The Nightmare Factory

Eerie. That's the first word that pops to mind when thinking of Ligotti's style of writing. Like a word association test; Ligotti . . . Eerie. Ligotti has a unique style of writing. Quite rare when so many writers are trying to write "like" someone else. King, Campbell, Straub, Barker, the list of the imitated goes on. It must be admitted, however; when one reads Ligotti, one can see the pastiche of different styles. The influence of Lovecraft is particularly poignant. Indeed, "The Last Feast of Harlequin," is dedicated to Lovecraft. What one has to realize is that this is not imitation but mastery. Ligotti is not trying to write "like" someone else . . . He can write better. After reading Ligotti, one might think that he studied under Lovecraft, mastered that style, then moved onto another until he had mastered all styles he felt he needed. It is similar to how artists study under recognized masters then create their own works after finishing their apprenticeship. Ligotti is an artist unto himself, but one can tell the "styles" under which he is versed; just as one can tell the "styles" under which Remembrandt was versed.Ligotti has a way of "bending" reality as, quite aptly, in a nightmare. More akin to Kafka, these are psychological skews in perception. But sometimes (and the scary part is that we never know whether or not the story we are reading falls into this particular "sometime") the horror is more than psychological, it is Lovecraftian. The first story in the collection, "The Frolic," is a good example of this. [STOP reading here if you do not want to know what happened in the story.] Is the prisonner simply an insane murderer or is he a being from a different plane of reality, a demon dimension bordering ours? Either way you look at the story, psychological (the killer is a psychopath) or supernatural (the killer is a demon from another dimension) you are hit with horror. The only difference is the difference between being hit with a 50 foot tidal wave or a 150 foot tidal wave. [RECOMMENCE reading now.] Ligotti is not a complex writer; he is a sophisticated writer. A complex writer presents many parts, all of which may not go together. A sophisticated writer presents many parts, ALL of which serve an important purpose, like a well played chess match (or the engine block of a 65 Mustang). Ligotti has been indicted with being too ambiguous, too vague, in his writing. But the beauty of Ligotti's writing is that it is open to multiple interpretations. This is the reason for the confusion. His writing is not ambiguous, it is multifaceted. It is highly sophisticated with amazing prose, and I only hope that, unlike his Providence predecessor, Ligotti will not have to wait until after his death to receive the recognition he deserves as a truly original, truly eerie, voice in horror literature.

The work of Thomas Ligotti is the revival horror literature was in dire need of since the swamping of the genre by writers with below-average imagination and a writing rate of three paperbacks a year. If you have liked the works of E.A.Poe, or H.P. Lovecraft, or both, then Ligotti will come as a blessing to you. "Nightmare Factory" combines the four collections of Ligotti, sadly missing the drawings and poems that were included in the original editions of "Songs of a Dead Dreamer", "Noctuary", "Grimscribe" and "Teatro Grottesco". Being a nihilist himself, Ligotti delivers a verse that carries a very strong sense of foreboding gloom. His settings are out of place, nightmarish and maddeningly surreal. As you read through paragraphs, you feel yourself walking just steps behind the helpless protagonist into dread regions of madness where everything is a broken reflection of its original self. Horror unfolds as the "Greater Festival of Masks" nears its time of unmasking, where faces without soul take the stage. Young girls are abducted into frolicking, without a scream, without a whimper. A way lost in twisted alleys ends up in the worst place one can possibly hope not to get. Reflections in windows refuse to leave until people step over their dread and step into shuttered rooms. Sects worship idiot gods, intoning phrases and chants neither they, nor their idol understand. With a strong use of language, Ligotti carries us through his Nightmare Factory, where the line between light and darkness gets fuzzy, meanings of words are sinisterly re-defined, and it is impossible to tell whether angles are acute or obtuse.If you read horror, please do yourself a favor and take my advice. Ligotti is easily the best writer in the genre, and it seems he'll stay that way until someone else comes along.

