G. S. Carnivals
05-06-2009, 04:37 AM
TLO Member Interview: Mr. D.
Conducted by Phillip Stecco
1) How did you first encounter the works of Thomas Ligotti?
I am a constant reader and have been since I was 6. Even today I read over 200 books a year. I am an omnivore in my tastes and enjoy most any kind of writing.
One day about 6 years ago I was going through the shelves of my local library and found copies of The Nightmare Factory and Grimscribe in the short story section. Frankly, I picked them because of the covers. The artists sure did their job beacuse I took out both books and went home and read them from cover to cover. Everything that I should have been doing was put off and I've been hooked on Ligotti ever since.
2) What are some of your favorite works by Mr. Ligotti?
This answer has a degree of flexibility since, though Ligotti has a great degree of consistency in his vision, he has a varied technique. He has not published a poorly written story that I know of and many of his works are incredible.
"Teatro Grottesco" is probably my all time favorite. I also enjoyed (if that is the correct word to use in speaking of Ligotti) "The Music of the Moon", "Nethescurial", "The Tsalal", "Gas Station Carnivals", "The Glamour", "The Night School", "The Shadow at the Bottom of the World" and "The Last Feast of Harlequin".
3) What other writers do you enjoy reading?
I found that to answer this question honestly I had to answer at length. Please bear with me.
I spent a lot of time thinking of the writers whom I return to again and again. Poe is on the top of the list. I read him at the age of 12 and go back time after time. He is the master.
Others whom I read at around the same age who have stayed with me are J. R. R. Tolkein and Homer, especially the Alexander Pope translation. I love poetry and my favorite poets are Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, Sir Thomas Wyatt, George Gascoigne, John Donne, Walter Raleigh and Anna Akhmatova.
I really enjoy crime fiction and the writers in that field whom I enjoy most are Lionel White, Donald Goines, Jim Thompson, Roland Jefferson, Clarence Cooper Jr., Charles Willeford, Dashiell Hammett, Chester Himes, Jean-Patrick Manchette, David Goodis, Cornell Woolrich and the master crime writer of all time - Fyodor Dostoevsky.
Other important writers are Sam Beckett, Andrei Platanov, Yukio Mishima, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Yasunari Kawabata, Frank O'Connor, Flannery O'Conner, Flann O'Brien, James Tiptree, Jr./Alice Sheldon, Isak Dinesen/Karen Blixen, Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges, Karl Edward Wagner, Mikhail Bulgakov, Boris Pasternak and Nikolai Gogol.
4) Do you have any favorite singers or musicians?
I'm so old school that most of the people I like are dead. I got to see Otis Redding not long before his death. He was backed by Booker T and the MGs and the Mar Key horns and it was the most exciting show that I have ever seen. Planxty is my favorite group of all time. No one else comes close in my opinion. I really enjoyed Roy Buchanan and Luther Allison. Gil Scott-Heron is still alive though not as active and I think that he is America's unsung musical genius. Isaac Hayes was great, too.
5) Do you have any favorite artists in the visual media?
I consider architecture to be a visual medium and Frank Lloyd Wright is my favorite builder. My favorite artists are Vincent Van Gogh, Jack B. Yeats, Edvard Munch, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Claude Monet. Important cartoonists have been Mort Drucker at Mad, Walt Kelly, Gus Arriola, Bill Watterson and Aaron McGruder.
6) What are some of your favorite movies?
Since I've lived in Los Angeles for a long time for several years I wrote and tried to sell screenplays. I've always loved movies and have seen thousands of them over my lifetime. That, however, didn't help my career. In fact it was a hindrance.
Having seen, for example, over 200 of D. W. Griffith's films and knowing good films from bad killed my career. Dealing with Hollywood execs I would say things like, "But that was done before in 1933 in ..." I didn't realize that I was dealing with illiterates who didn't care whether it had been done before or not. They didn't (and don't) care if a movie is any good or not. They just want to make money.
So, about the time I started writing screenplays Hollywood stopped making the kind of movies I like. Talk about your eye-opening experience.
