Our Temporary Supervisor

[Nemonymous]

OUR TEMPORARY SUPERVISOR – with some artfulness I spread my latest reading of this story before and after last night’s sleep. That method allowed me to notice the humour that often pervades Ligotti’s work and resemblance to my own Corporate life in the past that I often review with grim laughter. However, I'd hoped to escape the Quine Org. of the previous story (as well as its nobby spider), but here it was again! (Like PFJ, I studied Quine at university in the late sixties; he was a philosopher who advocated, inter alios, a semantic holism...)
Here, in this story, we have, under cone-shaped lamps, the archetypal machinations of Corporate pecking-orders, new methodologies, productivity schemes to manufacture, I gauge, those knotty Metal-Piece Puzzles for Christmas. Frowley, Blecher, Nohls, the Narrator, all subjected to the Company Line.
All great horror stories (and this is a truly great one, even (or especially) with the humour) have a single lasting image that haunts you for the rest of your life (you know what I mean; like the spider at the window in ‘The Haunting of Toby Jugg’)...and here we have the image of the amorphous shape behind the frosted glass. Genius!
The Temporary Supervisor with ‘sabbaticals’ like the Town Manager?
Here we have another grey landscape making us believe that this factory may be related to The Red Tower. Also, in this story’s last sentence, the recurring theme of the essence of a work ethic allowing us to avoid unwelcome thoughts even as we realise that the trammels of Work are worse than having the unwelcome thoughts in the first place!!
I am now retired from my Corporate existence of the past, but this story reminds me it is only temporary as I wait for the ultimate retirement. My retirement is spent reading Ligotti and maybe there is absurd humour in that, too, as our minds blur into the grey landscape fogs around us (yet unseen, but definitely there, lurking...).
Frosted glass is usually used for toilets....

[Nemonymous]

I hope any Temporary Supervisor allows me to pass over without hindrance. Being Temporary is the best excuse for being best at one's job!

[beakripped]

Well said! Over the years Ligotti's Corporate Horror stories have become my favorites. Personally, I think both Q Org and the Teatro artists are part of the same company. Those bastards!

[tonalized]

OTS was was of the first stories I read by TL and remains one of my favorites. I work for a corporate bank, and it seems every day the supervisors are amending some process or adding some new pointless task in an attempt to improve efficiency. The way Ligotti manifests common horror elements to symbolize the inhumanity and mechanical nature of the corporate environment is genius.

[Nemonymous]

This is an extract from my current on-going review of the TEATRO GROTTESCO collection:-

OUR TEMPORARY SUPERVISOR

On the face of it, a more straightforward employment satire - straightforward but intriguing by means of not only Kafkaesque undercurrents but also a new source of generic Ligottian human-like shapes behind the temporary supervisor's frosted glass office door, time-and-motion work morphed by those shapes seeming to become Lovecraftian, all taking place in the previous story's Q. ORG scenario beyond the border, full of medications and brainwashing, as the Orwellian employees compare each other's performances at fitting metal pieces together at the Assembly Blocks...
The main protagonist strives to fulfil himself in such circumstances. A compelling character study.

I feel that I myself am now working at a similar Ligottian coalface of real-time dreamcatching, day and night trying to deploy his stories' strengths, their dreams and visions, in my seemingly endless work since i started a few weeks ago with THE FROLIC onward till now. I look to the side and see others also chipping away at the soft and hard sections of the various texts, and I am hoping I don't flag and can keep up with the onset of higher forces at work following the Penguin Classics takeover of certain aspects of this endeavour.
(I hope, too, that I don't fall short of what is needed of me or get into a such a state as this co-worker's grappling with such texts, plastic cutlery et al.)

(I shall now read my 2008 review of this story that is shown above at the top of this thread.)

[Nemonymous]

Quote Originally Posted by Nemonymous

This is an extract from my current on-going review of the TEATRO GROTTESCO collection:- OUR TEMPORARY SUPERVISOR On the face of it, a more straightforward employment satire - straightforward but intriguing by means of not only Kafkaesque undercurrents but also a new source of generic Ligottian human-like shapes behind the temporary supervisor's frosted glass office door, time-and-motion work morphed by those shapes seeming to become Lovecraftian, all taking place in the previous story's Q. ORG scenario beyond the border, full of medications and brainwashing, as the Orwellian employees compare each other's performances at fitting metal pieces together at the Assembly Blocks... The main protagonist strives to fulfil himself in such circumstances. A compelling character study. I feel that I myself am now working at a similar Ligottian coalface of real-time dreamcatching, day and night trying to deploy his stories' strengths, their dreams and visions, in my seemingly endless work since i started a few weeks ago with THE FROLIC onward till now. I look to the side and see others also chipping away at the soft and hard sections of the various texts, and I am hoping I don't flag and can keep up with the onset of higher forces at work following the Penguin Classics takeover of certain aspects of this endeavour. (I hope, too, that I don't fall short of what is needed of me or get into a such a state as this co-worker's grappling with such texts, plastic cutlery et al.) (I shall now read my 2008 review of this story that is shown above at the top of this thread.)

Rationale: Le NŒUD de Ligotti - THE NIGHTMARE NETWORK