same time. It feels like I'm finally "getting" Ligotti. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 212.50.191.46 |
His utter contempt for humans is titter worthy. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
"The Clown Puppet" is scary as hell, but it's also hilarious... his rants about "puppet nonsense" are priceless. Reading Ligotti is like watching mad people dance: you laugh at their antics yet are afraid of their unpredictability and capacity for irrational behaviour. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.156.32.207 |
I'm glad to read comments above. As you know I've been a big Ligotti fan for many years. Zed said: Reading Ligotti is like watching mad people dance: you laugh at their antics yet are afraid of their unpredictability and capacity for irrational behaviour I'm not being facetious, but if you watched 'Big Brother' last night, this very much falls into place. They are also having a puppet theme at the moment, and there are the decapitated heads of dolls in the prison. I write regularly about this on the TTA Forum. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
Des, watching Big Brother is simply like watching mad people fuck. Funny for about as second, then you are consumed by a sense of shame and guilt. I can't even watch it equipped with a sense of irony. A stupid show for stupid people filled with even stupider people. My wife watches it, btw. :-) | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.160.23.143 |
There's more wit in his recent work, and more anger – he's matured as a writer. Of course, TG represents the best of his short story writing over the last 15 years, so some of the stories go back a while. I've always loved the twisted rage of 'The Clown Puppet'. It reminds me of Joy Division's 'Atrocity Exhibition'. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 212.50.191.46 |
The Clown Puppet didn't work for me. I need something weirder. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.156.32.207 |
Zed said; A stupid show for stupid people filled with even stupider people. Zed also said to me on the 'Teatro Grottesco' thread: Let's loosen up a bit, eh? I repeat the same advice. des | ||
| John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 90.208.48.69 |
But Zed wouldn't be Zed if it wasn't for quotes like that. I have still NEVER seen BB, by the way. Or indeed any other reality show. Apart from five minutes of something called OUTBACK JACK. Which Zed would have loved. Not. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.157.91.38 |
We watch The Apprentice, but that's it. The people on BB are ARSEHOLES - I know this because I've seen around seventeen seconds of the programme in error, and any show that can make a millionaire of someone like Jade Goody needs putting down. Now. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.156.32.207 |
Of course the people on BB are ARSEHOLES. But that doesn't alter my point. Read my column on the TTA forum (in conversation with Marion) nightly. I'm serious about this. But I would hate this tangent to detract from the main subject of this thread: a great author I've enjoyed since the eighties (long before BB)! (The tangents is my fault). | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.242.126 |
:-) No offence, Des. I just think the whole BB thing is a waste of time and energy. And I didn't mean to imply you were stupid, btw: let's face it, you hardly constitute the show's demographic or target audience. :-) | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.157.91.38 |
He does, he does! Just about to start Teatro Grottesco so we're sorta back on target! | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.242.126 |
I read the title story aloud before going to bed last night. Man, did I have some weird dreams... :-) | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
I watch BB BECAUSE they are arseholes. That's the point of the show. Inflicting pain and ironic celebrity careers on arseholes. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.156.32.207 |
Mad story of mine from 'Nasty Piece of Work' in 1997 that I've just put in the DFL Folder on the TLO site: An Uneasy Death This makes Big Brother seem like a puppet show for real. | ||
| John (John) Username: John Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 82.24.4.67 |
I'm about three quarters of the way through Teatro Grottesco - just past the title story, in fact. So far I'm generally enjoying it, although it does feel like some of his work could do with a bit of editing (he must have referred to that 'northern border town' or 'that two-street town' at least twice a page - and I'm not sure the repitition is deliberate). Some nice notions though. It's good to see Virgin Books putting this stuff out. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.232.172 |
I'm sure nothing in Ligotti is accidental. Whether it's always a good idea is another question. He is obsessive and repetitive. The group of stories about the little useless town are surely meant to illustrate circular thinking and narrow horizons. Note the way he uses the term 'intestinal virus' over and over in 'Teatro Grottesco' – he's clearly setting up the reader for what follows. And I doubt whether any editor could get Ligotti to make changes except to correct obvious mistakes – in fact, trying it would probably reveal how many words Ligotti knows that are not polysyllabic and contain no more than four letters. To me, the stories in TG that work brilliantly are 'The Town Manager', 'Purity', 'Our Temporary Supervisor', 'My Case for Retributive Action', 'Teatro Grottesco', 'Gas Station Carnivals', 'The Bungalow House' and 'The Clown Puppet'. The rest are pretty good as well, but are a bit discursive and theoretical for my taste. A few are essays disguised as stories. What strikes me overall about this book is its incredible bleakness and pessimism – the effect of which is heightened by the sensitivity with which he depicts people afflicted by physical or mental illness. Ligotti's anger and bitterness have inspired him to break away from the rather laboured theoretical abstractions of his creative mid-period, and to reach a clarity and intensity that exceeds any of his previous work. Reading Ligotti in this kind of mood is like reading Camus or Sartre at their most embittered, but without the humanism and socialism that both of the latter looked to for solutions. Instead of a progression from thesis and antithesis to synthesis, Ligotti shows us the antithesis shitting over the thesis from a great height – then closes the book. Which makes for a very pure horror reading experience, though a rather limited worldview in non-fiction terms. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
