Nemonymous
Grimscribe
Eventually to complete my recent reviews of stories on this SONGS OF A DEAD DREAMER section on TLO, i.e. the stories having now been reread in the Penguin Classics collection:
LES FLEURS
"It's strange how you're sometimes forced to assume an unsympathetic view of yourself through borrowed eyes."
Similarly, as with that quote, the unreliable 'narrator' (is he a good apple in the barrel or a bad one?) makes his descriptions and divulgences public here for the borrowed eyes of his readers, a Diary appropriately about his relationship with Day aka Daisy.
As with Ligotti in general, the prose is immaculately textured 'al dente', full of dark implication and an upon-the-edge feeling. In this story that feeling is of esoteric patterns underlying or transcending our perceived world (physical, natural, psychological and spiritual). This makes an interesting comparison with another book I happen to be concurrently reviewing HERE (i.e. The Collected Connoisseur by Mark Valentine and John Howard).
The Ligotti is a dreading upon-the edge feeling (also one here with a sense of being pursued by a detective) whilst the Connoisseur's is a yearning one. Both are replete with a patterned sense of secret groups and (syn)Aesthetics. In the Ligotti, the latter is represented, inter alia, by a cactus-like sculpture as 'objective correlative'.
(An extract from my on-going review of the Penguin Classics collection.)
LES FLEURS
"It's strange how you're sometimes forced to assume an unsympathetic view of yourself through borrowed eyes."
Similarly, as with that quote, the unreliable 'narrator' (is he a good apple in the barrel or a bad one?) makes his descriptions and divulgences public here for the borrowed eyes of his readers, a Diary appropriately about his relationship with Day aka Daisy.
As with Ligotti in general, the prose is immaculately textured 'al dente', full of dark implication and an upon-the-edge feeling. In this story that feeling is of esoteric patterns underlying or transcending our perceived world (physical, natural, psychological and spiritual). This makes an interesting comparison with another book I happen to be concurrently reviewing HERE (i.e. The Collected Connoisseur by Mark Valentine and John Howard).
The Ligotti is a dreading upon-the edge feeling (also one here with a sense of being pursued by a detective) whilst the Connoisseur's is a yearning one. Both are replete with a patterned sense of secret groups and (syn)Aesthetics. In the Ligotti, the latter is represented, inter alia, by a cactus-like sculpture as 'objective correlative'.
(An extract from my on-going review of the Penguin Classics collection.)
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