Part 1, March 2003:
TW: Some things in your life have changed since our last interview. You've quit your job at Gale Group after two decades and you moved from Detroit to Florida. We guess you are not too fond of drastic changes in your private life, so these must have been quite big steps... How do you feel when looking back to these changes? Did things change to the better for you?
TL: Human life moves in only one direction-toward disease, damage, and death. The best you can hope for is to remain stagnant or, in certain cases, return to a previous condition when things weren't as bad as they've become for you. For instance, I now work on a freelance basis for my former employer, except the sort of work that I do outside of the company is the work I used to do twenty years ago as an employee of the company. For me, this is a "change" for the better. Broadly speaking, you can argue that there's such a thing as "social progress" because, for example, people are no longer literally enslaved to other people. But slavery was an innovation, a progressive solution to labor shortage I don't think that things ever change for the better in the way that many people believe they do. They only assume different masks of the worst. One can only hope that these masks hold tight as long as possible before revealing what is beneath them.
TW: Speaking of changes: Your latest book "My Work Is Not Yet Done" was a great surprise for many of your readers. Especially the title story: It is a very bitter, grim novella, unmistakably Thomas Ligotti and yet not typically you. In this story, you describe - in a very convincing and almost painfully realistic way - the everyday life in a huge company: conspiracies, disgusting little schemes, the everyday horror the main character Frank Dominio falls victim to. This story seems like an attack against our lauded civilization, where money takes the place of a new Moloch: "The Great Black Swine Which Wallows in a Great River of Blackness". ... Which were your motives to write this story? One can easily feel the authenticity in it.
TL: My motives for writing this story were very much those for writing all of my stories: hatred of the system as considered in its broadest possible sense. In this case, the system of a corporate environment served as a microcosm for the greater system of existence, which explicitly emerges as the ultimate object of abhorrence.
TW: However, we've detected a priceless black humour in "My Work Is Not Yet Done" (as well as in many other of your stories). We guess you're not a "happy" person; we suppose this kind of homo sapiens which thoroughly enjoys existence in a world like ours is as fishy to you as to us ... But what about Thomas Ligotti's sense of humour in real life? Do you face everyday's madness with a grin? S.T. Joshi called you in his review on the book "an authentic heir of Ambrose Bierce". Regarding the black humour there are indeed similarities...
TL: To my mind, a well-developed sense of humor is the surest indication of a person's humanity, no matter how black and bitter that humor may be. If you think of the real bastards in world history as well as those with whom you are personally acquainted, they are people who invariably have no sense of humor. And they will often regard your sense of humor as "inappropriate." Humor is the mark of their enemy.
TW: You did compare the novel
MWINYD to the comic strip figure Dilbert as sharing common sources of inspiration. Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, himself worked for years in - what he calls - "a number of humiliating and low paying jobs" in various positions for various companies. So Dilbert seems to be autobiographical. What about Frank Dominio and Thomas Ligotti?
TL: The stories in My Work Is Not Yet Done were most definitely autobiographical in origin, as my stories tend to be. However, aside from attributing some of my own attitudes to the narrators of the title work of the book and the short story "I Have a Special Plan for This World," there are no direct links between the characters and events depicted in these works and those of my own life.
TW: The terms Reorganization and Computer seem to have a quite traumatic meaning for you...
TL: I think that they have a traumatic meaning for many people, especially the computer, which has taken its place beside nuclear energy as the ultimate symbol of what a society needs to "flourish" at this stage of human history. Such dependence always is frightening. For a company, reorganization is traditionally associated with an attempt to fix something, often quite blindly, for specific reasons: profits are down, costs are up, bankruptcy is threatening, competition is getting tough. In the 1990s, reorganization was reconceived by management theorists as an intrinsic good-something like the idea of ongoing revolution in Soviet Russia. No doubt there are great benefits for both a company and its employees in working as efficiently and intelligently as possible. But there are no abstract formulas for doing this, whatever a management handbook may claim. Usually what happens is this: some CEO comes along who is smart or lucky or both, and this person "turns around" a company, at least for a time. This may involve reorganizational measures as a strategy of top-down leadership. I could on about this subject, but I think I've already inflicted enough boredom on you.
