Letters to Nyctalops
 

I was reading through some old copies of Nyctalops when I came across a few letters written by TL. Some of the contents of these letters are in reference to work in previous issues, but some of the comments are interesting in their own right. The letter included in this post was printed way back in 1981 in issue #16. This is the issue that contains his first story that was published - The Chymist.
If anyone is interested, I could post a couple more.


THOMAS LIGOTTI -Grosse Pointe Woods, MI.

I thoroughly agree with the writer in the letter column of
Nyctalops 15 who remarked that "Somehow, you convey an
atmosphere of menace in the 'zine." It is truly the Twilight
'Zine. I'm unable to comment on the first seven issues of
your horror-zine (paradoxically rhymes with thorazine), but
those in my possession-especially the later numbers-positively
radiate all the searing hues along the spectrum of psychic
onslaught (rendered endurable only by the refracting
perspectives of art). The magazine has a personality. I would
go so far as to say there is such a thing as a Nyctalopian
world view (Welt-something or other in philosophical parlance)
and another "thing" that could be termed Nyctalopian
Knowledge. These twin phenomena have a great deal in common,
of course, with myriad forces elsewhere generated in
art and philosophy, from Decadence to Surrealism to the
Gothic nihilism of E.M. Cioran, not to forget the nucleus of
supernatural art and fiction around which these separate
forces so nicely revolve in your magazine.

All of these discreet schools of thought and creativity-along
with the world views they imply-are brought into a
new relationship in Nyctalops, one based upon certain
affinities among them. These affinities often escape those who
know only isolated sectors of the Nyctalopian universe, I'm
thinking of the book Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges,
in which the Argentine master asks his interviewer at one
point if he is familiar with Lovecraft. The interviewer, who
has already expressed his deep sympathies with all things
Borgesian doesn't know Lovecraft. You wonder how a
student of one could avoid the cosmic classroom of the
other; how could he have missed the connection? It is
precisely this sort of connection that Nyctalops makes all
the time: The Exquisite Corpse of Brian Eno, Jean Cocteau
(who, I believe, was illogically scorned by the surrealists for
his aestheticism) and the Morris and Hall collages of a higher
surrealism, Lovecraft and all related insanities of this divine sort,
those illustrations by "Unknown" that your appropriate
and so appropriately place in their rightful context, articles
by fans and professors, scholars and eccentrics, the intellectual
resources of academia and the intensity of fandom.

And all this in one handy, easy-to-use fanzine extraordinaire.
Here the connections are made, the Central Office, the composing
room where the Nyctalopian Weltanschauung (that's
the word) is born from a variety of decomposing artistic
and philosophical bodies which yet have life in them. Nyctalopian
Knowledge thus derives from observing these connections
being made by a deft plugging into the sockets of
transdimensional switchboards.

Thanks for sharing this. I don't own any copies of Nyctalops, but of course I've long wondered about it owing to Tom's multiple appearances there. In the letter you've transcribed, he certainly makes a compelling case for viewing the publication as an important and compulsively readable contribution to literature.

Re: Letters to Nyctalops
 

Nyctalops was an excellent magazine. I didn't start reading TL until the early 90s, so I missed out on this publication while it was in print. I only acquired these magazines much later because of my weakness for illustrated fiction, and I wanted to see how TL's stories were illustrated. The art for this story is especially striking. The letters were just an added bonus. This letter appeared in issue 17, published in June, 1982.

THOMAS LIGOTTl, Grosse Pointe Woods, MI

... All the art was excellent; it's long been my opinion that fantasy artists outshine
fantasy writers in any given issue of any given fanzine. And Nyctalops is especially
satisfying in this department, from the tasteful portraits of Kirk and McCormick, to the
grotesques of Tiani, Schroeder, and Stewart, to the madnesses of the various collagemasters.

[Your editorial!] seemed to be a definite statement of the Morrisian sensibility: the mirrors, Victoriana, dreams, peripatetic spirits questing only half-voluntarily for insights on inner and outer universes, Carrollian children pushed into unchildlike zones of Freudian tensions, brilliance shining through a masking membrane of blackness, disease, trauma, and—perhaps most of all-deep sadness.

