Ligotti Interviews

[bendk]

Matt Cardin and The Silent One have been discussing something Ligotti said in an interview about certain authors being 'disturbed' or 'damaged'. (See thread about authors). It is certainly true, that some famous authors like: Poe, Kafka, and Nietzsche, to name a few, fall into this catagory. They all seem to have been cursed with a crippling clarity of vision that was not conducive to mental health - which is really just an evolving consensus of beliefs. This brings to mind the famous quote:

Insanity in individuals is something rare, but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

I think Thomas Ligotti may also be 'out of step' with his contemporaries - which is a compliment as far as I am concerned. I would gladly distance myself from the morass of, often grotesque, popular opinion.

I eagerly look forward to each new TL interview. His most recent, for Fantastic Metropolis, is one of the most interesting. I am going to take this opportunity to start a thread to discuss what TL has commented on in his interviews. This specific post will be on the following:

Ligotti said:
Joseph Conrad said that he shunned the supernatural because it wasn’t necessary to depict the horror of existence. I wish he hadn’t. Because the supernatural is the metaphysical counterpart of insanity—the best possible vehicle for conveying the uncanny nightmare of a conscious mind marooned for a brief while in this haunted house of a world and being slowly driven mad by the ghastliness of it all. Not the man’s-inhumanity-to-man sort of thing, but a necessary derangement, a high order of weirdness and of desolation built in to the system in which we all function. Its emblem is the empty and inexplicable malignity that some of us see in the faces of dolls, manikins, puppets, and the like. The faces of so many effigies of our own shape, made by our own hands and minds, seem to be our way of telling ourselves that we know a secret that is too terrible to tell. The horror writer has the best chance of expressing something of that secret. It’s really a lost opportunity, or perhaps a blessing, that so few take advantage of this potential that lies in horror fiction.

"The supernatural is the metaphysical counterpart of insanity." I have been thinking about this comment for awhile, but I can't really come up with a satisfactory 'definition'. Anyone care to give it a shot?

Also, I would be interested to know people's feeling towards the value of 'supernatural' or 'horror' writing v.s. 'insane' writing, vs. ' realistic horror'. For Example - Supernatural being HPL and TL, etc., Insane being Schreber or Darger, etc. and Realistic Horror being Joseph Conrad, Kafka, etc. I know mainstream critics have mostly snubbed horror authors - Poe being the sole exception. But recently, HPL has been published by Penguin Classics and the trend may, hopefully, continue. I think Ligotti may have hit on something important in that comment.

[matt cardin]

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They all seem to have been cursed with a crippling clarity of vision that was not conducive to mental health - which is really just an evolving consensus of beliefs.

What you've said there is the aspect of the matter that has always engaged my attention the most. The idea under consideration completely inverts customary notions of sanity and insanity, mental health and mental sickness, etc., because it suggests that what constitutes "health" for us humans, psychologically and/or spiritually speaking -- I'm talking about all the standard stuff like self-confidence, peace of mind, cheerfulness, contentedness, "well-adjustedness," and so on -- is, in actual fact, a complete sham, because such attitudes and mental/emotional states don't reflect the way things really are. They're incongruous with reality, at least from our point of view, because from our point of view an accurate understanding of the facts necessarily entails "madness" to some degree. In other words, things being what they are and us being what we are, the only correct, as in accurate, response from us is one of horror, desperation, despair, and from a conventional point of view, derangement. If "sanity" is measured in absolute terms as the accuracy of one's mental and emotional disposition toward reality, then a truly sane response to the fundamental facts of the universe will appear as madness, conventionally defined.

