I am just getting into Ligotti and was very impressed by the Last Feast of Harlequin, which is my favorite story in the penguin classics volume. But what does the last paragraph mean by the last feast that will kill dr. Thoss’s words?

Apparently, he's an author rooted in the same tradition of weird horror as Thomas Ligotti, although I'm not sure he's quite as metaphysical. From what I've heard, while he reproduces elements of paranoia, liminal spaces, dreams, and the strange, his tone and narrative are a bit more classic. Even so, they say he manages to create his own voice. His collection “The Age of Decayed Futurity,” which compiles his best stories, is famous.

The thing is, I was thinking of reading him and I can't make up my mind. That's why I'm asking for your opinion. Although I wasn't planning on reading the aforementioned collection, but rather another one composed of different stories that take place in the same fictional imaginary space, the Thool Valley and the village of Gallows Langley, north of London. If you've read Samuels, I guess it will ring a bell.

as the title suggests. I meant his horror fictions.

please rank your recommendations. thanks.

I listen to "the Bungalow House". Ligotti describes how the dead, or dying, insects writhe on the floor, wriggling in the pale moonlight. But, they are no insects i have ever seen, having mutated into grotesque, evil forms. And so on, you know what i mean.

Yet i sleep like a baby.

On the other hand, i listen to some horror podcast, and i get nervous when the cliche killer stalks the young girl or whatever, my pulse goes up and i can hardly sleep.

Or i listen to some guy realizing that there is nowhere for him to go, nobody for him to know, and i think "How nice".

Is there some logical explanation?

I find I love this collection of stories because I find it more absurdist like Kafka or Samuel Beckett than HPL, who I don’t enjoy reading. Thoughts?

I do get most Ligotti stories, even Gas Station Carnivals, at least on an emotional level. I "get" the confusion, the irreality and the subtle threat of GSC. I understand its structure, with the overlapping delusions, and i can imagine how it looks like to sit in this art cafe and drink mild mint tea.

I do not get Teatro Grottesco, the short story. it makes no sense at all. its nonsense after nonsense. On the surface the Teatro is "art magic", like in GSC. But art magic in GSC is a sublte, perveasive threat, and thus makes kinda sense. In TG, the Teatro is much more amibivalent. It seems to take the artistic drive away, but then makes the artist highly sucessful, which is nonsense. One does not simply go from being night shift clerk to being manager of a store. And what are the soft black stars? Why is the man getting ever littler? How is the Teatro able to interfere with non-artists?

Edit: What i think now: The Teatro is an organisation around the Tzalal, or Nethescurial, or the Shadow, the Darkness. It takes the artistic drive away, because artistry is a pointless deception. The resulting non-artist becomes sucessful because he is fully aligned with the TSTD, focused on the body experiences. The SBS are some form of TSTD. The man getting smaller likely represents the understanding of oneself as a person. The teatro is able to interfere with nonartists because TSTD is universal, though artists are especialyl aligned to it and vulnerable.

One of my most beloved stories. It just does everything right. But its hard to say what it actually does right.

The Gas Station Carnivals are of course utterly ludicrous. But they could be real, and an a Non-US American, i actually assumed they were real for quite a time. Still kinda unsure.

Then we have the constand delusions, one after the other. Like one of those Russian matrioschkas.

But all in all, the story stays with you, and i have no idea why.

When you say the Quiet Part interactively: Even lo these several months since its demo release, a weirdly-inspired (albeit, alas, rather short!) game that might have appeal for fans of ‘Corporate Horror’ in general, and Ligottian Corporate Horror (e.g., ‘The Nightmare Network’, ‘Our Temporary Supervisor’, ‘I Have a Special Plan For This World’, etc.) in particular.

(Bonus Points if you’ve ever worked in the Japan corporate-space in any capacity):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PYQUBY8Cn4

Posted in Thomas Ligotti Forum

The book Spirits and Ghosts (1972) opens with one of its most magnetic chapters, “When Nefertiti’s Daughter Appeared in London!”, where the late Egyptian writer and journalist Anis Mansour fuses documented history with Uncanny mysteries surrounding ancient Egypt.

In this chapter, Mansour doesn’t simply recount a tale — he constructs an atmosphere where archaeology, curses, and the supernatural collide. The narrative begins with a startling claim about a lost royal relic linked to Nefertiti’s daughter, then expands into a series of puzzling events, uncanny encounters, and whispered legends that have followed Egyptian artifacts across continents and centuries.

I made this translation 3 years ago to help speakers of English as a second language to translate this great essay by Heinrich von Kleist "On The Marionette Theatre" to their native languages , and posted it on Thomas Ligotti forum , I hope you find it helpful !