Some of my favorite movies are Napoleon (by Gance), Playtime, The Wild Bunch, le Samurai, le Circle Rouge, le Flic, Head (with the Monkees), Out of the Past, Hickey and Boggs, My man Godfrey, Two-Lane Blacktop (and anything with Warren Oates in it), Vanishing Point, Rififi, Alphaville, Nosferatu (by Murnau), The Last Laugh, Ruggles of Red Gap, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, and anything with Douglas Fairbanks Sr. in it.
7) Do you watch television?
I haven't watched for decades. I mean, if there is a set on in the same room with me I'll watch for a few minutes, but usually the first commercial is so irritating that it drives me away.
I think that I outgrew tv. I grew up watching M Squad, The Defenders, East Side/West side, The Avengers, Run For Your Life, Secret Agent, Have Gun, Will Travel, Route 66, The Twilight Zone (!), The Alfred Hitchcock Show, Coronet Blue and T.H.E. Cat. With the old The Prisoner series television peaked. Technology has improved immensely but the shows themselves are no better. I saw a few minutes of one of the CSI shows two weeks ago and I couldn't stand it. Firstly, crime scene investigators are lab technicians. As soon as one of the CSI folks interviewed a suspect the case was legally tainted and the judge would have had to throw it out. Rather than get fired for what is a flagrant violation of procedure, the same CSI technician then went on to break the law. So, in about 8 minutes both law and regulation had been violated. If this show had had anything at all to do with the real universe at the end of the show the whole team should be fired and that one investigator should be prosecuted for a felony. Let's just say that watching a few minutes of a top show doesn't make me want to run out and get cable.
8) What do you enjoy eating?
(You might want to rephrase this question.) [I have since slightly modified the question. -- GSC] Basically, since I have to buy and cook most of the things that I eat, I like simple meals. I tend towards stews and rice, chicken and vegetables.
If I'm treating myself I enjoy anything from anywhere. I like Syrian, Lebanese, Moroccan, Italian, Sicilian (very different from Italian), French, Czech and Peruvian. I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pa and there were thousands of little old grandmas from all around the world who had spent all of their lives in one kitchen or another. I learned to cook from them.
9) Do you have any odd hobbies or collecting fetishes?
All hobbies are odd and I'm such an oddball that I should have more of them. I work in Federal Law Enforcement so I don't have a lot of time. I guess cooking is my hobby, when I have time.
I do collect books. I have thousands of them. I just bought two more bookcases but they aren't enough. I need two more. Either that or my daughter will have to move out.
10) What recreational activities do you enjoy?
I am very fortunate in knowing an actor named Stu Charno. Aside from being a musician, a writer, a woodworker and an actor he is one of the few certified instructors in the Chinese Internal Martial Art of Hsing I Chuan. While most of my co-workers in Customs who are my age (or, more frightening, even younger!) are 50 pounds overweight and look 80 years old I actually feel younger, and more limber. Hsing I has corrected a hip injury that I had when I was 12 years old.
Check out Stu's website. He is someone special.
11) So many of our lives are filled with the day-to-day anxieties of existence. Have you personally discovered any way to relieve stress?
There are three things that I discovered that help me and I have a very stressful career. First, stay in shape. No news there, but it really works. It even helps depression.
Second, rather than worry about why someone did something to you just go on. Many of us (me, too!) spend way too much time worrying about peoples' motivations. When did she dump me, what did I do? etc., etc. The simple fact is that a lot (not all) people are just jerks. They like being jerks. If you were involved with a jerk and he or she hurts you or dumps you thank them for the warning. If you're married to them or something like that it would have been a much more devastating experience. If your business partner runs off with the money you are free to start over. Don't lose your enthusiasm.
The third thing is that after a while the same stressful situations repeat themselves, but this time we are better prepared. The first time something bad happens to us we are young and ignorant and we think that it's the end of the world. The second time it happens to us we go, "Oh, this again!" and we handle it a lot better than we did the first time when we really made a mess of it. The third or fourth time we may have learned enough to avoid the whole thing.
Life is solving problems. When we solve one set of problems we move on to another set and solve them.
12) Life?
I'm for it.
13) Death?
All of my life as far back as I can remember I have been fighting the forces of death. I have worked for Presidential candidates Gene McCarthy, Shirley Chisholm and George McGovern. I protested against the war in Viet Nam. I have fought against corruption and self interest and for freedom. I have served my country in many ways for 40 years and try to make the world a tiny bit better for me having been in it.