TW: Apart from Dilbert: There are also strong kafkaesque elements and even echoes of George Orwell's "1984", e.g. the total control, the manipulation, the whole sick corporate system as the symbol of a paranoid totalitarian state...
TL: That's somewhat reductionist, but one would have to be contemptibly naive to deny that the corporation and the state are now inextricably allied. In English, people often say the word "company" when they mean to say "country." What more needs to be said?
TW: Frank Dominio supplies himself with weapons and makes plans to run amok. The typical image of the "American Nightmare"? From the European point of view, one is constantly irritated by reports of crazed gunmen, pupils running amok at High Schools, gang wars with heavy weapons, etc. The important role that fire arms obviously play in large parts of the US society seems hard to imagine for us. The same goes for the influence that organisations like the NRA have on US politics.
TL: One of my favorite movies is Once Upon a Time in America, which was made by the great Italian director Sergio Leone. The story focuses on a group of gangsters who at one point become involved in the rise of the labor movement in 1930s America. To justify the role of criminals in advancing the cause of the working man, one of the gangsters says something to the effect that "This country is still growing. There are certain types of diseases that are better to get when you're young." The leader of a labor union replies: "You guys aren't the measles. You're the plague." Europe has already had its plagues and seems to have learned from them after a few thousand years. The United States has yet to pass through this phase of development.
TW: Having a length of circa 42,000 words, "My Work Is Not Yet Done" is as far your longest story. This is an amazing fact, regarding your not being interested in novels. ... How much time did you need to write this novella? Are there any chances that we'll be able to enjoy more novellas of this length?
TL: I wrote and revised My Work Is Not Yet Done in about three months. My original plan was to write a book approximately twice as long but I realized that the story would work better at its present length. I have no idea whether I'll ever write any other long stories of this kind. I rather doubt it.
TW: "My Work Is Not Yet Done" differs not only in length, but also stylistically from your former work. The narrative style appears to be straighter, less abstract and metaphorical and at the same time more naturalistic (if we can use such term in this context). And the protagonist Frank Dominio really comes alive for the reader and becomes some kind of role model.
TL: I'm glad to hear you describe him as a "role model" because I very much wanted Frank Dominio to be a character with whom the reader would identify. I'm not at all sure that I succeeded in accomplishing this aim, since a number of people have conveyed to me that they view the protagonist of My Work Is Not Yet Done as nothing more than a dangerous maniac. Regarding the more straightforward style of the story, this is simply how one needs to write when a narrative extends beyond a certain length. Otherwise the reader becomes overwhelmed by a kind of verbal claustrophobia.
TW: Let's take a look at the other two stories: In our last interview you told us that the apocalyptic scenario of "The Nightmare Network" was heavily influenced by W.S. Burroughs. What about the background of "I Have a Special Plan for This World"? "Murder City" seems to be "Motor City" Detroit... Is this some kind of bizarre homage to your former home town?
TL: Yes. I had Detroit in mind as the background of both "I Have a Special Plan" and "My Work Is Not Yet Done" as well as such older stories of mine as "The Chymist" and "The Cocoons."
TW: In which chronological order did you write the stories for this book?
TL: "The Nightmare Network" was written around 1994, "I Have a Special Plan" around 1998, and My Work Is Not Yet Done in 2000.
TW: As far as we know,
MWINYD got some very good reviews (e.g. in Publishers Weekly). But what about the readers' reactions? Do you think you attracted a wider readership with this book? Or are there old fans who are disappointed, because
MWINYD didn't meet up with their expectations? It's easy to imagine that some of your aficionados might miss the certain touch of black romanticism in it.