The Everts piece was interesting to see, if only because the very existence of such an article (devoted exclusively to W. Paul Cook) indicates an advanced stage of refinement in Lovecraftian scholarship. Both Lovecraft critical essays offered worthy insights on the master. I'm only sorry I can no longer include them in the annotated bibliography section of the Lovecraft section of Twentieth Century Literary Criticism, Vol. 4 (due out in April 1981). The surveys of Dunsanian drama and H.H. Munro are a public service, inspiring such poorly read fans as myself to explore more deeply and widely the works of seminal fantasy artists.

Extremely welcomed by this reader are those little collage-pommes. This kind of thing
is what we look to Nyctalops to bring us. These patchwork aphorisms are deeply amusing,
expressing a delightful sardonic savvy and even wisdom of a curious sort. Likewise
the Absurdist "Dinner in Red" is a witty eidetic flash demonstrating that the surrealist's
automatic writing may be stylized and used with conscious symbolic intent. And the poetry
is all in the best Lovecraftian-Ashtonian tradition, whether straight-forwardly
(Miller, Smith, Wolfenbarger, Egan) or ironically (Wilgus and Dumars). An exceptionally
fortunate innovation is Wolfenbarger's "Horror Kaiku" (Haiku?), > yes, an unfortunate
typo - ed.< its pithy frisson proving that brevity can be the soul of horrific wonder as well
as wit.

It's very nice to see the Hichcock review and exquisite corpse poems from the pages of Nocturne getting wider circulation. The latter really make one want to lock the doors of the mind. After reading Breiding's poetry and gaining a dangerous familiarity with your collages, Harry, it's no comfort imaging the two of you together decomposing these poems on the Day of the Dead (especially after seeing the Texas Chainsaw Massacre). Doubly unsettling is the presence of these poems two pages after the clinical atrocities of Verba's "Night Surgeon." Ramsey Campbell also belongs to this pychopathic sub-category of Nyct. 16, his prose hallucination seemingly like a commonplace book of his subconscious, a close-out sale of grotesque imagery, remnants of rancid visions.

As for the letters department, the bitchiness mentioned by Bosky was well evidenced by Joshi's incomprehensible remark about the descending quality of Nyctalops. Nevertheless, the man deserves the respect and gratitude of all Lovecraft afficianados for obvious reasons, and I personally would like to have seen his review of A Winter Wish.

Re: Letters to Nyctalops
 

This letter is from Nyctalops 18, published in 1983. This issue contained the last story of what is referred to as The Nyctalops Trilogy: The Chymist, Drink to Me Only with Labyrinthine Eyes, and Eye of the Lynx. Nyctalops would cease publication after issue 19.


THOMAS LIGOTTI
Grosse Pointe Woods, MI

You've really got a kindred Nyctalopian spirit in
J. K. Potter. His work harmonizes amazingly well with
the kind of new wave horror your mag has pioneered.
It's Potter's virtue to have such an incredible technical
genius and at the same time such surreal spasms of
imagination. My favorite: the portrait of C. J.
Laughlin, whose face conveys the exact mixture of
wry menace and strange psychological depth that
HPL's did on the cover of NYCT. 15.
Nonfictionwise, Robert M. Price's essay I found a
playful and insightful scholarly exercise in a form
(self-serious Mythos exegesis) that is often silly.
Schweitzer's essay too was a worthwhile diversion,
and it was all new to me. I'm looking forward now to
future installments of Indick's "Sardonic Fantaisistes"
series. He seems to be doing the gentlemanly branch
of the horrormonger family, a very savage group.
I've read all of Saki's short stories (in the Mod. Lib.
edition) since Indick's last piece in NYCT. 16, and
think a good subtitle for it would have been —
"Dandies from Hell!" As for Kenneth Scher's lexicon,
the only interest it holds for me is in the annotations of
Lovecraft's entities.The Cthulhu Mythos itself is a
rather paltry imaginative concept when it is unfleshed
by the intensity, artistic genius, and personal obsessions
of HPL himself. The Mythos can be used as an in-
spirational springboard (just as may any supernatural
concept: vampires, werewolves, etc.) to launch a
writer's own fictional ideas, though these need not re-
semble Lovecraft's any more than Andy Warhol's
FRANKENSTEIN resembles Mary Shelley's.