Thomas Ligotti and Gore Vidal are America's greatest living writers. It is unfortunate that Mr. Ligotti has been so egregiously pigeon-holed as a mere "horror" writer, because his fiction is utterly incommensurable with the usual cretinous "horror" fiction bulked out on schedule by the Kings and the Barkers. Ligotti is not merely the tallest building in the Wichita of horror fiction, as it were, but a Titan of legitimate literature, a genius who must be ranged alongside his true peers: Baudelaire, Huysmans, and Poe (this is not, repeat not, irony!) Ligotti's finest tales appear in the omnibus collection entitled "The Nightmare Factory," which opens with a beautifully written and appropriately ominous "Foreword" by Poppy Z. Brite, a concise tribute which distills the sense of mystery and awe evoked in so many discerning readers of the Master's works. Ligotti's style is astonishingly deft, beautifully orchestrated, and insinuatingly minatory in its tone, for his sorcerous visions are embodied in a lush language that closely approximates the "prose-poetry" of such louche 19th century masters as Jean Lorrain, Octave Mirbeau, and Walter Pater. Ligotti's world is almost oppresively darkling and yet his artistry is such that we delight in the spell even as it clutches at our hearts. Read "Nethescurial" and "The Shadow at the Bottom of the World"--and maybe this time we won't have to wait for some French critic 50 years hence to reproach America--bitterly and justifiably--for having missed another giant, as we certainly have done with Poe and Lovecraft. Let's give the man his due now!

Mr. Ligotti is the true Master of contemporary horror. He understands how to communicate the breakdown of rationality. If you have read Kafka, you probably know what I am talking about. His stories take place in a bleak post-industrial zone of decaying cities, drifting artistic failures and dark mystics playing with the soul-searing secrets of an unfriendly cosmos. In a King or Koontz story, you may be chased by a horrible monster. But you still retain your identity and place in linear space-time. Not so with Ligotti's world. He submerges his doomed characters in a void where everything becomes menacing and lawless. One of his stories describes a sect who once believed that everything was filled with a divine essence. Exploring the matter deeper, however, they discovered that the reverse was true. The entire universe was filled with a hostile decaying essence and the only hope for happiness is ignorance. People tried to find out the ultimate truth, discovered to late that it was unspeakably horrible and then could not forget what they had learned. Pieces of an idol representing the foul nature of existence were scattered like the body of Osiris to the ends of the earth so as to hide the truth from the innocent. Another story concerns enchanting music played by mysterious performers in an abondoned building on nights when the moon is full. Anyone who hears the music is found mutilated and wrapped in a web-like bandages the next morning. We are never told why this happens, but it communicates a feeling of dread--humans are being preyed upon by incomprehensible forces. A small town is dominated by a creepy clown-like cult that are anything but funny. A grown man is driven near madness by memories of a disturbing carnival sideshow attended in his boyhood. These stories are for you if you like to be challenged to take a look at the world from a radical new perspective. Philosophical pessimists will them for their bleakness, poets for their haunting use of language and vague but emotionally charged descriptions. People just looking for something different will not be disappointed. This book was out of print for a while but, thankfully, it is available again. Buy it while you can.

Thomas Ligotti is perhaps the only living gothic visionary. His tales shimmer with dread and a sense of creeping doom. Who could read "The Frolic" and not be disturbed by it's menacing portnets of imminent doom? "The Red Tower" reads like a nightmare from a David Lynch movie, most notably "Eraserhead". Truly, Ligotti is a prince of Darkness and this collection cannot be recommended enough. It is a massive collection containing most of his collected fiction from "Songs of a Dead Dreamer", "Grimscribe" and "Noctuary". It also has four new stories including the unforgettably macabre "Red Tower". Really, this one cannot be left from the list of essential collections. It ranks alongside the brilliance of masters like Ramsey Campbell, Robert Aickman, Russell Kirk and Dennis Etchison. Good enough company for anyone I would have thought.