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Thomas Ligotti (born July 9, 1953) is an American horror writer. His writings are rooted in several
literary genre A literary genre is a category of literature. Genres may be determined by literary technique, tone, content, or length (especially for fiction). They generally move from more abstract, encompassing classes, which are then further sub-divided i ...
s – most prominently
weird fiction Weird fiction is a subgenre of speculative fiction originating in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Weird fiction either eschews or radically reinterprets ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and other traditional antagonists of supernatural horr ...
– and have been described by critics as works of ''philosophical'' horror, often formed into short stories and novellas in the tradition of
gothic fiction Gothic fiction, sometimes called Gothic horror in the 20th century, is a loose literary aesthetic of fear and haunting. The name is a reference to Gothic architecture of the European Middle Ages, which was characteristic of the settings of ea ...
.
Interview with Thomas Ligotti
' – web interview from Published in The New York Review of Science Fiction Issue 218, Vol. 19, No. 2 (October 2006).
The worldview espoused by Ligotti in his fiction and non-fiction has been described as pessimistic and nihilistic. ''
The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'' called him "the best kept secret in contemporary horror fiction."


Career

Ligotti started his professional writing career in the early 1980s with
short stories A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest t ...
published in American
small press A small press is a publisher with annual sales below a certain level or below a certain number of titles published. The terms "indie publisher" and "independent press" and others are sometimes used interchangeably. Independent press is general ...
magazines. He was contributing editor to ''Grimoire'' from 1982 to 1985. In 2015, Ligotti's first two collections, '' Songs of a Dead Dreamer'' and '' Grimscribe: His Lives and Works'', were republished in one volume by
Penguin Classics Penguin Classics is an imprint of Penguin Books under which classic works of literature are published in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Korean among other languages. Literary critics see books in this series as important members of the We ...
as ''Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe''. Michael Calia of ''
The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
'' wrote of the reprint that "Horror writer Thomas Ligotti is about to enter the American literary canon. Penguin Classics published a volume of Mr. Ligotti’s short stories, making him one of 10 living writers, including Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo, among the hundreds the imprint has published in the U.S." Ligotti's work received high praise following the publication from the likes of ''
The New York Times Book Review ''The New York Times Book Review'' (''NYTBR'') is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times'' in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely rea ...
'', the ''
Los Angeles Review of Books The ''Los Angeles Review of Books'' (''LARB'' is a literary review magazine covering the national and international book scenes. A preview version launched on Tumblr in April 2011, and the official website followed one year later in April 2012. ...
'',''
The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'', and''
The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
''.
Terrence Rafferty Terrence Rafferty is a film critic who wrote regularly for ''The New Yorker'' during the 1990s. His writing has also appeared in ''Slate'', ''The Atlantic Monthly'', ''The Village Voice'', ''The Nation'', and ''The New York Times''. For a number ...
contrasts Ligotti with
Stephen King Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author of horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, crime, science-fiction, and fantasy novels. Described as the "King of Horror", a play on his surname and a reference to his high ...
, observing, "King, the great entertainer, needs the story as the comedian needs the joke, and when he can’t quite deliver it he dies (in the comedian’s sense). King is a master of horror, though. When inspiration fails, he has the technique to fake it. Thomas Ligotti is a master of a different order, practically a different species. He probably couldn’t fake it if he tried, and he never tries. He writes like horror incarnate." Ligotti collaborated with the musical group
Current 93 Current 93 are an English experimental music group, working since the early 1980s in folk-based musical forms. The band was founded in 1982 by David Tibet, who has been Current 93's only constant member. Background Tibet has been the only const ...
on the albums ''In a Foreign Town, In a Foreign Land'' (1997, reissued 2002), '' I Have a Special Plan for This World'' (2000), ''This Degenerate Little Town'' (2001) and ''The Unholy City ''(2003), all released on
David Tibet David Tibet (born David Michael Bunting; 5 March 1960) is a British poet and artist who founded the music group Current 93, of which he is the only full-time member. He was given the name "Tibet" by Genesis P-Orridge, and in January 2005 he ...
's Durtro label. Tibet has also published several limited editions of Ligotti's books on Durtro Press. Additionally, Ligotti played guitar on Current 93's contribution to the compilation album ''Foxtrot'', whose proceeds went to the treatment of musician
John Balance Geoffrey Nigel Laurence Rushton (16 February 1962 – 13 November 2004), better known under the pseudonyms John Balance or the later variation Jhonn Balance, was an English musician, occultist, artist and poet. He was best known as a co-found ...
's alcoholism.


