An unsolved metaphysical mystery: “a book by Ligotti”

[Russell Nash]

I was wondering when it is that a book written by Thomas Ligotti can be considered that it is a book written by Thomas Ligotti.

One may say that whenever Ligotti writes a book, it immediately becomes a book by Ligotti. Let me see. I get my copy of “I Have a Special Plan for This World”, the Greek version, and I realize that if I don’t open the book and see what is written on the pages, I have no way to verify that this is a book by Ligotti. Therefore, I have to trust that a printing house is not going to play a joke on me just by printing blank pages. However, if I don’t open the book I cannot tell that this book was written by Ligotti. Unluckily, when opening the book, I got the page that is written in Greek. In this case, how do I know that these passages refer to Ligotti, or that they are not mere nonsense written by a madman? In fact, I see that that ant moving over the pages knows as much Greek as I do. For both of us, this book is not a book by Ligotti yet. Other than paper and ink, apparently harmonically distributed (perhaps following exotic rules?), I cannot even refute the statement that this thing, I call it a book, is not meaningless.

Does the book itself contain beauty? How much I love Ligotti’s poems and stories! However, since I don’t speak Greek (forgive me!), I just see paper and ink. I turn a page or two trying to find Liogtti’s beautiful descriptions of unheard of realities, but I don’t see them. I repeat I only see paper and ink. I shake the book but none of these concepts usually told by Ligotti fall from the book. This makes me think that unless I read the book, the English part that I understand, this book (if it is a book at all) is meaningless. Ligotti wrote the book, but where are his ideas? Paper and ink do not contain his ideas, or yes they do, but metaphorically. Only when I read the book, and I understand that those lines are poems, this mixture of paper and ink becomes a book. The book written by Ligotti only becomes a book written by Ligotti when I read it and understand what it says, at least the words of a given language.

If all my thoughts are true, it is not Ligotti who writes the book, but my mind (brain, soul, spirit, anima…?) whenever reads it transforms nothingness, a mixture of chemicals (paper and ink), in meaning. It is not Ligotti who writes the book but any reader who reads and understands it. Now, I see that the book is a medium, similarly to a copper wire that transmits meaningless electromagnetic waves that only become sound on a speaker. Even if I try to dissect this wire I will not find that beautiful music I love to listen to. The music is interpreted on my mind. How curious! I said to myself. That “I” that I see written on the paper is just ink on paper, does not mean anything unless I understand what it means.

I looked out the window, that starry sky is blessing me with another quiet summer night. I wonder, doesn’t the book of Ligotti have cosmological implications…? I fear it does. In the first seconds (or milliseconds, or a millionth of a second, or 10-25 of a second, choose any) after the Big Bang, when the temperature was a certain value, 3 billion degrees, for instance, and then, a split second later, it was 3 billion minus 1 degrees, how did the Universe just coming into being from nothingness know the concepts of greater than and lower than, if no one was there to interpret it? Hadn’t I conclude that a book by Ligotti becomes a book by Ligotti when and only when I read and understand it? Wouldn’t it be similar to say that the Universe becomes the Universe only and only when I see and understand it? If the Universe, as the book by Ligotti, is a medium that does not contain ideas, where did they come from? In the book by Ligotti, the ideas came from Ligotti’s mind, but in the Big Bang, where did these ideas came from?

Perhaps is not the Universe a medium but something else…? A conscious observer given meaning to everyone else? And, who gives meaning to this observer?

Perhaps is the Universe creating out of nothingness ideas by itself…? How…?

Or perhaps…?