The Spectral Link by Thomas Ligotti

[Druidic]

Here is an interesting review of Messiah:

http://thelectern.blogspot.com/2006/...-has-been.html

And an extract to show it's not without relevancy:

The world has been conquered by a death cult called Cavesword, named after its founder, John Cave (note the initials). The main premise of the cult is that life, consciousness, is an aberration, and that death is the natural state in which we are perfectly at one with the unknowing and uncaring universe. A potion/poison can be administered to adherents called Cavesway, which fills the suicidalist’s dying brain with lively visions and eases the final journey. Governments have succumbed to the cult, and all branches of Christianity have been totally eradicated (if only...). All dissenters are brainwashed and society exists in a kind of ghastly uniformity. Our protagonist, Eugene Luther, it transpires, played a crucial role in the formation of this religion, providing its basic texts and doctrines through his knowledge of philosophy and classical history. When he is recruited to the cause, he has just finished work on the emperor Julian, the last apostate. Writing his memoirs is the final doomed assertion of the truth, which no one will read, except, of course, the reader of the novel...

The essential conflict revolves around Luther’s realization that if Cavesword is right, then life must be celebrated, and the others’ insistence that death must be sought. We have art on the side of life, and publicity, media manipulation and marketing techniques on the side of death, resulting ultimately in the death of Western Civilization, as all history prior to the life of Cave is erased and forgotten, and Western culture succumbs to the banality of the media...

For Vidal, the real horror lies in the banalization of Death and how easily it is packaged and sold to willing consumers in a culture that specializes in merchandising. Not surprisingly, Cave's message falls flat in the Islamic world.
I find Vidal's take on this quite different and interesting. Messiah was published in 1954.

[Nemonymous]

An interview with Ligotti has been issued today here: Today's interview
This is fascinating and harrowing, and concerns ‘The Spectral Link’. I am split between these following two viewpoints, my heart and my head, but which is which?
1) This is a rich and illuminating interview that helps my future re-reading of the book.
2) It is something that badly infects the book with considerations outside of its published pure text, and this is why I have always tried to resist reading authorial interviews, including the very many Ligotti interviews.
(1) and (2) benefiting as well as infecting like Olan’s ‘loan’?

[Andrea Bonazzi]

The Spectral Link is here!

[Coa]

I love this guy :

Thomas Ligotti: The Spectral Link - YouTube

[marioneta]

I read THE SPECTRAL LINK simultaneously with BORN TO FEAR. I felt as if my brain had been taken out and put back in back to front. Together with THE CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE HUMAN RACE, these books would make a rock go through a paradigm shift, if a rock could read. There is also a unique pleasure in re-reading them, as it is with any of Ligotti's work.

"Enough to be in a crowd, in order to feel that you side
with all the dead planets."
E.M. Cioran

[Knygathin]

Can "The Small People" (or the whole book) be downloaded from Amazon? I don't find a link there. I have an Amazon Kindle for PC, and I think it will only accept ebooks purchased directly from Amazon.

[ramonoski]

Quote Originally Posted by Knygathin

Can "The Small People" (or the whole book) be downloaded from Amazon? I don't find a link there. I have an Amazon Kindle for PC, and I think it will only accept ebooks purchased directly from Amazon.

It is my understanding that the ebooks can only be sold within the United States, so if you live elsewhere it won't show in your search results. Here's the link to the ebook:

Amazon.com: The Spectral Link eBook: Thomas Ligotti: Kindle Store

 

Amazon.com: The Spectral Link eBook: Thomas Ligotti: Kindle Store

If you see the "1-click purchase" button thing, you're good to go.

[Knygathin]

Ramonoski, a message says that The Spectral Link is currently not available for purchase. Other Ligotti ebook titles can be bought with the "1-click purchase".