Personal life

He has cited
Thomas Bernhard Nicolaas Thomas Bernhard (; 9 February 1931 – 12 February 1989) was an Austrian novelist, playwright and poet who explored death, social injustice, and human misery in controversial literature that was deeply pessimistic about modern civilizati ...
,
William S. Burroughs William Seward Burroughs II (; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist, widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular cultur ...
, Emil Cioran,
Vladimir Nabokov Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (russian: link=no, Владимир Владимирович Набоков ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. B ...
,
Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe (; Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is wide ...
,
Giacomo Leopardi Count Giacomo Taldegardo Francesco di Sales Saverio Pietro Leopardi (, ; 29 June 1798 – 14 June 1837) was an Italian philosopher, poet, essayist, and philologist. He is considered the greatest Italian poet of the nineteenth century and one of ...
,
Samuel Beckett Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish novelist, dramatist, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. His literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal and tragicomic exp ...
,
Franz Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It ...
, and
Bruno Schulz Bruno Schulz (12 July 1892 – 19 November 1942) was a Polish writer, fine artist, literary critic and art teacher. He is regarded as one of the great Polish-language prose stylists of the 20th century. In 1938, he was awarded the Polish Acade ...
as being among his favorite writers. H. P. Lovecraft is also an important touchstone for Ligotti: a few stories, "The Sect of the Idiot" in particular, make explicit reference to Lovecraft's
Cthulhu Mythos The Cthulhu Mythos is a mythopoeia and a shared fictional universe, originating in the works of American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. The term was coined by August Derleth, a contemporary correspondent and protégé of Lovecraft, to identify ...
, and one, "The Last Feast of Harlequin", was dedicated to Lovecraft. Also among his avowed influences are
Algernon Blackwood Algernon Henry Blackwood, CBE (14 March 1869 – 10 December 1951) was an English broadcasting narrator, journalist, novelist and short story writer, and among the most prolific ghost story writers in the history of the genre. The literary cri ...
, M.R. James, and
Arthur Machen Arthur Machen (; 3 March 1863 – 15 December 1947) was the pen-name of Arthur Llewellyn Jones, a Welsh author and mystic of the 1890s and early 20th century. He is best known for his influential supernatural, fantasy, and horror fiction. Hi ...
, all ''
fin de siècle () is a French term meaning "end of century,” a phrase which typically encompasses both the meaning of the similar English idiom "turn of the century" and also makes reference to the closing of one era and onset of another. Without context ...
'' horror authors known for their subtlety and implications of the cosmic and supernatural in their stories. He has also invoked the influence of philosophers such as
Arthur Schopenhauer Arthur Schopenhauer ( , ; 22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher. He is best known for his 1818 work ''The World as Will and Representation'' (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the phenomenal world as the prod ...
and Peter Wessel Zapffe. Ligotti has suffered from chronic anxiety and
anhedonia Anhedonia is a diverse array of deficits in hedonic function, including reduced motivation or ability to experience pleasure. While earlier definitions emphasized the inability to experience pleasure, anhedonia is currently used by researchers t ...
for much of his life; these have been prominent themes in his work. Ligotti avoids the explicit violence common in some recent horror fiction, preferring to establish a disquieting, pessimistic atmosphere through the use of subtlety and repetition. Ligotti has stated he prefers short stories to longer forms, both as a reader and as a writer, though he has written a
novella A novella is a narrative prose fiction whose length is shorter than most novels, but longer than most short stories. The English word ''novella'' derives from the Italian ''novella'' meaning a short story related to true (or apparently so) facts ...
, ''My Work Is Not Yet Done'' (2002) Ligotti's ancestry is three-quarters Sicilian, one-quarter Polish, a genetic combination he likes to think "contributed to the bizarre quality of my imagination and to what has been called its 'universality'." He says that his Polish grandmother's stories, though not horrific, "put me in touch with an older and stranger world than I would otherwise have known and that emerged when I started writing stories so many years later". Ligotti attended Macomb County Community College between 1971 and 1973 and graduated from
Wayne State University Wayne State University (WSU) is a public research university in Detroit, Michigan. It is Michigan's third-largest university. Founded in 1868, Wayne State consists of 13 schools and colleges offering approximately 350 programs to nearly 25,000 ...
in 1978. For 23 years Ligotti worked as an Associate Editor at Gale Research (now the
Gale Group Gale is a global provider of research and digital learning resources. The company is based in Farmington Hills, Michigan, west of Detroit. It has been a division of Cengage since 2007. The company, formerly known as Gale Research and the Gale Gro ...
), a publishing company that produces compilations of literary (and other) research. In the summer of 2001, Ligotti quit his job at the Gale Group and moved to south Florida. Politically, he identifies as socialist.


