Ligotti and Aickman

[qcrisp]

Quote Originally Posted by Ascrobius

Sometimes it's as simple as not liking someone's work. Period. There doesn't have to be a hidden agenda, or deep psychology, or any other explanation, psychodynamic or otherwise, that someone outside of someone else's head has constructed that necessarily accounts for someone else's response to anything, especially when considering the consumption of art.

I think I agree to the extent that, though there will probably always be reasons, they might not be identifiable. All kinds of things shape one's sensibilities and responses. I admire Poe a great deal, but have always felt that my response to his work has never been the full response that someone who truly understands Poe would have. I imagine there must be a reason for this, but I don't know what it is, as I have no conscious objection to anything in Poe's aesthetic, or what I know of his philosophy.

Quote Originally Posted by Joel

This is probably the reason for Ligotti's being unimpressed with Aickman – that the latter, underneath it all, does not reject desire and romance, and does not see existence as futile. Lovecraft's negativistic worldview is clearly a strong influence on Ligotti, but not on Aickman. 'The Stains' seems to me one of Aickman's least misanthropic stories, in that it affirms love and friendship. But only in the context of an encroaching death. Of course, arguing over which of Aickman and Ligotti is bleaker is like arguing which of Gorgonzola and Stilton is more cheesy.

I think that arguments over how bleak or how dark writers are do occur, which seems to me to turn the bleakness into something more than faintly absurd, as if it's a commodity of some kind. It reminds me a little of heavy metal fans (of which I was one) arguing over which band is heavier. On this model, all you'd have to do to make better music is find how to use your distortion pedals in such a way as to create a heavier tone than your rivals, although some might argue that speed and relentlessness of riffs would also make a difference. It's not a model of musical appreciation that seems to cater for the idea of nuance, though. Lovecraft's criterion for the quality of a weird tale (I can't quote it verbatim from his essay), much as I appreciate it, seems similar to me.

Of course, it's not only in weird fiction that such 'rivalry of darkness' occurs. You get it in existentialist fiction and so on. Then again, even beyond the idea of bleakness, rivalry exists in literature, full stop, in the minds of readers, critics and writers. It is absurd, but perhaps it's inevitable. I don't know. I myself have indulged in it earlier in this thread, however, by saying that Aickman is the best (or my favourite) writer of weird fiction. If such a thing were purely quantitive (a matter of the degree of weirdness, or whatever), there would be no need for me, having discovered Aickman, to read any other writers of weird fiction, but of course, there is a need.

I was going to write more on the different qualities that different writers in the field have (rather than their quantities of weirdness), but it's still a bit early on a Sunday morning, after all. I might do so later, if I'm feeling vaguely inspired.

[Ascrobius]

Yeah, my point with that quote that you began with in your post

Sometimes it's as simple as not liking someone's work. Period.
There doesn't have to be a hidden agenda, or deep psychology, or any other explanation, psychodynamic or otherwise, that someone outside of someone else's head has constructed that necessarily accounts for someone else's response to anything, especially when considering the consumption of art.

is a reflection of the fact that early in this discussion an allusion was made that Aickman was essentially what Ligotti aspired to be. In the eyes of the person who made this assertion, perhaps Ligotti somehow felt as though he was "living in the shadow" of Aickman and that perhaps that was a dynamic that contributed to Tom's less than complimentary comments about Aickman in the past. Personally, I don't buy into that theory, but that's what I was really addressing with that statement.
Tim

[Joel]

Quentin, the idea that "which band is heavier" might have a technical answer (as opposed to a spiritual one) is fascinating, and does raise the possibility of a semi-quantitative 'bleakness index' in weird fiction – check for a mark [pun intended] out of 10: no light at the end of the tunnel, no cheese in the corner shop, no love, no sunshine, no beer in the fridge, no survivors, no common language, no peace, no sleep, no future. I know that's not what you were arguing for, but still.

One thing that Aickman and Ligotti have in common is an apparent atheism and lack of belief in any afterlife. In that respect, neither writes 'ghost stories' in the orthodox sense. I agree with the two people in this thread (and its predecessor) who have argued that the most fundamental difference between the two writers is that Ligotti has relatively clear and definite things to say, whereas Aickman is more ambiguous and open-ended.

[Ascrobius]

Because I can't resist a Spinal Tap reference, like Nigel Tufnel's amp, Ligotti's bleak-ometer would go to 11.

And to that one might ask "Why not just make 10 bleaker?", to which Ligotti might respond, "Because my bleakness goes to 11.