This is what first drew me to Niezsche's piercing observation in BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL, when I first really understood it, about the fatuousness of popular ideas concerning the truth-value of negative ideas: "Nobody is very likely to consider a doctrine true merely because it makes people happy or virtuous . . . . Happiness and virtue are no arguments. But people like to forget -- even sober spirits -- that making unhappy and evil are no counterarguments. Something might be true while being harmful and dangerous in the highest degree. Indeed, it might be a basic characteristic of existence that those who would know it fully would perish, in which case the strength of a spirit should be measured by how much of the 'truth' one could still barely endure -- or to put it more clearly, to what degree one would require it to be thinned down, shrouded, sweetened, blunted, falsified." I put this in my story "Teeth" because it came close to summing up several thoughts that had been gripping me for quite some time. I got the same feeling when Schopenhauer’s ideas about the inherent “evil” of existence from the human point of view came alive for me. A few years later, my initial reading of Tom's works inflamed the same thoughts and feelings.

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"The supernatural is the metaphysical counterpart of insanity." I have been thinking about this comment for awhile, but I can't really come up with a satisfactory 'definition'. Anyone care to give it a shot?

If by "definition" you mean an exposition of Tom's full meaning in that quote (and I'm not sure I'm reading you correctly here; please let me know if I'm misunderstanding your question), I'm thinking he meant that the very idea of a supernatural reality that confronts and interacts with the natural world from "outside," from a qualitatively distinct ontological realm, encapsulates, or expresses, or symbolizes, the experience of the insane mind being confronted with thoughts, emotions, sensations, and perceptions that appear to come to it from outside itself, and/or to act upon it with an inescapable and often transformative influence that promotes derangement. If there really is a supernature, then the universe, by which word we customarily mean the world as described by and accessible to natural science, is a haunted place, and I think Tom was saying that insanity likewise constitutes this state of feeling haunted by terrifying and horrifying realities outside one's control, “from beyond.”

[continued below]

[matt cardin]

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Also, I would be interested to know people's feeling towards the value of 'supernatural' or 'horror' writing v.s. 'insane' writing, vs. ' realistic horror'. For Example - Supernatural being HPL and TL, etc., Insane being Schreber or Darger, etc. and Realistic Horror being Joseph Conrad, Kafka, etc. I know mainstream critics have mostly snubbed horror authors - Poe being the sole exception. But recently, HPL has been published by Penguin Classics and the trend may, hopefully, continue. I think Ligotti may have hit on something important in that comment.

What really comes home to me -- and I'm basing my further thoughts here on the, perhaps incorrect, assumption that I've understood Tom aright -- is that by the understanding of things I expressed a couple of paragraphs above, the idea of supernaturalism is essentially horrifying. This would explain why Tom laments Conrad's, and any other writer's, decision to shun supernaturalism when trying to depict horror. I'm tempted simply to re-quote Tom's words in full, because I think he stated himself so clearly that further exposition would be superfluous: employing the idea of the supernatural is the single best way to depict horror, precisely because the supernatural is "the metaphysical counterpart of insanity -- the best possible vehicle for conveying the uncanny nightmare of a conscious mind marooned for a brief while in this haunted house of a world and being slowly driven mad by the ghastliness of it all." It’s interesting to note the slight semantic ambiguity of his formulation here. Is he saying that the supernatural is “the best possible vehicle” for achieving this effect, or does he mean that insanity does it? Or perhaps both together, since one is the “metaphysical counterpart” of the other?

Here’s where I feel it’s necessary to issue a proviso, and I’ll do so by invoking Lovecraft. In the famous opening section to his SUPERNATURAL HORROR IN LITERATURE, Lovecraft laid out his critical rationale for valuing and evaluating “the literature of cosmic fear.” Probably all of us here are familiar with his words:

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Men with minds sensitive to hereditary impulse will always tremble at the thought of the hidden and fathomless worlds of strange life which may pulsate in the gulfs beyond the stars, or press hideously upon our own globe in unholy dimensions which only the dead and the moonstruck can glimpse . . . The one test of the really weird is simply this -- whether or not there be excited in the reader a profound sense of dread, and of contact with unknown spheres and powers; a subtle attitude of awed listening, as if for the beating of black wings or the scratching of outside shapes and entities on the known universe's utmost rim.