TL: I think that you're right. Readers who liked my short stories found My Work Is Not Yet Done too "normal" for them, while readers who were unfamiliar with my short stories found this short novel too "weird," at least by the standards of most horror fiction. So it seems that I managed to please very few readers with that work.
TW: By the way: There is a fourth corporate horror story, "Our Temporary Supervisor", which was published in Weird Tales. Why has this story not been included in the book
MWINYD?
TL: "Our Temporary Supervisor" was written after the book was put together, as was a fifth corporate horror story, "My Case for Retributive Action."
TW: One could interpretate
MWINYD as a harsh critic on the modern American, or let's say, western society: Human greed is the root of evil. The greed for more and more money and power, alongside with stupidity, corrupts our whole world and leads to unavoidable catastrophes (e.g. in "The Nightmare Network"). But, nonetheless,
MWINYD is not some kind of political statement, because you don't show any solution or way out of the dilemma. You view at the world seems to be 100% pessimistic....
TL: My view is exactly that. While My Work Is Not Yet Done uses the corporate system as a starting point, this is only so that the story can go on to depict the all-encompassing system of human existence-in fact, all organic existence-as something fundamentally and inescapably evil. This view is essentially that of Buddhism, except Buddhism offers salvation in the form of an ultimate escape from existence through attaining enlightment and nirvana. For me, the only escape is death. The terms "wabi" and "sabi" that turn up in My Work Is Not Yet Done are aesthetic categories originally associated with Buddhism as practiced in Japan. These terms signify and celebrate qualities in art and life that are the polar opposite of those of the modern computerized world. In the story, wabi describes an old ashtray-a humble, out-of-style, well-used, and often overlooked object whose "beauty" stands in contrast to that of, for instance, a brand-new car. The narrator of My Work Is Not Yet Done finds the quality of "sabi" in ruined buildings, which to him convey the enchantment of loneliness, desolation, and impermanence. Of course, Frank finally abandons the sense of quietude and resignation offered by wabi-sabi when he goes into murderous action and pursues an aesthetic of the grotesque.
TW: In our last interview you mentioned "The Shadow at the Bottom of the World" as your favourite story. What about the stories in
MWINYD, especially the title story which must really have a personal meaning for you?
TL: Thematically, the title story of My Work Is Not Yet Done and "The Shadow at the Bottom of the World" are identical. Both of them emerge from the feeling of a dark, hideous power the underlies the nature and guides the workings of all organisms. In that sense, they both have a personal meaning for me, as do all my stories. But I think I understand what you mean: the fact that the stories in My Work Is Not Yet Done were written in reaction to my own experience, as opposed to having their origins almost entirely in my imagination, does make them somewhat tainted and, in a way, less artistic.
TW: Imagine that a big production company would agree to make a movie out of
MWINYD. And imagine the impossability that you could choose the actors for the leading parts. Whom would you choose for these roles (non-actors are allowed!)?
TL: Well, I would be forced to pick a younger actor for the part of Frank Dominio. And while there are a lot of terrific young actors, none of them are among my all-time favorites. I guess the closest I could come to an actor who is among my favorites and could possibly play Frank Dominio would be Kevin Spacey. More practically, I think Edward Norton would be an easy choice to make, the part since he has already distinguished himself as being able to play outsider-type characters in such movies as Fight Club. And I think Christopher Walken, perhaps my favorite actor of all time, would be a suitable candidate for playing the villain, Richard.
Part 2, May 2003:
TW: About two months have passed since the first part of this interview, much more time than scheduled... What about time in Thomas Ligotti's life? Does it crawl or fly?
TL: Boredom is not one of my afflictions, so the weeks and months and years are moving pretty fast for me.
TW: Let's talk about the Subterranen Press publication Sideshow and Other Stories, which I enjoyed very much. The conception and the length (or better shortness) of the stories remind me of some of your former works like the "Notebook of the Night" section in Noctuary, and the idea of "a sideshow world, where everything's ultimately peculiar and ultimately ridiculous" represents a basic theme in all of your stories. When did you write Sideshow and what were the motives?