It's like paying rent as I see it.
As you can see I, and we, have mostly failed. I sort of expected that. Life is a slow, grinding defeat for people who think as I do. The ones who fit into the status quo, who have no trouble crushing someone to make some money or gain even more power over others, are the ones who do well in this world. I'll fight to the end with my eyes open for I would hate myself if I became like the people I despise.
14) Work?
I work as a Customs and Border Protection Officer. I was with Customs when President Bush merged Customs, INS and Agriculture. Our slogan is "One Face At The Border", and we have made a lot of rude jokes out of it. No, things are not better or safer. We figure that our real mission was to get Bush re-elected in 2004 so at least we accomplished our mission.
To be honest the thing that made me work for the government was that fact that no one was offering me as much money. Now I am getting close to retirement so I might as well stay. It's not like I can quit and go into real estate.
I think that it's good to have someone in CBP whose primary goal is not to harass people from the third world. I try to do my job and not take advantage of the authority that Congress and the Constitution have given me. Under the Bush regime that has been a lot more difficult than it should have been.
15) Do you have any interesting work anecdotes to relate?
I found this to be the most difficult question to answer. Cops love to tell stories and I can tell stories all day as well, but, in a sense that is dishonest. Clever anecdotes about police work are never (I repeat, Never!) completely true. They have to be helped along a little bit. For example, I work at LAX and I have met almost every celebrity in the world. Some of them were charming, some of them were total assholes, but that's not the point. One of the first things I learned on the job was that models were even more stupid than actors and actresses. I thought meeting all these beautiful women would be great. Then I did start meeting them. Now, there are exceptions, of course, but the ones who aren't brain dead are more like two legged barracudas. Why do you think that Lindsay Lohan gets into so much trouble? She's no brighter than she has to be. Stupid people make stupid decisions.
There was a show on television called Barney Miller. It was about police in NYC. This is the show that cops identified with. Not CSI or anything like that. Barney Miller. The same dingy setting. The same crooks getting arrested week after week. This is what police work is really like. If you want to know what my life is like watch a few episodes of that show.
I will also spare you the other side of my life. Every once in a while I get to witness the absolute depths of human despair and infamy. Luckily it isn't too often.
16) What is your earliest childhood memory?
I have a vague memory of floating in darkness that might be a pre-natal memory. Even today if I take a nice hot bath in darkness I get a kind of deja vu feeling.
I remember bright things moving above my face and that probably comes from the crib. I think that my parents put a butterfly mobile over my crib. It would no doubt be considered too dangerous due to the choking hazard these days.
17) What is your fondest childhood memory?
I think that there may be something wrong with me but I remember childhood as a time of anxiety, unmitigated terror and continual embarrassment. Everything was new and frightening and I always did the wrong thing. If anyone read the comic strip "Calvin and Hobbes" that is an accurate description of my childhood. I used to think that my mother knew the cartoonist, Bill Watterson and was feeding him ideas.
Maybe my memories are more honest than other peoples' memories.
18) Who has been the most influential person in your life?
Like most people my mother, of course.
19) Do you have a special plan for this world?
No. Even if I did the world would just shrug its shoulders and ignore it. I'm not that important.
20) What else should we know about you?
I don't know about the word "should". However, if anyone hasn't been totally alienated by what I have written so far I am a poet and play guitar and bass. It helps keep me reasonably sane. I was an actor for 6 years. During that time I did all kinds of work to stay alive. Eventually I quit acting because I had absolutely no control over my life. I eventually took up writing and wrote a number of screenplays. My dealings with Hollywood big shots and would be big shots didn't drive me to murder (remember, I'm a kind of policeman and carry a weapon off duty). After Hollywood the occasional drunk or rowdy at work is nothing.
I took to writing novels. I wrote one and started pushing it around the publishing industry. I pushed it around so long that I now have a second novel done, so I published them myself through lulu.com. I have sold a total of 44 copies (yeah!).
Being a slow learner in some areas I am now working on a third novel. It's like my love life. I tell people I have a mother, four sisters and an ex-wife, but that I still like women. Talk about your slow learner.
