Which Ligotti stories are the most popular with fans?
I'd been meaning to ask this for a while, as I'm still fairly new to Ligotti, though can as of today say that I have now read all of his stories from Songs of a Dead Dreamer, Grimscribe and Teatro Grottesco (the latter of which I would rate as his strongest, most complex collection of work I've encountered yet writing-wise, though it lacks the variety of SoaDD). Whilst my efforts may seem lazy, I have actually done solid searches around for threads on people's favourite Ligotti stories, and come up completely empty, so at the risk of being banned from this abode with extreme prejudice for making what is no doubt a duplicate thread, I'd like to know which are the stories generally pointed to as his best?
My choices as of writing would include Purity, The Bungalow House, and Gas Station Carnivals – each of which are from the Teatro Grottesco collection. I felt these had shed almost entirely the clear surface elements carried from Poe (The Chymist, Drink to Me Only with Labyrinthine Eyes) and Lovecraft (Nethescurial, The Last Feast of Harlequin) which were prominent in the former two collections of his I'd read, moving the form in to even deeper, more darkly personal territory. I felt that with these later works he went from being the modern successor of the Poe/HPL tradition, to creating a spirit of horror all of his own, and in doing so equaling the previous two masters of darkness, being thence promoted from their star pupil, to their strongest competitor.
I have found the clear evolution of Ligotti's artistry fascinating, and was wondering how my views aligned with the consensus, as I'm actually not remotely clued in, as there has been a lamentable dearth of Ligotti discussion on this forum since I joined.
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