GAS STATION CARNIVALS always bowled me over. And I figured out why. It reminds me of the christmas parties my dad's work place would hold for us kids. The gasworks dressed up as Santa's grotto. Even the Territorial Army Barracks a few years. Santa just recognisable as one of Dad's workmates. Otherwise usually seen in overalls or combat gear. I can't pass that gasworks without getting the same joyous chill that GAS STATION CARNIVALS gives me. Perhaps the more middle class here will not understand this.  With your function halls and your ball rooms. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
I don't need a room for my balls. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.156.32.207 |
With your function halls and your ball rooms ==================== The dance hall had been empty until late evening, but now a few people struggled through the door having just left the pub down the road. The echoey spaces towards the inner-roof were only half-revealed by the slow onset of a giant ball’s twirling glitters. The walls’ shoddy decor was barely visible, too ... the hall’s internal dimness serving two purposes: cosmetic disguise and electric thrift. The first piece from the makeshift loudspeakers had elicited an old man’s recognition of various harmonies morphing into a tune. He moved towards the centre of the deserted floor, like a clumsy sailor on board a storm-tossed ship, Lilley in his wake, tugging her hand as she, perhaps reluctantly, submitted herself to the music. Alone together in the dance. Other couples remained shrunk back into the dimness that still hugged the walls. A ghostly audience for Lilley and the man, who had by now miraculously transformed into the spinning vision of youth and romantic memory. The dancing couple had truly become earlier versions of themselves or they were simply a mirage of youth that the others saw from the side-lines of the hall – stimulated by a drunken nostalgia for old dreams. But someone must have clicked a light-switch by clumsily leaning against it. The whole hall sprung into bright light, revealing all the blemishes and insecurities of reality. Lilley and her man were seen to be exactly what they were: old people on their last legs. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.242.126 |
I think the repetition in a lot of Ligotti's work is, for the most part, hilarious. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.156.32.207 |
I've not noticed any repetition in Ligotti's work. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.242.126 |
Really, Des? It's one of his key techniques: the repetition of certain words and phrases. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.156.32.207 |
I don't call that repetition, but an organic rhythm or ritornelle as in music. This is repetition: I don't call that repetition, but an organic rhythm or ritornelle as in music. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.156.32.207 |
BTW, repetition needs to be noticed to be conscious repetition as well as being close enough (how close?) in the text to spark off notice (or be so far apart it's merely subtle echoes). We all repeat words in our fiction, but I wouldn't call that repetition as a criticism or a literary observation - although strictly anything that is repeated is repetition! But we don't always call it that. I genuinely haven't *noticed* (in this sense) any repetition in Ligotti texts. I'll look out for it now! | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.237.56 |
I haven't read any Ligotti since SONGS OF A DEAD DREAMER, which I found only so-so. The only story I genuinely liked was "Dr Lochrian's Asylum". Something about his writing style in that book yells 'contrived' and 'makeshift', and I can only hope he turns out to be a better writer in his other books. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.156.32.207 |
This is what Ramsey said about SONGS OF A DEAD DREAMER: "One of the most important horror books of the decade...for Ligotti is one of the few consistently original voices in contemporary horror fiction." | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.237.56 |
I know, I have a copy of the book somewhere. I only ever bought it because around 1990 the name Ligotti was on everyone's lips - but his stories strike me as unfinished and skeletal. If you're stoned "The Mystics of Muelenburg" is a good laugh, and I suppose "Vastarien" is a halfway decent Lovecraft immitation. I'd just read my first Lucius Sheppard story, see, and Jack Cady's "By Reason of Darkness", which completely bowled me over. Leafing through SONGS was a bit of a disappointment after that. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.156.32.207 |
Yes, it's all a question of taste, Hubert. Compared to my own stuff, Ligotti's stories are well-rounded novels! ;-) | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.108.36.76 |
Hubert, I think you'll find TEATRO GROTTESCO a lot more original and focused than the previous books. I agree that he had a phase of seeming to believe his own publicity: he started writing abstract theoretical essays in the guise of stories. But some of his early work had real power and intensity – 'Dr Locrian's Asylum' indeed, but also 'The Frolic', 'Drink To Me Only...', 'The Glamour' and 'The Night Schools'. I used to be a semi-sceptic Ligotti-wise, but the new book has won me over. | ||
| Lincoln_brown (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 121.219.157.75 |
Should the stories in 'Teatro Grottesco' be read in order, or are there some that are more accessable, and are a good place to start? (for someone new to Ligotti) | ||
| Tom_alaerts (Tom_alaerts) Username: Tom_alaerts Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.243.65.49 |
Lincoln, perhaps start with his "corporate horror" stories Our Temporary Supervisor and My Case For Retributive Action. | ||
| Lincoln_brown (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 121.219.157.75 |
Thanks Tom, appreciate it. Hard to know where to start with some authors. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 87.102.81.183 |
I thought many of the stories I read in TEATRO GROTESCO felt unfinished. (felt? Thought? make your mind up) But I've felt that way before about his works. Maybe the emotional padding that fills the bones out is provided by us, only in certain circumstances? (shuddup!) | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
"I used to be a semi-sceptic Ligotti-wise, but the new book has won me over." That's exactly what happened with me, Joel. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.70.81.170 |
I'll pick it up at Fantasycon - Virgin are bound to be there aren't they? | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
90% of BFS membership at a guess. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
Ha! That's a classic, Joel. :-) | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.70.81.170 |
Wicked Joel :>) |