Conducted by Phillip Stecco
1) How did you first encounter the works of Thomas Ligotti?
I am a constant reader and have been since I was 6. Even today I read over 200 books a year. I am an omnivore in my tastes and enjoy most any kind of writing.
One day about 6 years ago I was going through the shelves of my local library and found copies of The Nightmare Factory and Grimscribe in the short story section. Frankly, I picked them because of the covers. The artists sure did their job beacuse I took out both books and went home and read them from cover to cover. Everything that I should have been doing was put off and I've been hooked on Ligotti ever since.
2) What are some of your favorite works by Mr. Ligotti?
This answer has a degree of flexibility since, though Ligotti has a great degree of consistency in his vision, he has a varied technique. He has not published a poorly written story that I know of and many of his works are incredible.
"Teatro Grottesco" is probably my all time favorite. I also enjoyed (if that is the correct word to use in speaking of Ligotti) "The Music of the Moon", "Nethescurial", "The Tsalal", "Gas Station Carnivals", "The Glamour", "The Night School", "The Shadow at the Bottom of the World" and "The Last Feast of Harlequin".
3) What other writers do you enjoy reading?
I found that to answer this question honestly I had to answer at length. Please bear with me.
I spent a lot of time thinking of the writers whom I return to again and again. Poe is on the top of the list. I read him at the age of 12 and go back time after time. He is the master.
Others whom I read at around the same age who have stayed with me are J. R. R. Tolkein and Homer, especially the Alexander Pope translation. I love poetry and my favorite poets are Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, Sir Thomas Wyatt, George Gascoigne, John Donne, Walter Raleigh and Anna Akhmatova.
I really enjoy crime fiction and the writers in that field whom I enjoy most are Lionel White, Donald Goines, Jim Thompson, Roland Jefferson, Clarence Cooper Jr., Charles Willeford, Dashiell Hammett, Chester Himes, Jean-Patrick Manchette, David Goodis, Cornell Woolrich and the master crime writer of all time - Fyodor Dostoevsky.
Other important writers are Sam Beckett, Andrei Platanov, Yukio Mishima, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Yasunari Kawabata, Frank O'Connor, Flannery O'Conner, Flann O'Brien, James Tiptree, Jr./Alice Sheldon, Isak Dinesen/Karen Blixen, Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges, Karl Edward Wagner, Mikhail Bulgakov, Boris Pasternak and Nikolai Gogol.
4) Do you have any favorite singers or musicians?
I'm so old school that most of the people I like are dead. I got to see Otis Redding not long before his death. He was backed by Booker T and the MGs and the Mar Key horns and it was the most exciting show that I have ever seen. Planxty is my favorite group of all time. No one else comes close in my opinion. I really enjoyed Roy Buchanan and Luther Allison. Gil Scott-Heron is still alive though not as active and I think that he is America's unsung musical genius. Isaac Hayes was great, too.
5) Do you have any favorite artists in the visual media?
I consider architecture to be a visual medium and Frank Lloyd Wright is my favorite builder. My favorite artists are Vincent Van Gogh, Jack B. Yeats, Edvard Munch, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Claude Monet. Important cartoonists have been Mort Drucker at Mad, Walt Kelly, Gus Arriola, Bill Watterson and Aaron McGruder.
6) What are some of your favorite movies?
Since I've lived in Los Angeles for a long time for several years I wrote and tried to sell screenplays. I've always loved movies and have seen thousands of them over my lifetime. That, however, didn't help my career. In fact it was a hindrance.
Having seen, for example, over 200 of D. W. Griffith's films and knowing good films from bad killed my career. Dealing with Hollywood execs I would say things like, "But that was done before in 1933 in ..." I didn't realize that I was dealing with illiterates who didn't care whether it had been done before or not. They didn't (and don't) care if a movie is any good or not. They just want to make money.
So, about the time I started writing screenplays Hollywood stopped making the kind of movies I like. Talk about your eye-opening experience.
