“At this point, and many others on the tape (as I recall), the voice became nearly inaudible. 'The bungalow house,' it said, 'was such a bleak environment in which to make a stand: the moonlight through the dusty blinds, the bodies on the carpet, the lamps without any lightbulbs. And the incredible silence. It was not the absence of sounds that I sensed, but the stifling of innumerable sounds and even voices, the muffling of all the noises one might expect to hear in an old bungalow house in the dead of night, as well as countless other sounds and voices. The forces required to accomplish this silence filled me with awe. The infinite terror and dreariness of an infested bungalow house, I whispered to myself. A bungalow universe, I then thought without speaking aloud. Suddenly I was overcome by a feeling of euphoric hopelessness which passed through my body like a powerful drug and held all my thoughts and all my movements in a dreamy, floating suspension. In the moonlight that shone through the blinds of that bungalow house I was now as still and as silent as everything else.'”
This blog post from "Weird Tales" magazine indicates they are publishing an "in-depth interview" with Thomas Ligotti in their next issue, the spring one:
Wildside is now leaner and meaner, and Weird Tales has some fantastic stuff lined up for the rest of 2009. The spring issue, coming your way in a few weeks, features stories by acclaimed authors Jeffrey Ford and Paul Tremblay — as well as exclusive, in-depth interviews with horror master Thomas Ligotti and comics genius Richard Corben. Meanwhile, we’ve begun taking submissions for a new line of micro-fiction: One-Minute Weird Tales! And we’re looking forward to an exciting summer/fall convention season — WorldCon in Montreal this August and Dragon*Con in Atlanta this September, for sure, plus more to be announced.
The estimable Peter Tennant has written a just-published (April 19) review of My Work Is Not Yet Done, and has taken the fascinating approach of writing it as a parody of Tom's "Notes on the Writing of Horror: A Story."
In other words, it's a review-as-metafiction in which the reviewer deploys a style invented by the reviewee to expound on the different types of reviewers and how they approach their craft. It doesn't evolve into a story that destroys the narrator at the end, but it's fascinating nonetheless.
Here's the opening paragraph:
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In his 1985 story Notes on the Writing of Horror: A Story, Thomas Ligotti illustrated various approaches to the art of horror writing by telling the same story over again, but each time written in a different style. It occurred to me that it might be entertaining and informative to attempt something similar with regard to reviewing, and that if I did so then it would, given my source of inspiration, be wholly appropriate to use Ligotti’s novella My Work Is Not Yet Done as the subject for my hypothetical reviewers to use in demonstrating their art.
Also of interest is the fact that Peter's regular Case Notes section of Black Static #10 is devoted to Ligotti, and the accompanying blog is matching that focus. Peter wrote on April 12:
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The Case Notes section of Black Static #10, which will be mailing out soon, contains a feature on American author Thomas Ligotti, consisting of reviews of My Work Is Not Yet Done (Virgin) and The Nightmare Factory Volume 2 (Fox Atomic Comics), and an interview in which Ligotti talks about his work and forthcoming non-fiction book The Conspiracy Against the Human Race. To mark the occasion, I thought we’d make April Thomas Ligotti month on the Case Notes blog.
. The style features imagery by Harry O. Morris and technicolor cathode ray burns throughout.
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THOMAS LIGOTTI ONLINE