Noel Carroll, in his THE PHILOSOPHY OF HORROR, has made the case, and I think he’s right, that Lovecraft in this essay was not saying anything definitive about horror literature in general, but was merely expounding on the type that he personally enjoyed reading and wanted to write. In other words, what Lovecraft gave us in his theoretical statements in SUPERNATURAL HORROR IN LITERATURE was merely an expression of his personal philosophical, emotional, and aesthetic sensibility, and I think the same must be said of Tom’s words on supernaturalism. He is expounding on a highly specific type or inflection of the horror response, not the typical horror of "nature, red in tooth and claw," but rather "a necessary derangement, a high order of weirdness and of desolation built in to the system in which we all function." And in this, he echoes Lovecraft.

[continued below]

[matt cardin]

In fact, I’ll avow the resemblance goes much further than that. I think what Tom said in the Fantastic Metropolis interview may be taken largely as a reexpression of the very same ideas that Lovecraft expressed back in the 1920s. Even the distinction Tom makes between the “man’s inhumanity to man” type of horror and the type that he personally values and evokes in his stories is prefigured in Lovecraft’s essay, where Lovecraft notes that “This type of fear-literature [i.e. the literature of cosmic fear] must not be confounded with a type externally similar but psychologically widely different; the literature of mere physical fear and the mundanely gruesome.” Lovecraft, ever the self-conscious writer, was far from unaware that he was dealing with an extremely rarified literary genre. “The appeal of the spectrally macabre,” he wrote, “is generally narrow because it demands from the reader a certain degree of imagination and a capacity for detachment from everyday life.” I think this finds its counterpart in Tom’s disclaimers about the purely subjective nature of his opinions, and also in his statements in an as-yet unpublished essay about the relative rarity of readers who prefer and respond to true supernatural horror (Lovecraft’s “weird horror” or “literature of cosmic horror”) over mainstream literary horror of the type exemplified by, for example, THE EXORCIST.

So to sum up, in valuing literary supernaturalism because it is the best vehicle for expressing horror, Tom is giving the word “horror” a definite, distinct meaning, one that corresponds to his experience of life. I personally find his vision of a haunted universe -- what he referred to in one early interview as a vision of the universe as “an enchanting nightmare” -- to be intensely provocative and deeply moving, because it corresponds to things that I have felt and known. And Tom, for his part, found early in his life that his intimations of this vision were given blazingly brilliant expression in the writings of Lovecraft. In fact, when he spoke about that “enchanting nightmare” of a universe, it was in the course of praising Lovecraft, whom he said had “dreamed the great dream of supernatural literature -- to convey with the greatest possible intensity a vision of the universe as a kind of enchanting nightmare.” It’s not surprising, I think, that he echoes Lovecraft on so many points, since in doing so he is merely stating what is personally true for him.

[unknown]

Also, I don't think Conrad was a horror author per-se. True, he wrote about the horrors of man and whatnot, but I don't think he classified himself as a horror writer. (I may be wrong). Right now we're reading Heart of Darkness in my AP Literature class and discussing it and imperialism and the nonsense that went on in the Congo during the early 1900s. I think Conrad probably "shunned" supernatural horror because it did not concern him or people at the time. he was more concerned with the atrocities in central Africa and the horrors that lay within the heart of mankind.

my two cents

[matt cardin]

Good point. Although Conrad's writings certainly have evoked an emotion of horror for a lot of people -- and I'm speaking only from second-hand knowledge here; I've never read Conrad myself -- he did not classify himself as a horror writer so far as I know. And the type of horror associated with his books is light years removed from the Ligottian and Lovecraftian cosmic-derangement variety.