Tim

[Bleak&Icy]

The relationship between Dalha D. and the narrator in "The Bungalow House" has always struck me as being particularly Aickmanesque: the depth of emotional isolation and physical estrangement, the unspoken sexual tension, the utter failure to connect, the widening void...

When I say "Aickmanesque," I know exactly what I mean, but attempting to formulate the unique qualities which contribute to making RA's fiction so unsettling is very difficult. Try describing an Aickman story to someone unfamiliar with his work. Whenever I finish reading one of my favourite RA stories my response is inevitably the same: awed silence mingled with a creeping sense of personal catastrophe.

Relatively few writers have their names turned into a word which enters the common vocabulary, and is then used as an evocation. Off the top of my head we have: Rabelais, Shakespeare, Borges, Orwell, Kafka, Shaw, Lovecraft, Byron, Keats... Ligotti... Aickman... (of course, there are others). When I think of the words "Ligottian" and "Aickmanesque," the respective qualities evoked do not intersect in many areas.

Recently I listened to an old interview with Kafka biographer Frederick Karl, in which he attempted to provide a definition of the much-abused work Kafkaesque. From memory he said something close to the following: a sense of overwhelming intrusion by inexplicable, uncontrollable forces which can come from all sides--family, state, the cosmos... and once activated these forces destroy all personal values; a force in the world that is antipathetic to the will of the individual, against which the individual struggles, and ultimately goes down fighting.

Can anyone provide a similar definition of the qualities evoked by the words Aickmanesque and Ligottian?

Postscript: Of course neither word has entered the common vocabulary; and only an optimist (or should I say pessimist?) would suggest that Aickman or Ligotti will ever attain the literary status of Kafka or Borges.

[qcrisp]

Quote Originally Posted by Bleak&Icy

Can anyone provide a similar definition of the qualities evoked by the words Aickmanesque and Ligottian?

Good question. I shall ponder this myself.

Some random thoughts that occur to me in relation to Ligotti. Both Ligotti and Lovecraft present the universe as something that is, from a human perspective, a nightmare by definition. However, in the case of Lovecraft, the nightmare is discovered through objective evidence (it's to do with our physical and literal peripherality in time and space). In the case of Ligotti, the nightmare is known through personal and subjective revelation. The nightmare is absolute; that it is subjective does not make it less so. A nightmare is subjective. Humans are drowning in the subjectivity of experience in the universal nightmare - that is the revelation.

I think some of the power of Ligotti's work derives from the fact that you can make formulations based on it, formulations often made in the work itself, in fact, such as the truth that there is nowhere to go, nothing to be done etc.

However, it seems to me that it's much harder to extrapolate these kind of cosmic/philosophical formulations from Aickman's work. I suppose this is similar to Joel's point about Aickman's work being much more open-ended.

Kafkaesque: a smothering claustrophobia experienced by individuals branded paranoid by those who seek to impose their will on others.

NB. I wish Kafka had lived through WW2; he might have authored the definitive novel about its horrors.

Aickmanesque: an eerily expressed contemporary surrealism described in elegant yet twisted and clotted language.

I haven't read enough Ligotti / Ligottian criticism to even attempt a personal interpretation. But the phrase 'a sense of utter futility' would probably creep in somehow.

BTW........does TL have a 'significant other' or any children? In my opinion there is often a correlation between loneliness and a nihilistic world view (with exceptions, of course).

I have a close relation who has a trail of failed, broken relationships in his wake - no children either - and somewhat inevitably, this has led to much inner soul-searching and depression. It's a cliche to say so, but having kids around can cheer you up in addition to ensuring that you have little choice but to stop worrying about bigger spiritual issues because of a pressing need to feed, cloth and entertain the little blighters.

JK

[Nemonymous]

A non-religious but aeschatological process of...

Ligottian: Humanity becoming various Metaphors

Aickmanesque: Various Metaphors becoming Humanity

[Joel]

Brilliant, Des.

[Ascrobius]

Only because someone asked and it's relevant to the discussion, Thomas Ligotti has no children and has never been married. That being said, without revealing personal information, there are other extenuating/aggravating "circumstances" that can be verified within the context of Ligotti's existence that have certainly contributed to his rather extreme world view. At the risk of being cryptic, there certainly appears to be a positive correlation between the scope and magnitude of these extenuating circumstances and the scope and magnitude of his world view. There will be no more questions about where Tom Ligotti stands in terms of the cosmos when you finally get a chance to read what has become the final draft of The Conspiracy Against the Human Race.
It will all be made painfully clear.

Tim