The Literature of Creepy Clowns

[dr. locrian]

"The Literature of Creepy Clown" (Literary Hub) highlights Ligotti's "The Last Feast of Harlequin."

Quote

The apex of clowns-as-nightmare fuel in literature may well have come from the pen of Thomas Ligotti. This is not terribly shocking, given that Ligotti could write about an adorable child riding a pony on a sunny day and turn it into the stuff that chills readers’ souls and convinces them that they live in a bleak, arbitrary universe. Among the stories in his collection Grimscribe is “The Last Feat of Harlequin,” about an academic whose work involves articles with titles like “The Clown Figure in American Media.” He ventures to the town of Mirocaw, which hosts an annual festival in which clowns play a prominent role. Our narrator habitually attends such events, and regularly takes part. “To me the title of Clown has always carried connotations of a noble sort,” he writes. Throw in the involvement of an old mentor and you have the beginnings of a compelling narrative. It’s also a narrative that, by the story’s end, curdles into something utterly terrifying. The narrator arrives in Miroclaw and discovers anonymous townspeople dressed as clowns and battered by their neighbors according to some mysterious custom. “They’re the freaks,” one of the locals tells him. “It’s their turn this year. Everyone takes their turn. Next year it might be mine. Or yours.” By the time the story reaches its climax—in a clown-filled subterranean chamber, where a terrifying ritual takes place—even readers without a pre-existing aversion to clowns may well find themselves recoiling from one the next time they see them. Ligotti’s story taps into the kind of formalized and codified behavior associated with clowns, and then uses that to unearth something much deeper and more sinister. It’s one of the most effective horror stories in a book of effective horror stories, and it seems no coincidence that the cover of the recent Penguin Classics edition of Ligotti’s Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe features a sinister riff on the harlequin whose imagery pervades the story.

[ramonoski]

If I may complement this with a somewhat related article:

Monster of the Week: The Mirocaw Harlequins | Stuff to Blow Your Mind

[dr. locrian]

Clowns are the topic du jour!

[SF Sorrow]

The sight of the Evil Clown of Middletown (the one pictured in the first post in this thread) always brings a smile to my face. It is a metal sign that looms like a psychotic sheet metal sentinel alongside Route 35 in Middletown. I suppose its purpose is to encourage people to go the liquor store for which it is shilling, but I like to think that in the deep of night, when weather is bad and the normally busy road is abandoned, malformed and twisted figures scuttle out of the nearby woods to gather at its base and deliver unto it the adoration due this horrid harlequin.

[Metaphysical Mutant]

This is why I think Ligotti should do a musical collaboration with the Insane Clown Posse. They're both from Detroit, they both have the evil clown thing going on, he writes poetry, they write rhymes. It just makes sense.