How I Came to Appreciate Thomas Ligotti

[Nicole Cushing]

This afternoon I recorded a new video: How I Came to Appreciate Thomas Ligotti. Lots of pics of my Ligotti books as well as my HPL and Poe stuff, accompanied by commentary.

[njhorror]

I was reading classic horror and wanted something weirder. I found it.

[DoktorH]

Conspiracy Against the Human Race is what did it for me. read that, figured that if Ligotti did not already have a quasireligious cult of worshipper-minions regarding him as their Prophet-King of Oblivion, I would start one. I am far too lazy to actually do so, and TCATHR is full of wonderful reasons why there's no point in even attempting such silliness, but if Ligotti ever runs for pope or president or Bull Goose Warlord of whatever dystopian ruin my continent is bound to become, I'll vote for him.

	TCATHR The Conspiracy Against the Human Race

[Michael]

I posted elsewhere that Ligotti was, in a very real sense, the person who let me know that I wasn't completely losing my mind. I immediately appreciated his writing the first second I cracked open my copy of "The Nightmare Factory." In particular, it was the story "In the Shadow of Another World" that made me realize this wasn't just another "horror writer"; that he was of the caliber of Poe and Lovecraft, and that we may not again see his peer for a century.

But maybe when I truly appreciated him was when I began to live my own life, finally devoid of the crippling fear that I was losing my mind (a fear vanquished because of Ligotti), and found others like me. Did they all appreciate the beauty I found in his writing? No, few did. But all of them appreciated the message he had within his writing. It was a message not of hope but of truth, a truth we had always known but had never found another to confirm. Until he did. As Boethius found consolation in his philosophy, so I, so we, found consolation in Ligotti's. For this I am appreciative. For this I am very grateful. As are many others I've met who were lost in this marionette stage.