The Spectral Link by Thomas Ligotti

[Druidic]

Quote

When the end of Western Civilisation comes around, my old tiger, I'd like to join you on your porch, knock back some beer together, and fire off a few rounds at the enemy before we're finally done for.--Mark S.

It would be an honor! I'll hold you to it!.

[Druidic]

After finally reading Metaphysica Morum I thought again of Gore Vidal's Messiah. When Fritz Leiber wrote of Nyarlathotep coming into modern civilization "to sell the world on Death" I couldn't help but feel his words had been inspired by Vidal's book (which he once praised in an essay on Lovecraft). Vidal's dark and disturbing novel seems like a logical companion to Ligotti's story; and I'm surprised at how few seem to have read it.

Perhaps this excerpt from a Wiki summary will inspire some readers to check it out;

The novel is written as the memoir of Eugene Luther, one of the first followers of Cavism, founded by John Cave, an American undertaker. One of the basic precepts of the new religion is the glorification of death. True followers of Cavism regard death as holy and to be sought gladly. It has been seen by some commentators as a prophecy of future cult leaders... The founder John Cave is himself cynically killed by his followers when he proves inconvenient for the new religion's development.

And this is only the beginning of this beautifully written book...

[Nemonymous]

Amazon UK have just written to me saying that they are refunding me £0.54 as a result of 'pre-order price protection'. So it looks as if they are still intending to deliver my copy of 'The Spectral Link'.

Meanwhile, I am wondering what to do with this financial windfall.

[beakripped]

Amazon Canada shipped my copies of The Spectral Link and Born to Fear on Friday and it looks as if they've currently got copies in stock.

[Nemonymous]

Just received my copy of the book from Amazon UK!

[beetlebox]

Quote Originally Posted by Howarth

Quote Originally Posted by beetlebox Imagine my joy...I came into work to find a parcel on my desk, clearly my copy of The Spectral Link. It is all I can do not to tear open the package there and then, and to hell with whatever it is I'm paid to do. Imagine my horror...when I come to open the book and find it has been printed back to front and upside down? What kind of cruel hoax is this? The clock goes back to zero as I return the book and hope I can get another copy before I go insane. I'd keep it; misbindings like that can (sometimes) be worth something, eventually.

That's good to know. Actually the seller has been very good about it. I had to prove the misprint with some photos, and they are going to send me a new copy and said keep the misprinted one. So I sort of get a bonus copy - albeit a little quirky. It is readable though and I couldn't be patient enough for the new one to arrive, so have started reading from the back cover!

I have to say, when I first saw it I thought maybe it was intentionally printed like that to add to the unease of the reader ;)

[Nemonymous]

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'" but also believing "nothing really meant anything", like Dr. O. The story has its own "magnificent symphony" as its 'all-new context' for a 'metaphysical mutant'. Borrow or lend, which comes first? A fascinating tantalisation. Am I 'uniquely defective' in thus interpreting this work?

[EemeliJ]

Quote Originally Posted by Dr. Locrian

Quote Originally Posted by beetlebox Imagine my joy...I came into work to find a parcel on my desk, clearly my copy of The Spectral Link. It is all I can do not to tear open the package there and then, and to hell with whatever it is I'm paid to do. Imagine my horror...when I come to open the book and find it has been printed back to front and upside down? What kind of cruel hoax is this? The clock goes back to zero as I return the book and hope I can get another copy before I go insane. Man, if it wasn't for the cost, I'd feel really tempted to keep that bizarre copy! One of a kind!

Mine arrived today, and it's the same.

I'm going to keep it

[bendk]

Another bibliomutant. I'd keep it too, as long as there is no swamplands odor to it.

[Nemonymous]

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?