Some of my favorite movies are Napoleon (by Gance), Playtime, The Wild Bunch, le Samurai, le Circle Rouge, le Flic, Head (with the Monkees), Out of the Past, Hickey and Boggs, My man Godfrey, Two-Lane Blacktop (and anything with Warren Oates in it), Vanishing Point, Rififi, Alphaville, Nosferatu (by Murnau), The Last Laugh, Ruggles of Red Gap, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, and anything with Douglas Fairbanks Sr. in it.
7) Do you watch television?
I haven't watched for decades. I mean, if there is a set on in the same room with me I'll watch for a few minutes, but usually the first commercial is so irritating that it drives me away.
I think that I outgrew tv. I grew up watching M Squad, The Defenders, East Side/West side, The Avengers, Run For Your Life, Secret Agent, Have Gun, Will Travel, Route 66, The Twilight Zone (!), The Alfred Hitchcock Show, Coronet Blue and T.H.E. Cat. With the old The Prisoner series television peaked. Technology has improved immensely but the shows themselves are no better. I saw a few minutes of one of the CSI shows two weeks ago and I couldn't stand it. Firstly, crime scene investigators are lab technicians. As soon as one of the CSI folks interviewed a suspect the case was legally tainted and the judge would have had to throw it out. Rather than get fired for what is a flagrant violation of procedure, the same CSI technician then went on to break the law. So, in about 8 minutes both law and regulation had been violated. If this show had had anything at all to do with the real universe at the end of the show the whole team should be fired and that one investigator should be prosecuted for a felony. Let's just say that watching a few minutes of a top show doesn't make me want to run out and get cable.
8) What do you enjoy eating?
(You might want to rephrase this question.) [I have since slightly modified the question. -- GSC] Basically, since I have to buy and cook most of the things that I eat, I like simple meals. I tend towards stews and rice, chicken and vegetables.
If I'm treating myself I enjoy anything from anywhere. I like Syrian, Lebanese, Moroccan, Italian, Sicilian (very different from Italian), French, Czech and Peruvian. I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pa and there were thousands of little old grandmas from all around the world who had spent all of their lives in one kitchen or another. I learned to cook from them.
9) Do you have any odd hobbies or collecting fetishes?
All hobbies are odd and I'm such an oddball that I should have more of them. I work in Federal Law Enforcement so I don't have a lot of time. I guess cooking is my hobby, when I have time.
I do collect books. I have thousands of them. I just bought two more bookcases but they aren't enough. I need two more. Either that or my daughter will have to move out.
10) What recreational activities do you enjoy?
I am very fortunate in knowing an actor named Stu Charno. Aside from being a musician, a writer, a woodworker and an actor he is one of the few certified instructors in the Chinese Internal Martial Art of Hsing I Chuan. While most of my co-workers in Customs who are my age (or, more frightening, even younger!) are 50 pounds overweight and look 80 years old I actually feel younger, and more limber. Hsing I has corrected a hip injury that I had when I was 12 years old.
Check out Stu's website. He is someone special.
11) So many of our lives are filled with the day-to-day anxieties of existence. Have you personally discovered any way to relieve stress?
There are three things that I discovered that help me and I have a very stressful career. First, stay in shape. No news there, but it really works. It even helps depression.
Second, rather than worry about why someone did something to you just go on. Many of us (me, too!) spend way too much time worrying about peoples' motivations. When did she dump me, what did I do? etc., etc. The simple fact is that a lot (not all) people are just jerks. They like being jerks. If you were involved with a jerk and he or she hurts you or dumps you thank them for the warning. If you're married to them or something like that it would have been a much more devastating experience. If your business partner runs off with the money you are free to start over. Don't lose your enthusiasm.
The third thing is that after a while the same stressful situations repeat themselves, but this time we are better prepared. The first time something bad happens to us we are young and ignorant and we think that it's the end of the world. The second time it happens to us we go, "Oh, this again!" and we handle it a lot better than we did the first time when we really made a mess of it. The third or fourth time we may have learned enough to avoid the whole thing.
Life is solving problems. When we solve one set of problems we move on to another set and solve them.
12) Life?
I'm for it.
13) Death?
All of my life as far back as I can remember I have been fighting the forces of death. I have worked for Presidential candidates Gene McCarthy, Shirley Chisholm and George McGovern. I protested against the war in Viet Nam. I have fought against corruption and self interest and for freedom. I have served my country in many ways for 40 years and try to make the world a tiny bit better for me having been in it.
