Weird Fiction and the Cult of Obscurity

Weird fiction readers remind me of black metal fans. That's all I have to say on the subject.

I am the most kvlt of all. I write my stories in broken English, on toilet paper and in crayon and push them through people's letter boxes. These small press authors are all clearly commercial sell outs.

[Nemonymous]

I have long espoused the cult of Nemonymity and other bespoke obliquities.

[Patrick G.P]

Quote Originally Posted by Nirvana In Karma

Weird fiction readers remind me of black metal fans. That's all I have to say on the subject.

Was tempted to comment on this earlier, mentioning bands you've probably never heard of. But there is seriously a Black Metal band called Mary Shelley:
Mary Shelley - Encyclopaedia Metallum: The Metal Archives
Sheesh, pick a more obscure horror writer for your band name next time, newbs.

[Ibrahim]

Quote Originally Posted by Robert Adam Gilmour

Publication: The Dedalus Book of Dutch Fantasy Publication: The Forbidden Kingdom Title: The Hidden Force Publication: New Worlds from the Lowlands: Fantasy and Science Fiction of Dutch and Flemish Writers Publication: The Dedalus Book of Flemish Fantasy

Thumbed through the first Dedalus book in the local library & it looked ok, you could do worse than pick it up as an introduction. The Vestdijk tale included is wonderfully poetic. All this is really making me want to try my hand at translating some Couperus shorts, but i fear my knowledge of both languages is too limited. Oh well.

[Hidden X]

This recent TLO mess about Laird Barron had me thinking about this, that is about opposite of this.
I often get the impression that some author's achievement of wider popularity and acclaim equals to veritable death sentence within the weird fiction's connoisseur/elitist subculture, as far as their opinion of his or her fiction goes. I guess that you can apply the same to a number of authors, from John Langan to Jeff VanderMeer.
I recall Ex Occidente's (ultimate in connoisseur genre!) Geticus Pollus complaining that VanderMeer isn't cool and avant-garde anymore.

Quote

...which I imagine Jeff VanderMeer would love, if only he could take a break from reading the mainstream, puffy-meets-edgy stuff which he keeps promoting lately. So take a break Jeff, go buy this book and start reading something serious for once and you will see you will become once again one of my kewl guys.

	TLO THOMAS LIGOTTI ONLINE

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

You'd need more evidence to support that.

Thomas Ligotti is widely acclaimed, and we all like him and consider him the best living horror writer. Many of the best regarded current crop of writers mentioned in the same breath as him simply aren't as good as people say, and most of them are plain irritating fanboys.

[hopfrog]

Fanfags of ye world unit!
I read so little horror I have no clue who this current crop of writers be. I ache to be inform'd.

[Speaking Mute]

Given the number of Clive Barker fans that surfaced in the recent Laird Barron/Joshi discussion, I don't think that's a fair assessment of TLO membership. Popularity is also relative: Barron might have a large standing in the Weird Horror niche, but he's yet to crossover into mainstream literary success like Vandermeer or Mieville in terms of either sales or recognition. And even Vandermeer and Mieville are midges compared to King, Patterson, Rowling, Crichton, etc. etc. I'd go further and say that just about any contemporary author is obscure until they've either landed a high profile television show or had their names splurged across a couple of blockbusters.

Furthermore, Kafka and Poe are certified pop culture, but I doubt there's many Weird Horror aficionados out there who will go on at lengths about how much these authors supposedly suck. The revolt against Lovecraft is a reflection of current political turmoils and the amount of terrible Lovecraft pastiche out there - in which some of us would include relatively popular authors like Vandermeer and Kiernan.

	TLO THOMAS LIGOTTI ONLINE