Reviews of BORN TO FEAR: INTERVIEWS WITH THOMAS LIGOTTI

[matt cardin]

Just published: the first review I've yet seen of Born to Fear. (And this is before I've even received my own copy from Subterranean.) It's positive.

"Hooked on True Detective? Check Out Its Influence, Thomas Ligotti"
By Jon Morris, PopMatters, June 2, 2014

Quote

In the interviews, Ligotti comes across as a learned man whom one might easily converse with, even disagree with, and still get along. He tells one of his interlocutors, for example, “let me pause a moment and acknowledge the obvious, namely, that my celebration of Poe and Lovecraft, and my derogation of writers who are unlike them, is a pure outpouring of personal temperament—and nothing more.” Personal temperament, or something akin to it, was exactly what drew me to Camus, and what has made reading his books, along with those of Cioran, Ligotti and others, such a solace. Ligotti has a name for this effect: “This is what I call the ‘I thought I was the only one who felt that way’ syndrome. The farther your thoughts and feelings are from those of the mainstream, the more attached you will become to the writer who speaks for you so. You will feel lucky to have found that writer. And that writer will feel even luckier to have found you.” With a new collection of interviews with Ligotti to read, hot on the heels of the successful first season of True Detective, pessimists have much to feel lucky about all around.

[beakripped]

Seems to be something wrong with the link.

[ramonoski]

For some reason it seems to be parsing it with the TLO url at the start. No idea what went wrong there.

One can simply delete the ligotti.net bit at the start, but here's a fixed link anyways: Hooked on True Detective? Check Out Its Influence, Thomas Ligotti | PopMatters


Anyway, not that there was any doubt this was going to be a great book, but glad to see favorable reviews for it. This month can't end soon enough.

	TLO THOMAS LIGOTTI ONLINE

[matt cardin]

Not sure why the link above went bad, but thank you both for the assist. I've just edited it in the original post, and it seems to be working now.

[matt cardin]

Here's another one, this time with a qualifiedly positive take:

Review of Born to Fear: Interviews with Thomas Ligotti
SVRevu, June 2, 2014

An excerpt:

Quote

Ligotti's fiction clearly represents a deeply pessimistic view of the world. All of his stories revolve around the central idea that life is absurd, miserable, and pointless, and this view of the world informs every facet of the stories. Still, somehow it is far more depressing to hear Ligotti himself describe this worldview, and how deeply he endorses it. I enjoy Ligotti's fiction a great deal, but for me it has always been a form of catharsis. The nihilistic worldview expressed in the stories reflects how the world looks at its darkest, and to see that reflected with such eloquence is a kind of exorcism--to confront and then leave behind the pessimism reflected therein. It is clear, however, that Ligotti does not write the stories as catharsis. The worldview depicted is one he fully adopts. Ligotti describes in candid detail his struggles with anxiety and depression, and he explains and defends his anti-natalist views, whereby it would have been better had no one ever existed. The interviews were thus, in a strange way, darker than any of the stories, especially read one after another, and I had a hard time reading through this collection. The interviews are also occasionally repetitive. The volume collects a variety of interviews, and it is only to be expected that many interviewers will ask similar questions. It might have been better had the editor cut out some of the redundancy, although sometimes the reframing of a familiar answer provides some new insight.

Also note that the same reviewer, Benjamin Wald, has simultaneously published a (positive) review of The Spectral Link.