Nemonymous
Grimscribe
THE JOURNAL OF J.P. DRAPEAU
I remember this probably being the first Ligotti story I ever read, appearing, as it did, in a 1987 issue of 'Dagon', a momentous magazine that later issued a Ligotti special in 1988 (and a DF Lewis special in 1989!)
It must have been a revelation for me, this story, back then - as it still is as I explore its dense byways today. I give below, from it, a series of quotes that seem to resonate with my findings above of this Penguin Classics collection so far - excerpts indeed of the inchoate Journal's 'Excerpts':
----------------
"Where is the writer who was begotten by two passionate masks..."
"Since childhood, for example, not one day has passed in which I have failed to hear the music of graveyards."
"...I decided to heed the old man's warning and disguise certain perceptions of mine in the language of whimsy."
"...that the whole of creation might best be pictured as an untenanted room filled with the echoes of nothingness."
"...the page before me will not welcome my pen."
"Finally, I realised that an entirely different creature was hiding behind my face, making it wholly unrecognizable to me."
-------------
These concepts are orbiting, as it were, a momentous image of planetary forces (in the astrological harmonics of which I have been interested for most of my life), viz. an explicit "tugging away" not at each of the spiritual or mental aspects of a human being but literally at each of our separate body parts (parts that are later shown in this work as separately autonomous during a magic show). That seems to be not only what I anticipate to be the situational core of this book near the cusp of 'Songs of a Dead Dreamer' and 'Grimscribe', but also its naturally ultimate philosophical core.
(An extract from my on-going review of the Penguin Classics collection.)
I remember this probably being the first Ligotti story I ever read, appearing, as it did, in a 1987 issue of 'Dagon', a momentous magazine that later issued a Ligotti special in 1988 (and a DF Lewis special in 1989!)
It must have been a revelation for me, this story, back then - as it still is as I explore its dense byways today. I give below, from it, a series of quotes that seem to resonate with my findings above of this Penguin Classics collection so far - excerpts indeed of the inchoate Journal's 'Excerpts':
----------------
"Where is the writer who was begotten by two passionate masks..."
"Since childhood, for example, not one day has passed in which I have failed to hear the music of graveyards."
"...I decided to heed the old man's warning and disguise certain perceptions of mine in the language of whimsy."
"...that the whole of creation might best be pictured as an untenanted room filled with the echoes of nothingness."
"...the page before me will not welcome my pen."
"Finally, I realised that an entirely different creature was hiding behind my face, making it wholly unrecognizable to me."
-------------
These concepts are orbiting, as it were, a momentous image of planetary forces (in the astrological harmonics of which I have been interested for most of my life), viz. an explicit "tugging away" not at each of the spiritual or mental aspects of a human being but literally at each of our separate body parts (parts that are later shown in this work as separately autonomous during a magic show). That seems to be not only what I anticipate to be the situational core of this book near the cusp of 'Songs of a Dead Dreamer' and 'Grimscribe', but also its naturally ultimate philosophical core.
(An extract from my on-going review of the Penguin Classics collection.)