Robert M. Price on Ligotti

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In this podcast interview with Robert M. Price, he has some nice things to say about Ligotti, Barron, Pulver, and T.E.D. Klein. (this discussion begins at 8:20)

SOTRadio-Cthulhu Mythos-Robert M. Price-Pt.4 - YouTube

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I was looking through some old Crypt of Cthulhu mags when I came across a brief review of Noctuary by Robet M. Price. He had this to say: "....the visions of the heir of Poe and Clark Ashton Smith. The jacket demon-visage is the real title of this book, though "Noctuary" ain't bad either, recalling one of Ligotti's fictional grimoires, The Noctuary of Tine, which is altogether appropriate since, as in the case of his "Vastarian" this book is not about soul-damning horror, it just is that horror. What is the sound of one hand strangling?
Ligotti's tale "Order of Illusion" at the very end of the book is worth the price of the whole. It is the perfect explanation of (really, confrontation with) Derrida's doctrine of the trace. And Tom tells me he's never read Derrida. It is sublime. Ligotti and Derrida are both major influences on my theology, spirituality, and preaching. Let me know if you'd like a copy of my sermons "The Holiness of Desolation" and "Mute Oracles" for example."


Robert M. Price
Crypt of Cthulhu #87 1994


The Holiness of Desolation

http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.c...ons/desola.htm


Mute Oracles

http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.c...rmons/mute.htm

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I found this early review of SOADD in Crypt of Cthulhu #40 1986.


Thomas Ligotti, Songs of a Dead Dreamer (Silver Scarab Press) 166 pp. $8.50

(Reviewed by Robert M. Price)

It was the lateness of the hour, not the content of the book, that made me drop off to sleep after finishing several of the stories in Songs of a Dead Dreamer. I recall dimly wondering if I would have nightmares influenced by the stories. What I dreamed actually seemed to be kind of like one of the stories : it seemed that the very dream itself was a thought, an experience telepathically stolen from someone else and written down, and my dream-awareness was actually the subjective self-awareness of the written account! "I" struggled with the realization that I was but the echo and not after all the identity I felt myself to be. What kind of book prompts dreams of this kind?
It is the kind of book that moved Ramsey Campbell to call it, in his Introduction, "one of the most important horror books of the decade." Again, "I don't know when I have enjoyed a collection of an author's horror stories more." Such praise coming from Campbell is rather striking, and I have to admit it's what got me to set other things aside and take a look. Having looked, let me say that one can almost forgive publisher Harry Morris for not putting out an issue of Nyctalops for . . . three years?, if this is what he's been up to instead.
Ligotti's stories are not all cut from the same predictable cloth as some authors' are. His premises and characters have the same appearance of unselected variegated-ness as reality itself, as if Ligotti's imagination were a radar dish set to pick up signals from any and every corner of the universe of nightmare. Uniting all the stories is a narrative style that is confident, fluid, and sensitive to arresting metaphor. There is an eerie suggestiveness reminiscent of HPL and Clark Ashton Smith, but the stories are perhaps more like the work of Ramsey Campbell than anyone else I am familiar with. However, such comparisons are easily misleading. Let me rather say that if you like Campbell, you will very likely enjoy Thomas Ligotti.
The most amazing thing about Ligotti's work is that none of it has been professionally published before! Even this collection is the product of the small press. I herewith venture the prediction that this will soon change. If the tiny 300 copy printing comes to the attention of a major publisher, I feel confident that in a year of so we will see at least a mass market paperback of Songs of a Dead Dreamer.

	SOADD Songs of a Dead Dreamer   Songs of a Dead Dreamer was the first book published featuring a collection stories by Thomas Ligotti. Original Printing Revised Printing

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This is the introduction Robert M. Price wrote for TL's story "Sect of the Idiot" for his anthology The Azathoth Cycle. The Blind Idiot God
16 Horror Tales Concerning the Ultimate Chaos. Published by Chaosium Publications 1995.


Of Magister Ligotti Lin Carter once commented, "This Ligotti chap astonishes me. Seems like he came out of nowhere just recently and is already an accomplished master, as far as I am concerned. His subtlety of effect, control of mood and atmosphere, and sheer power of eerie suggestiveness would have delighted Lovecraft himself." This nowhere from which Tom emerged was the netherworld of semi-pro and fanzines including Nyctalops, Eldritch Tales, and Crypt of Chulhu. In fact, "The Sect of the Idiot" first appeared in Crypt #56 and was written at my request. Since then it has appeared elsewhere, most notably as the title story in a German collection, Die Sekte des Idiots (DuPont 1992). I am delighted to present it here again.
All of Ligotti's fiction presupposes and promotes a disturbing philosophy of nihilistic Zen (if I may so tag it). As Ligotti's character Professor Nobody puts it, the "logic of supernatural horror... is a logic that is founded on fear, it is a logic whose sole principle states: 'Existence equals Nightmare.' Unless life is a dream, nothing makes sense"
("Professor Nobody's Little Lectures on Supernatural Horror") In "The Sect of the Idiot" this mad world view is identified with H.P. Lovecraft's: All is idiot chaos.
Ligotti's tales are laden with wonderful bits of dark mythology, evocative hints that make the reader feel he no longer simply peruses a piece of fiction, but that genuine revelations are at hand, that a Ligotti story is like Ligotti's fictional volume Vastarian, a book which is not simply about the thing but actually is the thing, i.e., esoteric revelation. The tales function like Zen koans, subversive riddles designed to paint us into a corner, to tree the fox of rational sanity and force a leap into the Spartan purity of the Void. Go on, now. The Norns of Azathoth are waiting for you.