The Frolic

[Nemonymous]

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:

THE FROLIC

"An amiable genie seemed to be on standby."

Opportune that, yesterday, too, I finished reading Salman Rushdie's new 2015 novel (my review of it HERE) which is about putting the genie or jinn back in the bottle, and I assumed this was the genie of today, the IS State, the Internet trolling and rivalries, and other modern day madnesses and strangenesses, the Fantastical embedded in the Quotidian - but when layered with this 1980s premonitory classic story by Ligotti, one knows it is the genie of what some do with or think about our children, a worsening plague that has become more and more obvious since those ignorant 1980s, arguably worse than any other plague, giving birth to anti-natalism as a renewal of an older pessimist philosophy in order to protect our children not only from birth itself but from those waiting for them on this side of birth?
On a more superficial level, this is a truly frightening story of a beautifully conveyed gloomy town whose main 'industry' is a prison. A psychologist, home in the evening from working at that prison, is debating about what he considers to be a wrong decision in taking that job. He tells his wife about a prisoner, with no name except John Doe, one who is imprisoned for multi child-murdering, who seems to develop an inferred uncanny link with that psychologist's little daughter (after earlier talk between the psychologist and the prisoner during the working day), the daughter supposedly safe in her bedroom with her new Bambi toy, the window open...
That genie of a link between the Fantastic and the Quotidian, the Impossible and the Possible, the Lower and Upper Worlds, as Rushdie now puts it, is tied in with that prisoner's "...attempt on his part to recast the traumatic memories of his childhood into a realm that cross-breeds a mean-street reality with a fantasy world of his imagination, a phantasmagoric mingling of heaven and hell. This is where he does his 'frolicking'..."
A momentous work. It will haunt you.

As an aside, "When told me about..." on page 12, is this a typo? I hope it is the first and last typo in this Penguin Classics book.

(An extract from my on-going review of the Penguin Classics collection.)

 

[MadsPLP]

Upon re-reading this story, never a favourite of mine, but quite effective, two things struck me which made me like it more.

First of all the sarcasm in the description of the town. It feels like da deliberately sarcastic parody of "realistic" horror fiction so much in vogue at the time of the collection coming out. It's like Ligotti doesn't even try to hide his sneering at the trope of building a "realistic" world in order to introduce the horror.

It has alway struck me as an odd choice for an opening story since it is so different from other Ligotti stories. I perceived it might be for commercial reasons, since it's easily one of the more accessible and conventional stories by Ligotti. Upon rereading, it feels much like an introduction to the rest of the book.

The oft-quoted message from John Doe, "We leave this behind in your capable hands, for in the black-foaming gutters and back alleys of paradise, in the dank windowless gloom of some galactic cellar, in the hollow pearly whorls found in sewerlike seas, in starless cities of insanity, and in their slums . . . my awe-struck little deer and I have gone frolicking" [quoted from an online source - not the Penguin Classics edition as it's at home, and I'm procrastinating at work], seems like an introduction to the rest of the book. The rest of the book seems to take place in the black-foaming gutters, in the dank windowless gloom - "The Frolic" is the starting point for that frolicking trip that constitutes the rest of the book.

 

[Druidic]

This is my favorite Ligotti story. John Doe as an avatar of Nyarlathotep was just darkly brilliant.

 

[Revenant]

I often wonder if Ligotti wrote the work as a way of easing himself into the world that was eventually to become known to the rest of us as the Liggotian Universe.

 

[ToALonelyPeace]

One of my favorite story. I could see John Doe in my mind (though I've never met someone like him before) and hear his childish voice.

"Mean, mean, mean. You're a meany, that's what you are."

 

[Nemonymous]

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:

THE FROLIC

"An amiable genie seemed to be on standby."

Opportune that, yesterday, too, I finished reading Salman Rushdie's new 2015 novel (my review of it HERE) which is about putting the genie or jinn back in the bottle, and I assumed this was the genie of today, the IS State, the Internet trolling and rivalries, and other modern day madnesses and strangenesses, the Fantastical embedded in the Quotidian - but when layered with this 1980s premonitory classic story by Ligotti, one knows it is the genie of what some do with or think about our children, a worsening plague that has become more and more obvious since those ignorant 1980s, arguably worse than any other plague, giving birth to anti-natalism as a renewal of an older pessimist philosophy in order to protect our children not only from birth itself but from those waiting for them on this side of birth?
On a more superficial level, this is a truly frightening story of a beautifully conveyed gloomy town whose main 'industry' is a prison. A psychologist, home in the evening from working at that prison, is debating about what he considers to be a wrong decision in taking that job. He tells his wife about a prisoner, with no name except John Doe, one who is imprisoned for multi child-murdering, who seems to develop an inferred uncanny link with that psychologist's little daughter (after earlier talk between the psychologist and the prisoner during the working day), the daughter supposedly safe in her bedroom with her new Bambi toy, the window open...
That genie of a link between the Fantastic and the Quotidian, the Impossible and the Possible, the Lower and Upper Worlds, as Rushdie now puts it, is tied in with that prisoner's "...attempt on his part to recast the traumatic memories of his childhood into a realm that cross-breeds a mean-street reality with a fantasy world of his imagination, a phantasmagoric mingling of heaven and hell. This is where he does his 'frolicking'..."
A momentous work. It will haunt you.

As an aside, "When told me about..." on page 12, is this a typo? I hope it is the first and last typo in this Penguin Classics book.

