Ten Steps to Thin Mountain
 

Anyone have CoC #68? Anyone have a spare? A spoiler-free-but-not-too-short annotation?

Re: Ten Steps to Thin Mountain
 

I own a copy. Ten Step to Thin Mountain is one of my favorites of Ligotti's short works. (It's very short. I believe it fits on one page if memory serves).
Without giving anything away, it's basically the narrator's gradual obsession with a place called "Thin Mountain". (It's really hard to tell more without ruining it) Whether it's a real place or a state of mind is for the reader to decide.
About a year ago I read "Ten Steps to Thin Mountain" at a poetry/short story reading. I doubt those in attendance were ever the same again. One of the other readers read "Guts" by Chuck Palahniuk. It's a story that's become legendary for making people ill. In fact one guy actually did run to the bathroom in the middle of the reading because he felt like he was going to throw up.

Re: Ten Steps to Thin Mountain
 

Wow, I was waiting for this Haunted short story collection by Pallahniuk for a long while. I would like to check out Guts myself. Is it really that disturbing?

Ten Step to Thin Mountain sounds like a fine story to me. I wonder why it isn't included in the upcoming durtro collection!

P.S. Guts is available online: http://www.noops.org/guts.html

Re: Ten Steps to Thin Mountain
 

Guts is absolutely absurd and hilarious. It's a gross-out on the level of John Waters. I didn't find it disturbing, but I can understand why people would walk out during readings.

I enjoyed the shorts stories in Haunted, but found the overall whole to be less than the sum of its parts.

Cheers1

Waff's

Re: Ten Steps to Thin Mountain
 

This is one of Ligotti's shortest pieces, but it's surprisingly good. Almost like a proto-Red Tower/Unholy City/Degenerate Little Town. I suppose that, in a way, most—if not all—of Ligotti's fiction ends up back in this place, its many manifestations, its many ways of it seeping back into what one could regard as "reality."

On a side note, re: "Guts", I would imagine the fainting spells happened because the story begins by asking the reader/listener to hold their breath and keep it there as long as the story lasts...

Re: Ten Steps to Thin Mountain
 

Strange that 'Guts' and 'Thin Mountain' should end up together in a post. I always get to that line, "On Thin Mountain no one talks about Thin Mountain." and have to check dates to reassure myself Tom got there first...

Rule one about Thin Mountain: You do not talk about Thin Mountain.

It's rule two, too.