TL: I wrote Sideshow, and Other Stories about ten years ago. The section of the story called "The Malignant Matrix" was based on a dream. That was where the story started. Then I decided to write several similar pieces and connect them into a miniature horror story collection, which is a story structure I had been thinking about using for a long time. The words "peculiar and ridiculous" as a characterization of all existence are taken directly from the notebooks of Paul Valéry. Valéry was a real thinker and the more you think about the world, the more peculiar and ridiculous it seems. Thought is very destructive of everything that gives us a sense of stability and meaning in our lives. I simply extrapolated on this idea.
TW: Reading Sideshow, I felt echoes of Franz Kafka and Bruno Schulz... Especially "The Astronomic Blur" reminds me of the latter one. But, on the other hand, one can also feel the spirit of H.P. Lovecraft in some of the stories. Is Sideshow a little homage to some some of your literary idols? I remember you once called yourself a "fanatical student of literary styles"...
TL: I can understand how "The Astronomic Blur" would recall Schulz to a reader, since it combines the cosmic with the local. But the idea of the "little store" is also one that has haunted my imagination for many years. Such places used to be common in the older neighborhoods of Detroit, which is geographically close to where I grew up, and the sight of them always stirred in me a sense of mystery.
TW: The foreword begins with the words "At the time I met the man who authored the stories that follow, I had reached a crisis point in my own work as a writer of fiction". Did you yourself experience such a crisis point before writing Sideshow? And if so, how did you handle this?
TL: I've had doubts about the value of writing fiction practically from time I started doing it. But other impulses - the pleasure of using my imagination, the craving for attention, my aspirations to be like my idols Lovecraft and Poe - kept these doubts in the background for a long time. With Sideshow I simply decided to use these personal doubts as the subject matter for a story. This is a typical tactic for a writer to use in order keep on doing what, for no good reason, he's been doing for so long.
TW: In "The Abyss of Organic Forms" the narrator's half-brother loves to visit the local race course. I found this interesting, because I read in an older interview with you that you yourself used to attend horse races with your brother. Is "The Abyss..." some kind of dedication to your brother or to your own past?
TL: Yes, it is. My brother and I still attend the local race course on occasion. Since both of us now live in Florida, we're more likely to bet on jai-alai than on horses.
TW: One of my favourites in Sideshow is "The Phenomenal Frenzy". It's amazing, but you need only two pages to evolve an eerie atmosphere of absolute weirdness. I guess the short (and shortest) story is still your favourite literary world ...
TL: Indeed it is.
TW: "The Phenomenal Frenzy" ends in a disillusioned way that I'd like to call typical ligotti-esque: "But this same place, a true resting place in which I should have been able to live out the rest of my life in some kind of peace, was now only one more thing that I had to fear." That's something I found in nearly all of your stories: Even the apparently good things turn out to be just another charade, a facade in a sideshow world and they mutate into something weird or evil. Compared with this, the end of the afterword sounds unfamiliarly positive: "I ... had triumphed over my literary crisis and wanted nothing more than to get back to my desk, my brain practically vibrating with an unwonted energy in spite of passing another night without sleep."
TL: To my mind, the narrator's eagerness to continue writing is actually quite monstrous. At the same time, it is, as you say, very positive. In my observation, the most monstrous and vile people are those who are filled with energy and confidence. The more energy and confidence they have, the more monstrous they are. These people make life miserable for those of us who have doubts about everything we do and above all about existence itself.
TW: Sideshow and My Work Is Not Yet Done have been published by Small Press publishers. Is Thomas Ligotti going "back to the roots"? Apart from the fact that you don't reach a mass market with your works: What are your reasons to be published by Small Press publishers?
