Thomas Ligotti photographed by Jennifer Gariepy.
• More Thomas Ligotti (he’s been marginalised for decades, the attention is overdue): “Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe are fugues of the creeping unknown,” says Peter Bebergal who profiles Ligotti for The New Yorker, and gets him to talk about the impulses that produce his fiction; at the Lovecraft eZine eleven writers and editors ask Ligotti a question related to his work.
• As usual, Halloween brings out the mixes. This year there’s a choice of The Ivy-Strangled Path Vol. XII by David Colohan, Samhain Séance 4 : The Masks of Ashor by The_Ephemeral_Man, The Voluptuous Doom of Bava Yaga by SeraphicManta, Spool’s Out Radio #27 with Joseph Curwen, and The Edge Of The Holloween Oven – 10/26/15 by The Edge Of The Ape Oven.
• Broadcast’s James Cargill has provided a soundtrack for Peter Strickland’s radio adaptation of The Stone Tape by Nigel Kneale. John Doran and Richard Augood review the new and old versions for The Quietus. Related: Peter Strickland’s favourite horror soundtracks.
My mission was to make sounds that didn’t exist in reality, whether it’s a star ship or a laser or a monster or an exploding planet. You started with basic sounds that were acoustic and then you manipulated them. There’s a scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, when he falls into the well of souls and pushes over that statue and there are all those snakes? The sound of the snakes was made by pulling masking tape off glass. When the statue falls over and breaks the wall there’s the noise of lots of big rocks breaking. We just took some bricks and smashed them up and then slowed the tape recording down. I remember doing a lot of great scary effects using dry ice and a bunch of pots and pans out of the kitchen. You heat them up really hot and then you drop a load of dry ice into the hot pan so the rapid thermal change would make it scream.
Composer and sound designer Alan Howarth talks to Mat Colegate about working for films
• Jordan Hoffman reviews Jacques Rivette’s legendary 13-hour feature film Out 1: Noli Me Tangere (1971). The film will be in cinemas next month, and available on DVD/BR in January.
• The Stone Tape was originally a one-off TV drama shown at Christmas in 1972. Michael Newton looks at the BBC’s habit in the 1970s of screening ghost stories at Christmas.
• Steven Arnold’s Epiphanies: A look back at some of the artist’s surrealist photographs.
• Greydogtales just concluded a month of posts dedicated to William Hope Hodgson.
• At Dirge Magazine: Tenebrous Kate on seven songs based on dark literary classics.
• Phil Legard opens some grimoires for a short history of signs and seals.
• Micah Nathan on Tuesday’s Child, “LA’s best Satanist magazine”.
• “The Occult was a kind of awakening,” says Colin Wilson.
• Shagfoal: witchcraft and horror-blues by Dante.
• Jenny Hval‘s favourite albums.
• The Attic Tapes (1975) by Cabaret Voltaire | Those Tapes Are Dangerous (1997) by The Bug | The Black Mill Video Tape (2012) by Pye Corner Audio
It’s strange to be part of a cult and then have the drapes of the salon pulled open and the lights turned on and have the room fill with people who came not to gawk or mock but to join you.
I discovered Ligotti’s work about ten years ago. Someone over at Harlan Ellison’s blog name checked him approvingly and a few days later I just happened to be browsing at a used bookstore and found a copy of a collection called THE NIGHTMARE FACTORY with an intro by Poppy Z Brite. The first story I read was “Dr Voke and Mr. Veech ” and I had my first encounter with the Teatro Grottesco.
If this is Ligotti’s fifteen minutes then I am delighted. Over the years I’ve shared his work with my literate friends and I’ve gotten a range of responses from recognition to incomprehension. I have seen TRUE DETECTIVE and while I enjoyed it for what it was, they were just playing at it. Ligotti is serious. He means it.
John, my understanding is that Ligotti’s work is also being translated into French for the first time. Who knows what will come of that?
I imagine the French will love Ligotti given how much they like Lovecraft, Poe and the like. And there’s the philosophical dimension to his work, of course. There’s a Symbolist dimension to a number of his early pieces which makes them seem a lot more European than American.
I’m pleased to see him getting the attention at the moment, it may prompt someone to put more of his books back into print, and keep them there. But I’d be surprised if his popularity rises beyond a certain point. There’s a core of conservatism in all the genres that tends to push writers like Ligotti to the margins. Readers who prefer the Stephen King model of horror fiction aren’t going to get along with a piece like The Red Tower which doesn’t have any characters or a recognisable storyline.