Influence

In 2003,
Wildside Press Wildside Press is an independent publishing company in Cabin John, Maryland, United States. It was founded in 1989 by John Betancourt and Kim Betancourt. While the press was originally conceived as a publisher of speculative fiction in both tr ...
published '' The Thomas Ligotti Reader: Essays and Explorations'', a collection of essays about Ligotti's work edited by Darrell Schweitzer. Author
Jeff VanderMeer Jeff VanderMeer (born July 7, 1968) is an American author, editor, and literary critic. Initially associated with the New Weird literary genre, VanderMeer crossed over into mainstream success with his bestselling Southern Reach Trilogy. The t ...
has penned numerous pieces praising Ligotti's writing, including the introduction to the
Penguin Classics Penguin Classics is an imprint of Penguin Books under which classic works of literature are published in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Korean among other languages. Literary critics see books in this series as important members of the We ...
edition of ''Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe''. In 2014, the HBO television series ''
True Detective ''True Detective'' is an American anthology crime drama television series created and written by Nic Pizzolatto. The series, broadcast by the premium cable network HBO in the United States, premiered on January 12, 2014. Each season of the s ...
'' attracted attention from some of Ligotti's fans because of the resemblance of the pessimistic, antinatalist philosophy espoused in the first few episodes by the character of Rust Cohle (played by
Matthew McConaughey Matthew David McConaughey ( ; born November 4, 1969) is an American actor. He had his breakout role with a supporting performance in the coming-of-age comedy '' Dazed and Confused'' (1993). After a number of supporting roles, his first succes ...
) and Ligotti's own philosophical pessimism and antinatalism, especially as expressed in ''The Conspiracy Against the Human Race''. After accusations that dialogue from Cohle's character in ''True Detective'' were lifted from ''The Conspiracy Against the Human Race,'' the series' writer, Nic Pizzolatto, confirmed in ''
The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
'' that Ligotti, along with several other writers and texts in the weird supernatural horror genre, had indeed influenced him. Pizzolatto said he found ''The Conspiracy Against the Human Race'' to be "incredibly powerful writing". On the topic of hard-boiled detectives, he asked: "What could be more hardboiled than the worldview of Ligotti or milCioran?" The writing of Ligotti and
Eugene Thacker Eugene Thacker is an American philosopher, poet, and author. He is Professor of Media Studies at The New School in New York City. His writing is often associated with the philosophy of nihilism and Philosophical pessimism, pessimism. Thacker's b ...
is cited as an influence on the 2021 album ''The Nightmare of Being'' by the Gothenburg melodic death metal band
At the Gates At the Gates is a Swedish death metal band from Gothenburg, formed in 1990. The band was a major progenitor of Gothenburg-style melodic death metal alongside In Flames and Dark Tranquillity. Prior to their first disbandment in 1996, At the Gat ...
.