TL: It was very fortunate for me as a writer to have been published by larger publishing houses in both the United States and abroad. Without this development, my stories would be known to only a few readers of small-press horror fiction. And, of course, every writer wants as many people as possible to read his work. However, after a time it became apparent that my fiction had reached its optimum audience . . . and that this audience was not very large. So there was no point in continuing to publish with larger presses, especially since I could retain greater control over my work with small presses, which in addition created higher quality books.
TW: Speaking of the Small Press: Durtro Press in London will publish Crampton in June, an unreleased script for the THE X-FILES, written by yourself and Brandon Trenz. Can you tell us something about the genesis of Crampton? Were commercial considerations the main motive or did you find something in THE X-FILES that inspires you?
TL: First, the screenplay that Durtro will be publishing began as an episode of the X-Files but was subsequently rewritten as a feature-length script by myself and Brandon Trenz. This script is no longer part of the X-Files world except for the fact that the two main characters are still FBI agents. As for the genesis of the X-Files script, this came about because Brandon Trenz, who was a colleague of mine at my old job, had an idea for the opening to an X-Files episode that he related to me and a few other people who regularly gathered together to talk about movies, music, books, television shows, and whatever. I thought that Brandon had the beginnings of a good idea for an X-Files episode and encouraged him to develop the idea into a script. By that time, around 1996 or so, I was no longer a regular viewer of the X-Files and couldn't have cared less about writing for that or any other television show. At the same time, I wasn't writing much in the way of horror fiction and thought that perhaps I would stop writing altogether. This situation left me in the position of having nothing to do for the rest of my life - in other words, I had no significant distractions that stood between me and the fact of my death. For this reason - that is, in order to have something to do that would take my mind away from contemplating my death - I became involved with Brandon in developing the idea of this X-Files script. Neither of us had any idea that we had no chance of getting the producers of the show to read this script. We had no conception at all of how things worked in Hollywood. Nevertheless, we pressed on until the script was finished. Then we found out that the only thing that we could do with the script was to submit it to contests that offered the promise of promoting your work if you won. Well, we didn't win these contests, but Crampton was among the top finishers, both as a television script and as a feature-length screenplay. Over the years a series of developments have taken place that hold some promise that we may be able to get people in Hollywood to read our stuff, which now includes not only Crampton but another screenplay by the name of Michigan Basement.
TW: The book will be accompanied by a 6-track CD that features your own music, according to Durtro's promo text you will even sing on some of these songs. I know that music has part of your life for a long time now, but nonetheless that's a big surprise! Can you tell us something about it? How did it feel to create your own Soundtrack for your own work?
TL: For one thing, I do not sing on any of these tracks. These are spoken-word pieces backed by music that I recorded on my home 8-track recorder using my guitars and a synthesizer. The whole production is therefore quite lo-fi, even crude. The six pieces were inspired by the themes of Crampton and the title of the CD is The Unholy City. It was a lot of work for me to put this CD together because I have no talent for the process of recording. Nevertheless, producing a CD that contained both words and music that I had written is something that I've wanted to do for a long time. I wish I had more time and energy to pursue similar projects, but I don't.
TW: Another forthcoming Durtro release will be a book called Teatro Grotesco . Are these the stories from the "Teatro Grotesco" section in The Nightmare Factory or is it new material?
TL: This forthcoming collection will indeed incude the stories from the "Teatro Grottesco" section of The Nightmare Factory, since none of these stories has yet to appear in hardcover. It will also include about 7 other stories and novellas that I've published since The Nightmare Factory, excluding the stories in My Work Is Not Yet Done . I don't know when it will it be ready for publication.
TW: And now the inevitable question: What about Thomas Ligotti's future projects ...?
TL: Durtro has a cycle of poems that I wrote within the past few years. The title of the collection of 14 pieces is Things They Will Never Tell You. Two new stories will appear in Weird Tales. Also, Brandon and I are now in the process of signing with a talent agency that handles screenwriters and have begun work adapting my short novel My Work Is Not Yet Done as a movie, although no one has requested that we do any such thing. Aside from that, I don't really have any plans for future projects. Then again, I never really did.
