Re: SUPER THREAD: Ligotti
Posted by:
Sawfish (IP Logged)
Date: 14 September, 2020 10:53AM
Good exchange, Knygatin!
SPOLIERS...
First off, in referring to "Drink to me..." (DTM for our purposes), I had the wrong title. The story that I found to have a "nasty" concept was actually "Eye of the Linx", the *next* story in the collection. Concerns the commericialization of S&M in hidden clubs, and what sorts might find themselves attracted to this.
Very scary and sickening. Much more sickening/disgusting, when you contemplate the character of those main characters in the story, and you realize that for all those "goths" you used to see in the 80s--and also those attendees of the PDX HPL Film Festival that so deeply impressed me--there is something very weak and vulnerable driving it. A sickness of the soul really. And the narrative POV in "Eye of the Lynx" is a predator of that. Very "Jack-the-Ripper".
I'm not joking. Prior to the film festival, I had seen one or two of them within the context of my daily life--never completely immersed in all their questionable finery--maybe in a bookstore or something. But there at night, in the winding interior corridors, sconce-lit, of an old movie palace, lots of them, full regalia, talking together--the air of utter psychic illness comes off of them like a tsunami. They don't really scare you so much as a) disgust you, and b) make you want to try to keep your kid from suffering the strange and compelling fate that has befallen them. For me, there was never any real danger there (she turns out to be a sort of a skeptical middleweight wise-guy, a lot like her old man), but whatever has screwed them over so that they must play-act like this with their one-and-only lifespans, really, this is what you'd wish on dire enemies... (GULP!)
In my opinion, DTM is an excellent, *excellent* story. It, to me, is an extended social commentary on the crassness of modern society, in its lockstep pursuit of superficialities. Against all odds I found that I was aligned with the intent of the narrator's "joke"--in a sense it was the same basic revelation as is in the old movie, "The Magic Christian", where virtually everyone is revealed to have little to no sense of value.
Then there is the introduction of the little boy, upstairs, whom Ligotti introduces as a "normal" observer, not taken in by the mesmerist's ruse.
"Yucky", indeed.
The kid is also used to supply the route to the back door, as a way to advance the plot.
This one was enjoyable, to me.
Knygatin Wrote:
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> Excellent overview observations, Sawfish. I rarely
> analyze supernatural literature from that social
> perspective. I just dive into it, and let it
> affect me emotionally and aesthetically (either it
> is good, and convinces me, or else it isn't. That
> is my simple judgment. I want it to remain a
> supernatural illusion in my head. Otherwise I
> reject and forget about it.).
>
> Yes, I really like "Drink to Me Only with
> Labyrinthine Eyes". It is Poesque to my senses.
Yes. Now that I've got the right story, I can see that it's something like "The Masque of the Red Death".
> I
> think Ligotti is a great prose writer, comparable
> to Lovecraft in lucidity and loaded meaning (not
> quite as good, but probably the best modern prose
> writer of horror).
Agreed.
If you judge him on the very first story in the collection, "The Frolic", you think maybe not--kinda clumsy with poor dialog, and what's worse, using a dialog expository to tell the entire story, except for the very loaded and frightening revelation at the end.
> And he has humor (which I don't
> see in Lovecraft). (CAS has humor too, something I
> forgot to mention in an earlier post. Humor and
> horror do not conflict, when done with intended
> artistic insight. They marry very well.)
> One scene in this story has especially stuck in my
> mind: A person is having a conversation in a room
> that has old-fashioned heavily textured and
> patterned wallpaper. In an attempt to be socially
> relaxed, he leans against the wall; but the
> wallpaper pattern confuses his sense of
> perspective, misjudging its distance, so he loses
> his balance, making a fool of himself.
Making a fool of one's self at a party of social luminaries is pretty much what the story is all about, in the implied ending. Boy, oh boy. Are all those glitteratti in for a BIG surprise when he rings the doorbell, huh? ;^)
Two more points...
1) He does not tell us what happens when he rings the bell--that happens immediately after the end of the story. This is an ***excellent*** way to handle it--he hints repeatedly what he has done, both to the audience (now the party attendees) and to his assistant, so you know damned well in your mind's eye, what's happening (and confirmed by the kid) and what's more, what *will* happen once they return from the mesmerized state.
I mean, you could find stuff to quibble over, conceptually, but this is *fantasy*, and in knowing this and deciding to invest the time to read it, all that it owes to the reader really is to not violate any of its own rules. If it has set no, or few, rules, well then it has a whole lot of freedom and leeway.
Stylistic/mechanical quibbles would still be valid, though.
2) Do you recall an HPL story (I think), told from the POV, 1st person, of what is revealed to be a decrepit corpse who awakens post-mortem, confused, knowing nothing of his present status, and returns to a party, scaring the bejeezus out of the attendees? He eventually sees himself in a mirror...
I *think* this is HPL, but am too settled in right now to look it up, but maybe it rings a bell with you.
> I find this
> brilliant, an example of descriptive details that
> Ligotti uses to distort the sense of reality. And
> it is funny and nightmarish at the same time.
I'm on "The Lost Art of Twilight" now. At one point in the collection, there is a section where he discourses on the various stylistic schools that can be used to write a horror story: realistic, gothic, experimental, etc. I didn't really get a lot out of it, in truth, and it seemed a little showy, like a juggler who has entertained and impressed you quite sufficiently, deciding to show you that he can do all the same stuff with razor-sharpened axes, or flambeaux.
Also, he's not an "atmospheric" writer, so far as I've seen. Not like Dale observes in his paper on the comfortable aspects of HPL.
--Sawfish
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"The food at the new restaurant is awful, but at least the portions are large."
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