It's like paying rent as I see it.
As you can see I, and we, have mostly failed. I sort of expected that. Life is a slow, grinding defeat for people who think as I do. The ones who fit into the status quo, who have no trouble crushing someone to make some money or gain even more power over others, are the ones who do well in this world. I'll fight to the end with my eyes open for I would hate myself if I became like the people I despise.
14) Work?
I work as a Customs and Border Protection Officer. I was with Customs when President Bush merged Customs, INS and Agriculture. Our slogan is "One Face At The Border", and we have made a lot of rude jokes out of it. No, things are not better or safer. We figure that our real mission was to get Bush re-elected in 2004 so at least we accomplished our mission.
To be honest the thing that made me work for the government was that fact that no one was offering me as much money. Now I am getting close to retirement so I might as well stay. It's not like I can quit and go into real estate.
I think that it's good to have someone in CBP whose primary goal is not to harass people from the third world. I try to do my job and not take advantage of the authority that Congress and the Constitution have given me. Under the Bush regime that has been a lot more difficult than it should have been.
15) Do you have any interesting work anecdotes to relate?
I found this to be the most difficult question to answer. Cops love to tell stories and I can tell stories all day as well, but, in a sense that is dishonest. Clever anecdotes about police work are never (I repeat, Never!) completely true. They have to be helped along a little bit. For example, I work at LAX and I have met almost every celebrity in the world. Some of them were charming, some of them were total assholes, but that's not the point. One of the first things I learned on the job was that models were even more stupid than actors and actresses. I thought meeting all these beautiful women would be great. Then I did start meeting them. Now, there are exceptions, of course, but the ones who aren't brain dead are more like two legged barracudas. Why do you think that Lindsay Lohan gets into so much trouble? She's no brighter than she has to be. Stupid people make stupid decisions.
There was a show on television called Barney Miller. It was about police in NYC. This is the show that cops identified with. Not CSI or anything like that. Barney Miller. The same dingy setting. The same crooks getting arrested week after week. This is what police work is really like. If you want to know what my life is like watch a few episodes of that show.
I will also spare you the other side of my life. Every once in a while I get to witness the absolute depths of human despair and infamy. Luckily it isn't too often.
16) What is your earliest childhood memory?
I have a vague memory of floating in darkness that might be a pre-natal memory. Even today if I take a nice hot bath in darkness I get a kind of deja vu feeling.
I remember bright things moving above my face and that probably comes from the crib. I think that my parents put a butterfly mobile over my crib. It would no doubt be considered too dangerous due to the choking hazard these days.
17) What is your fondest childhood memory?
I think that there may be something wrong with me but I remember childhood as a time of anxiety, unmitigated terror and continual embarrassment. Everything was new and frightening and I always did the wrong thing. If anyone read the comic strip "Calvin and Hobbes" that is an accurate description of my childhood. I used to think that my mother knew the cartoonist, Bill Watterson and was feeding him ideas.
Maybe my memories are more honest than other peoples' memories.
18) Who has been the most influential person in your life?
Like most people my mother, of course.
19) Do you have a special plan for this world?
No. Even if I did the world would just shrug its shoulders and ignore it. I'm not that important.
20) What else should we know about you?
I don't know about the word "should". However, if anyone hasn't been totally alienated by what I have written so far I am a poet and play guitar and bass. It helps keep me reasonably sane. I was an actor for 6 years. During that time I did all kinds of work to stay alive. Eventually I quit acting because I had absolutely no control over my life. I eventually took up writing and wrote a number of screenplays. My dealings with Hollywood big shots and would be big shots didn't drive me to murder (remember, I'm a kind of policeman and carry a weapon off duty). After Hollywood the occasional drunk or rowdy at work is nothing.
I took to writing novels. I wrote one and started pushing it around the publishing industry. I pushed it around so long that I now have a second novel done, so I published them myself through lulu.com. I have sold a total of 44 copies (yeah!).
Being a slow learner in some areas I am now working on a third novel. It's like my love life. I tell people I have a mother, four sisters and an ex-wife, but that I still like women. Talk about your slow learner.