Bibliography

*'' Songs of a Dead Dreamer'' (1985, rev. & exp. 1989) *'' Grimscribe: His Lives and Works'' (1991) *''Noctuary'' (1994) *'' The Agonizing Resurrection of Victor Frankenstein and Other Gothic Tales'' (1994) *''The Nightmare Factory'' (1996). Essentially an omnibus of selections from Ligotti's first three collections, with a concluding section containing new stories. All of the stories in the concluding section were later printed in Teatro Grottesco. *''In a Foreign Town, in a Foreign Land'' (1997, accompanying CD by
Current 93 Current 93 are an English experimental music group, working since the early 1980s in folk-based musical forms. The band was founded in 1982 by David Tibet, who has been Current 93's only constant member. Background Tibet has been the only const ...
) *'' I Have a Special Plan for This World'' (2000, accompanying CD by Current 93) *'' This Degenerate Little Town'' (2001, accompanying CD by Current 93) *''The Unholy City'' (2002, accompanying CD by Current 93) *'' My Work Is Not Yet Done: Three Tales of Corporate Horror'' (2002) *''Crampton: A Screenplay'' (2003, with Brandon Trenz) *''Sideshow, and Other Stories'' (2003) *''Death Poems'' (2004) *'' The Shadow at the Bottom of the World'' (2005) *'' Teatro Grottesco'' (2006, reprinted in 2008) *'' The Conspiracy Against the Human Race'' (2010) *'' The Spectral Link'' (2014) *''Born to Fear: Interviews with Thomas Ligotti'' (2014), edited by Matt Cardin *''Songs of a Dead Dreamer & Grimscribe'' (2015) *The Small People (2021). A chapbook reprint of a single story previously collected in The Spectral Link. *Paradoxes From Hell (2021). A chapbook reprint of a previously uncollected story and two poems.


Adaptations

Graphic novels *'' The Nightmare Factory'' (2007) *'' The Nightmare Factory – Volume 2'' (2008)


Awards

* 1982: Small Press Writers and Artists Organization, Best Author of Horror/Weird Fiction: ''The Chymist'' * 1986:
Rhysling Award __NOTOC__ The Rhysling Awards are an annual award given for the best science fiction, fantasy, or horror poem of the year. Unlike most literary awards, which are named for the creator of the award, the subject of the award, or a noted member of t ...
, from Science Fiction Poetry Association (nomination): ''One Thousand Painful Variations Performed Upon Divers Creatures Undergoing the Treatment of Dr. Moreau, Humanist'' * 1991: World Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction (nomination): ''The Last Feast of Harlequin'' * 1992: World Fantasy Award for Best Collection (nomination): '' Grimscribe: His Lives and Works'' * 1997: World Fantasy Award for Best Collection (nomination): ''The Nightmare Factory'' * 1995: Bram Stoker Award for Best Short Fiction (nomination): ''The Bungalow House'' * 1996:
Bram Stoker Award for Best Fiction Collection The Bram Stoker Award for Best Fiction Collection is an award presented by the Horror Writers Association The Horror Writers Association (HWA) is a worldwide non-profit organization of professional writers and publishing professionals dedicat ...
: ''The Nightmare Factory'' * 1996: Bram Stoker Award for Best Long Fiction: ''The Red Tower'' * 1996: British Fantasy Award for Best Fiction Collection: ''The Nightmare Factory'' * 2002: Bram Stoker Award for Best Long Fiction: '' My Work Is Not Yet Done'' * 2002: International Horror Guild Award, Long Form ''My Work Is Not Yet Done'' * 2010: Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Nonfiction (nomination) '' The Conspiracy Against the Human Race'' * 2019:
Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement The Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement annually recognizes one to three living artists for "superior achievement in an entire career" which has "substantially influenced the horror genre". It is conferred by the Horror Writers Association ...


References


External links


Thomas Ligotti Online
– Fan site, wealth of information, media and discussion on Thomas Ligotti.
Horror Garage interview with Thomas Ligotti
conducted by Mark McLaughlin in 2008
"It's all a matter of personal pathology"
-a July 2006 interview With Ligotti conducted by Matt Cardin.
Literature Is Entertainment or It Is Nothing
– a long, in-depth interview conducted by Neddal Ayad.

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Ligotti, Thomas Thomas Ligotti Living people 1953 births 20th-century American writers 21st-century American writers American horror writers American male short story writers American people of Polish descent American short story writers American socialists American writers of Italian descent Anti-natalists Cthulhu Mythos writers Dark fantasy writers Philosophical pessimists Wayne State University alumni Weird fiction writers Writers from Detroit