Re: Letters to Nyctalops
 

bendk,

Thanks for posting this content, as I had nearly forgotten the introspective qualities offered by Tom's letters. I suggest that we offer them up to "The Repository" as official transcriptions. I can take care of this if you wish, while still designating the contribution as yours.

I hope to further flesh out "The Repository" with such materials, including his letters and contributions to GRIMOIRE. There is so much work not done.

Re: Letters to Nyctalops
 

Very, very cool 8).

Re: Letters to Nyctalops
 

Dr. Bantham,

Of course. You have a blank check to do with my posts whatever you feel is in the best interests of TLO. I look forward to reading some of the more obscure works that you mention.

Re: Letters to Nyctalops
 

wow!! bendk, amazing letters indeed! What a joy to read them. Thank you, bendk!!!

Re: Letters to Nyctalops
 

This letter appeared in the final issue of Nyctalops, issue 19, published in 1991.

THOMAS LIGOTTI, St. Clair Shores, MI :::: Nyct. 18 arrived about a week (three weeks! May your fellow printer, Henry, forgive my procrastination in posting this letter. Talk about eraserheads!) [Ahh, what's a couple of weeks compared to the seven year delay in getting this issue out? -hom] ago and I've since been assimilating its gorgeosity. Each new issue of your publication revives in me a kind of sardonic pride to be part of the Nyctalops Network...
The literary highpoint of Nyctalops 18 was, to my biased brain, Tierney's "The Man in the Evil Garret." It is a classic, not cliched, Gothic dream. This character & all his crusty effects --his books, his town, his kaleidoscopic sunset -- have been described before, but never in so concentrated and suggestive a manner. To quote Laurence Bush's well-stated observation: "The essence of horror literature is the compression of images into a powerful light. No longer can a reader afford to wander around in an epic allegory tn encounter the dragons and sirens along the tedious highways. The aim of the modern horror writer is to present a demitasse of distilled poison, not a diluted bucketfull." Pace Laughlin; praise to Tierney. His prose poem helped me kill many hours imagining that impossibly marvelous tale The Man in the Evil Garret began to compose when he faded into the shadows of Lovecraftian legend, dissolving into those discreet ellipses...
I'll have to leave it to admirers of Robert Aickman, which I am not one, to comment on the essays treating his work. C.P.M.'s piece seemed to display the greater critical deftness; but the subject, whom Russell Kirk called "the greatest living writer of ghost stories" when he lived, is not one I warm up to, living or dead. Too many unrewarding hours spent pondering his ineffectual subtleties, too many frustrating revelations when I finally discovered the thematic key to a tale, only to find a crude closet of cliches behind the door. It's probably my innate vulgarity which prevents me from appreciating Aickman's "obscurity" but it is not for lack of effort that I cannot.
Thanks for perpetuating the myth of L. Miguel Riaz in your editorial, which struck me as a prose counterpart to your "Eye of the Lynx" illustration. Both share the same razory beauty.

Re: Letters to Nyctalops
 

Please pardon me as this probably isn't the right thread or venue.
I'm a student and freelance translator of researching 20th century French fantastic fiction. I was interested in Eddy C. Bertin's recurring feature Through Europe's Hall of Literary Terror, as it covered many authors I'm trying to persuade publishers to bring into English.
I have a copy of Nyctalops 14, but am having trouble tracking down copies of ensuing issues. Since my interest would be limited to the pages of Bertin's column, I would be most grateful for any help in procuring scans or photocopies. Please feel free to contact me by email, and thanks again.