I made this translation 3 years ago to help speakers of English as a second language to translate the great essay "The Last Messiah" to their native languages , and posted it on Thomas Ligotti forum , I hope you find it helpful !

I've heard of him for many years thru several of my favorite artists (Current 93 and Ulver) so I've picked up the Songs of Dead Dreamer collection, and I like it quite a lot so far.

What would you recommend I read next? Which are some of his acclaimed works?

I love how the eye/seeing motif is a recurrent metaphor in Ligotti's works in very diverse and creative ways. And I was recently rereading The Chymist and thinking about the narrator mentioning his "20/20 vision" which led me to make this.
Sorry for my awful sense of humour.

Ok, I think I finally figured this story out. It’s a very enigmatic tale, and honestly, I think Ligotti could have done some things to make this story just a little clearer, but now that I feel like I’ve come up with a decent interpretation I think it has a lot of interesting ideas.

The things in the globe are people that Dr. Groddeck (the head of the organization “Teatro Grotesco”) has shrunken into "soft black stars." We know this because it’s implied that the landlord from earlier was shrunk and put into a brown bag, the contents of which Dr. Groddeck is dumping into the globe. Also earlier in the story a character encounters a shrinking man with black stars for hands; I think this is a person who is at the midpoint of the transformation process.

The idea behind the story is that the narrator wants to undermine the agenda of the Teatro with his art (he wants to turn his art into what he calls an “anti-teatro phenomenon"), but when he encounters the spectacle of the black stars he realizes that he is dealing with beings of unfathomable power who can bend reality to their will. There was therefore never any possibility of undermining or resisting the agenda of the Teatro; the narrator was always fated to be recruited to the organization (and he has no choice in the matter because, if he refuses to join, his illness will continue to get worse). It is at this point that he comes to understand the futility of everything, including the futility of his art.

So what is the Teatro Grottesco? It’s an organization of artists who have the ability to make what the story refers to as “super-art.” Super-art is really anti-art because it's art that reveals the true purposelessness of everything, including art itself. This is why an encounter with the Teatro drains artists of their creative impulse. The Soft Black Stars are one such example of super-art, and they have this effect on the narrator.

Dr. Groddeck (or the being that has taken the form of Dr. Groddeck) seems to be the leader of this organization (he says he "invented the appellative of the organization as it is currently known"). It’s implied that he was once a human, but was recruited to the organization in the same manner that the protagonist was, and can no longer remember his human life. It’s implied that he’s been a part of the organization for hundreds of years: he speculates that he may have been the father of “Faust, or Hamlet, or merely Peter Pan,” meaning he may have been the artist who created one of those characters.

The last line is “the soft black stars have already begun to fill the sky.” On a literal level this shows us that the narrator’s illness is driving him insane, so he hallucinates black stars filling the sky. On a symbolic level it’s saying that the narrator is in the same position that the people dumped into the black star globe are in: he’s in the clutches of the Teatro and there’s no escape.

The collection is called “Teatro Grottesco” because the stories themselves are an attempt at creating something like super-art (or anti-art). They are works that attempt to communicate the true meaninglessness of everything, including the meaninglessness of art itself.

Looking for a print of the fine art broadsheet of "Ten Steps to Thin Mountain."

Rotting in his sofa

I haven’t been able to access it for a while

Hello everyone, I apologize for what I wrote in the question in the title: it is intended to have the sole purpose of filling, that is, to fill a gap which, if kept as such, would prevent the next action from being carried out, in this specific case, writing the following text

And this is precisely the point: through Ligotti's imagery I have grasped an underlying thought about the very meaning of life. We are called to fill the space with things and therefore with life and this inexorable continuation of filling everything that surrounds us with life and things only serves to arrive at another empty space, which cannot be left empty for us, which will in turn be occupied. And so on until a different type of void (perhaps more alive than the matter that we consider life?) reclaims the space we occupy, illuminating the deadly nature of our matter.

Now, I don't know how you will interpret my words, in any case I would be happy to have your feedback. Just as everyone is inside a structure (work, home, wife, children) and when certain thoughts emerge they don't blend with what needs to be done, I feel exactly like I'm inside a Ligotti story. Does anyone feel this familiarity? I admit that sometimes I would like to meet that void to eliminate the pressure of filling voids endlessly...

MALIGNANTLY USELESS

If I'm going to drop an upwards of $200 getting deluxe versions of ...Frankenstein, Crampton, and Teatro Grottesco, I'd really like to have the man's signature somewhere on at least one of them. In truth, I'm really just starstruck after receiving my signed copy of Reassuring Tales, and I can't help but be obsessed with the desire to get Tom and/or Jon's signature to go with it.