[Nemonymous]

My last rationale: http://www.ligotti.net/showthread.ph...007#post123007

========================================
22.7.14
I have now read ‘Metaphysica Morum’, but not yet read ‘The Small People’. I don’t think it’s any accident that Olan is an anagram of Loan, a loan being a two way ‘deal’, infecting and benefiting both ways, just as ‘demoralise’ is, in its modern sense, to make someone lose hope but, in its archaic sense, to strip someone of morals. This story is of the infinitesimal and the immeasurable, both ironic and non-ironic, about futility, where fighting in this literary way for futility is a purpose that outlasts and immortalises the fighter but also this fighter is fighting WITH futility thus landing him back in that bus station toilet where he began.
I am indeed “open to ‘delightful possibilities and interpretations'”, like Dr. O, but also believing “nothing really meant anything”. The story has its own “magnificent symphony” as its ‘new-found context’ for a ‘metaphysical mutant’. Borrow or lend, which comes first? A fascinating tantalisation. Am I ‘uniquely defective’ in thus interpreting this work?

22.7.14 (later)
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?

23.7.14
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 co
nsider it to be a major work that will continue to resonate with me…
24.7.14
An interview with Ligotti has been issued today here: http://www.ligotti.net/showthread.php?t=8726
This is fascinating and harrowing, and concerns ‘The Spectral Link’. I am split between these following two viewpoints, my heart and my head, but which is which?
1) This is a rich and illuminating interview that helps my future re-reading of the book.
2) It is something that badly infects the book with considerations outside of its published pure text, and this is why I have always tried to resist reading authorial interviews, including the very many Ligotti interviews.
(1) and (2) benefiting as well as infecting like Olan’s ‘loan’?

4.8.14
Just learned about Jonathan Swift’s importance in creating interest-free loans for the Irish poor: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2006/07/jonathan_swift_.html

25.8.14
Today’s Gulliver knots / Ligotti theory: http://www.ligotti.net/showthread.php?t=8882

[Nemonymous]

Quote Originally Posted by Nemonymous

My last rationale: http://www.ligotti.net/showthread.ph...007#post123007 ======================================== 22.7.14 I have now read ‘Metaphysica Morum’, but not yet read ‘The Small People’. I don’t think it’s any accident that Olan is an anagram of Loan, a loan being a two way ‘deal’, infecting and benefiting both ways, just as ‘demoralise’ is, in its modern sense, to make someone lose hope but, in its archaic sense, to strip someone of morals. This story is of the infinitesimal and the immeasurable, both ironic and non-ironic, about futility, where fighting in this literary way for futility is a purpose that outlasts and immortalises the fighter but also this fighter is fighting WITH futility thus landing him back in that bus station toilet where he began. I am indeed “open to ‘delightful possibilities and interpretations'”, like Dr. O, but also believing “nothing really meant anything”. The story has its own “magnificent symphony” as its ‘new-found context’ for a ‘metaphysical mutant’. Borrow or lend, which comes first? A fascinating tantalisation. Am I ‘uniquely defective’ in thus interpreting this work? 22.7.14 (later) 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? 23.7.14 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 co nsider it to be a major work that will continue to resonate with me… 24.7.14 An interview with Ligotti has been issued today here: http://www.ligotti.net/showthread.php?t=8726 This is fascinating and harrowing, and concerns ‘The Spectral Link’. I am split between these following two viewpoints, my heart and my head, but which is which? 1) This is a rich and illuminating interview that helps my future re-reading of the book. 2) It is something that badly infects the book with considerations outside of its published pure text, and this is why I have always tried to resist reading authorial interviews, including the very many Ligotti interviews. (1) and (2) benefiting as well as infecting like Olan’s ‘loan’? 4.8.14 Just learned about Jonathan Swift’s importance in creating interest-free loans for the Irish poor: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2006/07/jonathan_swift_.html 25.8.14 Today’s Gulliver knots / Ligotti theory: http://www.ligotti.net/showthread.php?t=8882

The Spectral Link is the ultimate Ligottian Knot...?