Item: a new Ligotti interview, this one published at Thomas Ligotti Online and conducted by the site’s founder (and my dear friend), Jon Padgett. The subject is the origin of Tom’s two new stories “Metaphysica Morum” and “The Small People,” which have just been published as the short book The Spectral Link. The details make for a real-life narrative that sounds like a Ligottian horror story, since they explain the specifics of the physical collapse from abdominal agony that Tom experienced in 2012, and that led to a “revitalization of creativity” akin to the one experienced by the character of Grossvogel after he suffers a similar episode in “The Shadow, The Darkness.”
Here’s a morsel to whet your appetite:
The basis for both stories, however, was an incredible sense of alienation I felt following my surgeries, the sense of a reality that could not be denied, a vivid reminder of my already pessimistic view of life, and even an expansion of that view due to my experience of literally unbearable physical pain. I had known long-term physical pain before, but this was different somehow. Essentially, though, that pain ultimately made me feel more myself than ever, both emotionally and cognitively. I couldn’t look away any longer from what I once named “the nightmare of the organism,” despite my elevated mood. It was like the phenomenon of always being aware of my heart beating that goes with having panic-anxiety disorder, which is the state I inhabited while writing almost all of my stories. All in all, it seemed I was even less a part of the world’s prevailing sense of the real than I was before. This was not an unfamiliar feeling for me, but it was massively revitalized after the traumatic events of the hospital episode. What kind of world was I living in that could avert its eyes from the most significant realities such as those I had recently confronted?
MORE: “Vital Realities: A Conversation with Thomas Ligotti“
(For additional Ligotti interviews, you can always visit the interviews page at TLO and/or see my Born to Fear: Interviews with Thomas Ligotti.)