The Shadow, the Darkness

[Nemonymous]

THE SHADOW, THE DARKNESS – Not so much a story as a philosophical treatise disguised as a story and makes mention of a “Conspiracy Against The Human Race” – with a photographic 'negative' Maat called Tsalal. It takes place in a Twin Peaks town (Crampton) (plus mention of “psychic coffee house” and the town’s metamorphosis at the end into, inter alia, “strange peaks”), a ‘storefront’ art gallery (Cf The Bungalow House) and a character called Grossvogel who reminds me of Madoff the disgraced hedge-fund operator. A very apt comparison, I found!
“Soul or self” are dubbed “nonsense and dreams”, and Grossvogel is like the “giantlike” Russian ‘man’ in Algernon Blackwood’s THE CENTAUR. In fact this Ligotti ‘story’ (almost novella length) is the precise 'negative' version of THE CENTAUR novel.
It also treats of Art as a “swindle” (akin to hedge funds?) and other Aesthetic matters in 'The Bunglaow House' - and, in this respect, reminds me very strongly (but also, in its way, very differently) of the story ‘The Point of Oswald Masters’ (the authorship of which is currently unknown in the ‘Cone Zero’ anthology (Nemonymous 8)).
The style of 'The Shadow, the Darkness' is hypnotic, almost like Philip Glass music as well as clumsily amorphous, yet paradoxically tight and sinewy, in the textual texture of Elizabeth Bowen fiction.
The gastrointestinal disease (here seen as a religious Road to Damascus!) echoes the story ‘Teatro Grottesco’ and, not surprisingly in view of this ‘disease’, there is the need of another Art installation lavatory to be placed into the ’story’!
This ‘story’ also has labels like “drab abyss”. A 'story' about “absence” and the “useless desire to do something, and to be something.”
In many ways, perhaps against its authorial intent, this ‘story’ uplifts me. I fail to explain why.

[Jezetha]

I just read ´The Shadow, the Darkness´ for the first time. It struck me ever more forcibly that this story, the nucleus of the forthcoming CATHR, is not only strongly allegorical, I suddenly realized I was reading a negative gospel. Reiner Grossvogel - a rather ludicrous German name, literally meaning Pure Big Bird - figures as Christ. The people who follow him rather critically and reluctantly (his disciples as it were) are all 'losers' and twelve or thirteen in number (p. 256 'about a dozen in all'). There is also one woman in this entourage called Mrs Angela - Mary Magdalen? Grossvogel dies and is resurrected, though here it is called 'metamorphic recovery'. The animating God in this Ligottian Gospel is the Tsalal, p. 272: "It means "to become darkened... to become enshadowed" in Hebrew. What Ligotti has done here is to have made the Good News of the New Testament into its obverse. And CATHR will be the Ligottian Bible.

	CATHR The Conspiracy Against the Human Race

[Ascrobius]

While I don't have time to get into why I feel the way I do about it, I do believe that though it will take some time for people to begin referring back to The Shadow, The Darkness, after more people read TCATHR, after seeing the obvious connectedness between the two, and recognizing it for what it is; a true Ligotti masterpiece. Not only that, but in Ligottian terms, it's an epic when compared to the majority of his other works, which puts it into a category of its own.

	TCATHR The Conspiracy Against the Human Race

[EemeliJ]

Though not my personal favourite of the collection, I always thought that The Shadow, The Darkness was the most powerful story in Teatro Grottesco. Quite excellent it was at the time of reading, about a year ago, and I've been slowly going through the stories again just recently. The second reading has proved to be more intense and I wonder how the story will strike this time. Severini and The Shadow, The Darkness are still left. There is some anticipation in me. I'm excited to go through the story again and make a little analysis of my own. For now though, I shall occupy meself with Songs of a Dead Dreamer, which I haven't read too much yet.