The Small People (possible spoilers)

[Nemonymous]

And now I have read 'The Small People'...significantly on this the day my own bungalow house begins to take final shape through quite major rebuilding this summer; originally a 1930s built abode into which my wife and I first moved in 1995, the same year that Ligotti's Bungalow House story was first published. I am now sitting in the back garden writing this in the evening sunshine sometimes gazing up at the reconstituted roof and new dormer extension, the new roof made from the old tiles, now a patchwork of worn and not so worn tiles... "ruins upon inauguration".
Metaphysica Morum was for me, at times, a sort of Swiftian Modest Proposal; The Small People is more a Gulliver's Travels merged with Sarban, a genuine masterpiece that will incubate slowly within me... telling of our struggle with entropy and the desperate half-life between offspring and we parents. The vision of the Small People is a unique one, I feel, uniquely defective, like eating backwards...chewing and absorbing ourselves towards where we emerge from the womb, then the womb itself?
The two friends meet in a lavatory in an old park, related to that bus station one in Metaphysica Morum? The spectral link? A gestalt real-time review of one book leading to another book, each word itself a small person dying to express itself, but needing others to join in to give full joined-up meaning.
Is a life a loan with a curse of interest?

[njhorror]

What is "The Small People"?

[Nemonymous]

Quote Originally Posted by njhorror

What is "The Small People"?

The second of two stories in Ligotti's book 'The Spectral Link'.

[Nemonymous]

It may be significant that the protagonist in 'The Small People' addresses a Doctor in telling his tale as a sort of confession, and I imagine this doctor to be Lemuel Gulliver who was a medical doctor and also was imprisoned for public urinating rather than in a toilet or lavatory (although it was to put out a fire that he did it). I was wondering whether there is anything else possibly significant from Swift's book in relation to Ligotti's. (I speculatively compared parts of Metaphysica Morum to the Modest Proposal device, for example.)

Having slept on 'The Spectral Link', I consider it to be a major work that will continue to resonate with me...

[Nemonymous]

Apparently, Swift's Gulliver is a known influence on Lovecraft, where he, Gulliver, finally realises that humanity is a debased breed.

Cross reference with ligotti as knots: Ligotti are knots - THE NIGHTMARE NETWORK

[Nemonymous]

Quote Originally Posted by Nemonymous

Apparently, Swift's Gulliver is a known influence on Lovecraft, where he, Gulliver, finally realises that humanity is a debased breed. Cross reference with ligotti as knots: Ligotti are knots - THE NIGHTMARE NETWORK

"The Small People themselves call to mind Gulliver’s Travels, but other than a playful literary reference, I can’t really parse out the significance of this." - from here: http://tomcatintheredroom.com/2014/0...homas-ligotti/

[Acutely decayed]

Not swiftian..not moral instruments but despite their own protestations immoral ..forever dancing on the edge of death....running to and thro .. as if with meaning,, faerie creatures,, alll,,all too hu..familiar......

[spore]

Just read this for the first time- what a venomous and evocative piece. I loved it. Easily in my top ten.

What confused me (and I usually don't try to overthink this stuff) was the actual size of the small people - I assumed they were liliputs or something at first, like less than a foot tall but it got a bit murky.