New Ligotti interview on Weird Fiction Review

[Gwynplaine]

Greetings all. I'm a longtime lurker , but this great interview prompted me to register. Enjoy!
http://weirdfictionreview.com/2011/1...weird-fiction/

[Gray House]

Reading more, elsewhere online, about Ligotti's picks of most overlooked or underappreciated weird fiction, I decided to buy The Colonel’s Photograph, and Other Stories and A Kayak Full of Ghosts. I encountered the Géza Csáth some time ago, somewhat accidentally. A relative of mine who has little interest in horror or weird fiction bought a number of books from a yard sale, including Opium, and Other Stories. I hadn't heard of Csáth, and I'm sure my relative hadn't, but I read it and it made a strong impression. The comparison with Poe certainly seems right.

[klarkash]

I was also very interested to see that Ligotti mentioned Danilo Kiš- his A Tomb for Boris Davidovich was very powerful, and I've also heard good things about his Encyclopedia of the Dead.

Hope I live long enough to read both of those- considering the pile of books that's already staring me down, it's not assured...

[gveranon]

I wonder if I'm a fool for having ordered, sight unseen, a copy of William Scott Home's Hollow Faces, Merciless Moons. I'm not sure that Ligotti's comments constitute a recommendation . . .

[Ascrobius]

If I was a betting man, I'd bet that you won't be disappointed.

[bendk]

Quote Originally Posted by gveranon

I wonder if I'm a fool for having ordered, sight unseen, a copy of William Scott Home's Hollow Faces, Merciless Moons. I'm not sure that Ligotti's comments constitute a recommendation . . .

I did the same thing, even though I don't think TL's statment was an endorsement of Home's fiction. Fortunately I have a copy of the HPL Tribute fanzine that has the WSH article that Ligotti included in his criticism of Lovecraft for Twentiteth-Century Literary Criticism. (It should be available at your library). I read the article and I thought it was excellent. But fiction is a completely different thing, so we'll see.


Here is the opening line and then an excerpt from the article:


"The Horror Theme After HPL" By William Scott Home


"Life," H.P. Lovecraft wrote in his Commonplace Book, "is more horrible than death."


It is easy to find horror in the animal nature of man - consciousness pulsing inside the bestial body, risen out of the slime and darkness: the darkness lingers on our bodies and the slime on our minds - bred of murder ever more facile and more augmented - haphazard and loveless breeding - cannibalism - plagues - carrion scavenging, clawing and stamping, pushing and grubbing, dancing around split skulls and ripping out beating hearts in an ecstasy of freedom and blood-glut before awesome fires; is that strange alien glow trapped somewhere in the cerebrum's soft jelly, jostled by smouldering gristle of the medulla, not a parasite, an intruder, a discarnate Monboddonian mind? Has it ever done other than shrink from those excesses which are the normalities of the beast?

[Nightspore]

I've looked through the Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism series, but the William Scott Home essay that Ligotti mentions doesn't seem to appear in either of the entries devoted to Lovecraft. I've also looked through its companion series Short Story Criticism (also edited by Ligotti), but it doesn't seem to be there either. Maybe I'm not looking in the right place?

[miguel1984]

According to Wikipedia:

"In 1987, Thomas Ligotti included Home's essay "The Horror Theme after H.P. Lovecraft" in the Gale Research compilation Twentieth Century Literary Criticism.[15]"

15. Gale Research International, Ltd., 1987, Twentieth Century Literary Criticism, Vol. 22, Dennis Poupard, Marie Lazzari, and Thomas Ligotti, editors.

[teguififthzeal]

I have the book. I'm not going to scan the stories because I don't think Home is rich, but I'll definitely write excerpts from these demented, really great stories.