A wonderful recommendation by Ligotti

[Malone]

Thanks to Jeff Coleman for sharing this with me. (Apologies if someone has already posted this.)

“My reading of the poems in this book has only confirmed once again that I can no longer respond in any meaningful or robust way to written literature. At this point in my life, I can react only to watching or listening to performances of writing, something that no doubt sounds strange and even pathological to others. Nevertheless it, this is how it is for me. Even my old favorites no longer provoke the interest and emotion they once did. I deeply regret this condition of limitation. I might describe this condition as one of literary anhedonia, likening it to the better known experience of musical anhedonia, from which I also suffer and which I realize is not comprehensible to the majority of individuals. Thus, I must apologize for my inability to offer a blurb to what may very well be a fine book.” - Thomas Ligotti

the spiral consilience | gnOme

[Nemonymous]

Quote Originally Posted by Malone

Thanks to Jeff Coleman for sharing this with me. (Apologies if someone has already posted this.) “My reading of the poems in this book has only confirmed once again that I can no longer respond in any meaningful or robust way to written literature. At this point in my life, I can react only to watching or listening to performances of writing, something that no doubt sounds strange and even pathological to others. Nevertheless it, this is how it is for me. Even my old favorites no longer provoke the interest and emotion they once did. I deeply regret this condition of limitation. I might describe this condition as one of literary anhedonia, likening it to the better known experience of musical anhedonia, from which I also suffer and which I realize is not comprehensible to the majority of individuals. Thus, I must apologize for my inability to offer a blurb to what may very well be a fine book.” - Thomas Ligotti the spiral consilience | gnOme

That's best blurb I have ever seen. Thanks.

[Kevin]

Wow. I can't say I'm a complete stranger to what TL describes.

Notice how he says "at this point in my life." This is great supplemental information for Quentin's thread on getting older.

[yellowish haze]

The saddest blurb I've ever read. This was recently posted by Raul Urraca in our compilation:

Compilation of blurbs by Thomas Ligotti - THE NIGHTMARE NETWORK

[Bleak&Icy]

Directly under Ligotti's non-blurb on the book's website is the BUY button. Never has a hand frozen so rigidly above a mouse.

[vapidleopard]

That they printed it anyway made me laugh, despite the severity of the content and its implications.
It reminds me of this type of thing. Where the sign maker translates and prints the error message, or out of office message as part of the sign.

[Hidden X]

Hilarious as this situation is, that blurb itself is actually scary and incredibly depressing. I neither can nor want to imagine how horrid something like that must be for a lover of literature as broadly and well read as TL.

[Alarm Agent]

Becoming less impressionable is what i really like about getting older.
Though I am afraid my indifferentism towards almost everything will end in some Zen-like state of ultimate Catatonia . I'm sure Mr. Ligotti is way ahead of me in this matter.

[Revenant]

Agreed Alarm Agent. I find myself growing increasingly indifferent, like the hamster who realizes all that time on the treadmill got him nowhere.

All I crave now is solitude and something good to read.

[Cnev]

Anhedonia is one of the worst states imaginable when trying to function in any capacity; knowing that you should feel deeply for something when you can't actually feel anything at all. I know what it's like, and I deeply feel for him. Very sad, especially for such a great mind.