(An extract from my on-going review of the Penguin Classics collection.)

PS: My rationale for these reposts: http://www.ligotti.net/showthread.php?p=123007#post123007

 

[Michael]

Very random question for the Network. I could just be making this up but I thought I remembered that Thomas Ligotti has said he doesn't care much for "The Frolic". Specifically, it's not that he absolutely hates this story but that this is usually the first Thomas Ligotti story folks read (this applies to me) primarily because of Songs, Nightmare Factory, and now the Penguin Edition. I think his point was that this type of story structure he can do but if one thought that "Oh, most of Ligotti's stuff is like the Frolic" then they would be inaccurate.

Does this ring a bell for anyone? And if so, do you know where he said it? I thought it was an interview but can't find it? And it's totally possible that I'm just misremembering a conversation I had and he never said this at all.

Again, random.

 

[gveranon]

Very random question for the Network. I could just be making this up but I thought I remembered that Thomas Ligotti has said he doesn't care much for "The Frolic"... I think his point was that this type of story structure he can do but if one thought that "Oh, most of Ligotti's stuff is like the Frolic" then they would be inaccurate.

Does this ring a bell for anyone? And if so, do you know where he said it? I thought it was an interview but can't find it? And it's totally possible that I'm just misremembering a conversation I had and he never said this at all.

If you have a copy of The Frolic film on DVD, check the accompanying booklet. The booklet contains either an interview or a short essay in which Ligotti says something like what you remember. I'm trapped at work right now but will check my copy when I get a chance.

 

[Michael]

Very random question for the Network. I could just be making this up but I thought I remembered that Thomas Ligotti has said he doesn't care much for "The Frolic"... I think his point was that this type of story structure he can do but if one thought that "Oh, most of Ligotti's stuff is like the Frolic" then they would be inaccurate.

Does this ring a bell for anyone? And if so, do you know where he said it? I thought it was an interview but can't find it? And it's totally possible that I'm just misremembering a conversation I had and he never said this at all.

If you have a copy of The Frolic film on DVD, check the accompanying booklet. The booklet contains either an interview or a short essay in which Ligotti says something like what you remember. I'm trapped at work right now but will check my copy when I get a chance.

THAT'S IT!!!!
Thanks a TON gveranon!!!!

 

[ToALonelyPeace]

The interview for The Frolic: Deviltry on DVD is here. I don't see he said anything about it being his least favorite work. On the other hand, I know Ligotti said his favorite piece was "The Shadow at the Bottom of the World" here.

 

[gveranon]

The interview in The Frolic booklet is different from the one at Horror Garage. It is a much longer interview with both Ligotti and Brandon Trenz (who co-authored the script), conducted by Brian Poe.

However, the comments that Michael remembered are in Ligotti's "Introduction," which is about four (booklet-sized) pages. Here are some relevant excerpts:

In his introduction to his study The Modern Weird Tale (2001), S. T. Joshi wrote, "There is scarcely a 'normal' character in all Thomas Ligotti's work...." This is a fair observation and does not inspire me to argue over what constitutes a normal character.

In fiction or in reality, normal people did not consume my interest as a child and teenager, and just as likely I did not consume theirs. In high school, my closest friends and I were dubbed "freaks" in accordance with the jargon of the period. To us, this appellative carried only positive connotations. The only fictional character I can recall being taken with in those years, and ever afterward, was Sherlock Holmes, whose fascination for readers is based on his not being normal in any sense.

The stories I wrote at that time--the early to mid-1970s--were still bad and their characters were not normal. When I discovered the world of small-press horror magazines in the latter 1970s, I also discovered that--with some striking exceptions such as the twisted heroes and heroines in the stories of Ramsey Campbell--everyone was writing primarily about normal characters.... Desperate to get one of my stories published, I finally broke down and wrote about some normal characters living a normal life. The result was "The Frolic." The story was accepted by the first editor to whom I sent it.... The year before, however, Harry Morris's legendary fanzine Nyctalops had printed one of my tales that featured an exceptionally abnormal character--Simon Smirk, the eponymous freak of "The Chymist." By the time I was aware of this acceptance, though, I had already made my sacrifice to normality by writing "The Frolic."

While the onstage character of "The Frolic" were normal--a prison psychiatrist named David Munck and his wife Leslie, who had a daughter named Norleen--there was also an abnormal character in the cast, a supernatural psycho designated as John Doe. This was the standard way to write horror stories: focus on normal characters being victimized by abnormal characters or things and tell of their plight from a third-person viewpoint. Earlier in my then-nonexistent life as a horror writer, I would have told this story from the perspective of John Doe, with the Munck family in the shadows of Doe's mind, if they were even included in the narrative. But I was convinced that this sort of thing could never be published.... When Harry Morris accepted "The Chymist," I thought that maybe I could go back to writing stories seen through the eyes of abnormal characters, many of whom live in an abnormal world delineated in an abnormal prose style. It turned out I that I was right, and, to my relief, certain editors and readers began to consent to all the abnormality I could deliver.

In "The Frolic," I tried to keep the abnormal home fires burning while fixing for the most part on normal characters. I am not sure I could have continued to do that, as Campbell has done in his later work. Normal people still do not consume my interest either in reality or in fiction.

 

[ToALonelyPeace]

I see. Fascinating, thanks for posting the excerpts. I will try to get the DVD then.