I get the impression from Tom's many words about his aesthetic theory of horror that he feels the only type of horror that is truly and ultimately deserving of the name is the type he experiences and writes about, the type that generates and is generated by a hellish sense that existence itself is a nightmare. I personally am inclined to agree with him, not only because I have felt/seen this same type of existential nightmarishness and therefore respond to it out of subjective bias, but also because it would seem on purely logical, philosophical grounds to represent the categorical apotheosis of all other horrors. That is, it focuses on the experience of horror itself, horror qua horror, aside from any external stimuli such as the early 20th century African situation that Conrad wrote about, and posits that horror is fundamental, and not only to human reality, but to reality itself.

By the way, to bendk: I meant to say something in my original post above in response to your mentioning of Schreber and other individuals who have represented the horror of literal insanity. As in so many things, and I'm afraid I may start sounding repetitive, I tend to feel the same way that Tom does about this. He has said that he finds literal accounts of madness to be of no interest in comparison to fictional stories, because in this latter type the author's intimations of horror have been processed through his or her creativity and given coherent aesthetic expression. It's the savoring of a horrific vision of the world presented through a skillfully rendered work of art that is the draw here, not first-hand dispatches from the land of mental illness (conventionally defined, of course).

[unknown]

I agree, Matt. I wouldn't call what Conrad writes "horror", I call it reality and truth (although the two are subjective). heh. So I agree with Ligotti and Lovecraft on that aspect.

btw, you should check out the Heart of Darkness. It's an interesting read.

[bendk]

Matt and unknown, thank you for the input.

Matt, this statement was particularly helpful to me.

I'm thinking he meant that the very idea of a supernatural reality that confronts and interacts with the natural world from "outside," from a qualitatively distinct ontological realm, encapsulates, or expresses, or symbolizes, the experience of the insane mind being confronted with thoughts, emotions, sensations, and perceptions that appear to come to it from outside itself, and/or to act upon it with an inescapable and often transformative influence that promotes derangement

I think what may have been confusing me was the word 'counterpart' in TL's statement "the supernaturnal is the metaphysical counterpart of insanity". Which I took to mean, the supernaturanl is: a metaphysical equivalent or a metaphysical parallel to insanity. I was looking for a realm of thought. I was playing with the ideas : sanity is to metaphysics as insanity is to ?. But that didn't get me anywhere. Or - instead of fleeing into conventional faith, or insanity, there was the supernatural, or, perhaps, having faith in a necessary derangement; it being a conscious choice, unlike insanity, which is not chosen. The 'transformative influence' that you mention is interesting. This reads like what happened to Schreber, but I would call this a 'metaphysical aspect' of a certain type of insanity. The type of insanity where a person sees through the mass delusion of everyday life and of 'free will' and realizes they are being controlled by external forces. I think Philip Dick went through a similar ordeal. I still need to give this more than a little thought.

When it comes to religion, I think most people make the mistake in thinking happiness is truth, or , at least, the justification for belief. Even when reading about C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, and J.K. Huysmans, the word 'consolation' keeps springing up as a justification for belief. Faith provides the only consolation in this world that makes life bearable. I know this is a gross oversimplification, and these men were brilliant, but that is how it comes across to me. More than one person has invoked the quote attributed to Dostoevsky, but which is actually a summation of one character's thoughts in "The Brothers Karamazov". "If God does not exist, then everything is permitted". People use this quote to 'justify' belief all the time. But this statement, again, does not concern itself with truth but makes threats if the wrong conclusions are drawn.



Was it Kenneth Grant who postulated the theory that Lovecraft's thoughts were really channelled from beyond? That he was an unknowing medium for the old ones. An entertaining thought.