TW: Recently I've read an old interview with you in the magazine Tekeli-li. I found it very interesting that you mentioned the unknown German author of the book The Nightwatches as some kind of reinforcement for your own work. Is it by chance the book Nachtwachen, that was published under the nom de plume Bonaventura at the beginning of 19th century? This is one of the forgotten masterpieces of the Romantic period and hardly known even in Germany ...
TL: The Nightwatches is indeed a forgotten masterpiece. Any book that is so explicitly at odds with the social and religious culture of the world is doomed to be forgotten. A modern-day counterpart to this book is the work of the Austrian novelist and playwright Thomas Bernhard. But Bernhard was always raging against the nazi mentality that he saw as still holding sway within Austria, so his work has been embraced somewhat, at least in Europe. His work is still too grim for consumption by English-speaking countries. English and American readers will only tolerate books that ultimately uphold the status quo and offer people reasons why their miserable lives are worth living.
TW: Literature is a very important part of your life and there are several writers that you adore or that even inspired you. But frankly: What about modern horror literature? Are there living horror writers whose works you enjoy or who do deeply impress you?
TL: For all practical purposes, I've read all the books that I ever want to read. And that includes horror fiction. I don't follow the horror scene the way I did in the 1970s and 1980s. Even then, there were very few writers whose works I fanatically sought out, but those were enough to make me feel that writing horror fiction was a worthwhile pursuit. My favorites were the obvious greats: Ramsey Campbell, T.E.D Klein, Dennis Etchison, Joseph Payne Brennan for his poetry, and a few others. In recent years, a number of horror writers have been brought to my attention who would have given me the same sense that writing horror fiction wasn't a total waste of time if I had read them during my fanatical years and who I feel are carrying the torch for what I consider true horror fiction in the great tradition of Poe, Lovecraft, Machen, and James. These writers include Matt Cardin, Quentin Crisp, Monika Angerhuber, Mark Samuels, and a host of British ghost story writers.
TW: What do you think about the future development of horror literature? I don't know exactly the situation in the US, but in Germany (as well as the rest of Europe) many of the younger horror writers orientate towards American bestselling writers like King and Koontz. The results are rather boring, because you hardly find a writer with an original voice ...
TL: Except as a form of popular entertainment, I don't think that horror fiction ever had a future. In my view, it has been only pure accident that joined the tastes and temperament of someone like Poe or Lovecraft to a talent sufficient to express these tastes and this temperament, which, as Lovecraft pointed out many times, are the province of very few individuals. Let's say it once and for all: Poe and Lovecraft - not to mention a Bruno Schulz or a Frank Kafka - were what the world at large would consider extremely disturbed individuals. And most people who are that disturbed are not able to create works of fiction. These and other names I could mention are people who are just on the cusp of total psychological derangement. Sometimes they cross over and fall into the province of "outsider artists." That's where the future development of horror fiction lies - in the next person who is almost too emotionally and psychologically damaged to live in the world but not too damaged to produce fiction. It's a delicate balance . . . and the determining factors are not predominantly literary.
TW: Some short questions in conclusion. What is...
...art?
TL: Distraction, escape, a way to transform the intolerable into the enjoyable, a booby prize that we give ourselves for continuing to exist.
TW: ...the best reason to laugh?
TL: Because you're high.
TW: ...the worst book you ever read?
TL: I've never read a book I didn?t like. I can tell on the first page, usually in the first sentence, if I'm going to like a book, a story, a collection of essays or poetry. If I know I won't like it, I don't read it.
TW: ...the difference between cats and people?
TL: It's always a sad occasion when a cat dies.
TW: ...a good day?
TL: A day without pain or the prospect of pain, which is to say, none.
TW: ...darkness?
TL: The bottom line.
TW: Last not least, thank you very much for doing this interview with me!
TL: You're most welcome.
Similar Threads
Linear Mode
