Last summer I became aware of this rather brilliant video essay by Sam Pulham, co-host of the Sherds Podcast, “a literary discussion programme exploring the peripheries of world literature and unearthing neglected texts from outside the mainstream canon.” Pulham’s thesis is that the weird supernatural-horrific sensibility that infuses and defines Ligotti’s 2006 fiction collection Teatro…
Tag: Thomas Ligotti
Dreams, Waking Reality, and the Purpose of Your Life
In A Course in Demonic Creativity, I recommend reading your life like a dream or a creative narrative (a novel, a movie) to discern symbols and themes that can serve as clues to your overall life pattern, your purpose, your creative calling, your destiny and life mission as embodied in the concept of the daemon…
The Best Thomas Ligotti Story You’ve (Probably) Never Read
Thomas Ligotti’s “Ghost Stories for the Dead” first appeared in 1982 in the second issue of the small press horror magazine Grimoire. It opened with an epigraph drawn from E. M. Cioran: “That faint light in each of us which dates back before our birth, to before all births, is what must be protected if…
Watch David Tibet accept Thomas Ligotti’s Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement
At last night’s 2019 Bram Stoker Award ceremony, which was presented in a rather nifty video format, David Tibet accepted Thomas Ligotti’s Lifetime Achievement Award. See for yourself, beginning at 13:40: You can read the text of Tom’s acceptance speech online, but seeing/hearing Tibet deliver it is so much more fulfilling. The whole thing, both…
Autumn Longing: Alan Watts
Yesterday, I came across a passage in a book by Alan Watts that reignited an old passion for what I have referred to in the past as “the autumn longing.” In a kind of “deep cut” vein for this blog, longtime readers — by which I mean really longtime readers, those who have been with…
Advance praise from Thomas Ligotti for TO ROUSE LEVIATHAN
To offer some satisfaction for this awful and wondrous craving is the gift of this book.
VASTARIEN wins Magazine of the Year in 2019 This Is Horror Awards
Vastarien, the horror journal established and launched in 2018 by Jon Padgett and me (with crucial input from a couple of other valued friends) has just been named Magazine of the Year in the annual This Is Horror Awards. In addition to launching the journal, Jon and I co-edited the first two issues, after which…
Teeming Links – March 15, 2019
In light of yesterday’s awful mosque attacks in New Zealand, I feel led to start with this except from a 2003 PBS interview with Thich Nhat Hanh. After an extensive conversation about Buddhism, Christianity, mindfulness, and other such matters, and their relationship to gritty large-scale matters of war and violence, the interaction ends with this:…
Sample of Cadabra Records’ Audio LP of Ligotti’s “The Bungalow House”
https://soundcloud.com/cadabraecords/thomas-ligotti-the-bungalow-house-read-by-jon-padgett-score-by-chris-bozzone-sample-2 Cadabra Records is currently accepting preorders for their lush audio production of “The Bungalow House,” which is one of my (and indeed one of most readers’) favorite stories by Thomas Ligotti. The above sample allows you to hear what the whole thing sounds like. Hint: It sounds incredibly lush and wonderful. The published album…
A Penguin Classics edition of Ligotti’s ‘The Conspiracy against the Human Race’
First there was the Penguin Classics combined edition of Ligotti’s Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe. Now there’s this forthcoming Penguin Classics edition of his The Conspiracy against the Human Race, to be published this October, with another beautiful cover by Chris Mars and a new preface by Ligotti himself. The canonization continues. Here’s…