Unknown

I agree that Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' is an excellent novel. It not only presents interesting ideas, but it is wonderfully written. I actually read a history book called "King Leopold's Ghost" that goes into greater depth about the atrocities in the Congo, to help me better appreciate Conrad's novel. I wouldn't consider it a horror novel, despite its famous line. But it is listed in the book "Horror 100 Best Books"


P.S.
This post was really rushed and I apologize for its probable incoherence. I have been really busy of late, and wanted to respond in a reasonable time frame. This post will be modified at a later date. Thanks

[unknown]

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I actually read a history book called "King Leopold's Ghost" that goes into greater depth about the atrocities in the Congo, to help me .

a friend of mine had to read that for one of his college courses, and I talked with him about it and Heart of Darkness. I find it interesting that it's rated in the top 100 horror novels. hm! 'The Horror! The Horror!"

anyway...

on the topic of religion, somebody once told me that there are no true believers. Well, there aren't many. Because it would require complete devotion on a Mother Theresa scale in order to call yourself a Christian or whathaveyou. I agree with the fact that many people use religion as a sort of "crutch" if you will. It helps to disillude (?) us from the pain and nonsense of real life. The hope of something great in the afterlife is what keeps many people going. I don't question peoples' religious beliefs. it's their choice and I fully respect it. I don't like to pigeonhole myself and would rather draw from various doctrines of various religions and create my own little niche for comfort value (rather than conform to one's strict standards).

</religion rant of sorts>

[adam]

I typed this up back in January in response to this discussion but got distracted by work. I just found it on my computer, so I figured I might as well post it:

Interesting stuff. I personally don't really think that Conrad is horror at all, but this will depend on how it is viewed (and particularly by whom). I have long since stopped being scared by "horrors" in the sense of the word that it is often used in popular culture, where it usually connotes the physical peril or man's inhumanity to man that Matt mentioned. Take so called horror movies, most of them are not really horror per se, rather the best they can do is be revolting or elicit a transient scare to make me jump. For some people this is as close to real (or underlying) horror as they can get because going much beyond that isn't necessarily comfortable.

The way I personally feel about this topic echoes what has already been discussed. I can't really put it any more succinctly than this, so I'll just quote Matt:

"I get the impression from Tom's many words about his aesthetic theory of horror that he feels the only type of horror that is truly and ultimately deserving of the name is the type he experiences and writes about, the type that generates and is generated by a hellish sense that existence itself is a nightmare. I personally am inclined to agree with him, not only because I have felt/seen this same type of existential nightmarishness and therefore respond to it out of subjective bias, but also because it would seem on purely logical, philosophical grounds to represent the categorical apotheosis of all other horrors."

The reason that things not involving the supernatural seem to be 'lesser' horror is that without the supernatural, the story is basically fitting into the general assumptions required for the human consensus reality (or some modified version of it). When all is said and done, the world is still essentially the same as it started out (though maybe a little uglier/darker/etc). Supernatural tales can, in contrast, force you to question the basic assumptions about the nature of 'real' world. Ligotti's work in particular is an excellent example of this, as reality HAS changed by the end of many of the stories (or at least the readers'/character's perception of it has). This aspect also illustrates why only a subset of supernatural stories are truly horror in this sense. The mere presence of the supernatural is not enough. The difference lies in the contrast between what 'reality' is when the story starts and what it is at the end. In most popular stories, 'reality' is the same at the beginning and the end, at least in terms of basic assumptions and rules governing it. This mutable, ever-changing reality in the real horror stories is what makes them different and infinitely more disturbing. As far as I am concerned anything that challenges basic assumptions of reality is supernatural (ie anything that doesn't appear governed by the laws of nature as we understand them), so this is a very inclusive definition of supernatural (though also a very literal one).

The descent into madness/insanity pretty much just follows the mold of the supernaturnal horror story: reality morphs into something different. It is much easier to deal with a fictionalized descent into madness because the ideas can be presented so that the reader can relate to them. Real instances of insanity are potentially uninteresting for several possible reasons: 1. We can't really get the whole story, or at least not in any way that we can relate to so it simply won't make sense; or 2. Actually receiving some insight into our perception of reality is a very frightening possibility indeed, we may not really want to know. Of course, real instances could be slightly modified with fiction to convey certain aspects of the madness, hinting at the bigger picture (and may even be more powerful/disturbing as a result of such a combination of reality and fiction).