Re: Favorite Ligotti Story
 

All of my favorites are songs (I Have a Special Plan for this World, This Degenerate Little Town, You Do Not Own Your Head, Welcome to the Unholy City) - do they count?

Of the conventional stories, The Medusa.

Re: Favorite Ligotti Story
 

Surprised I hadn't posted in this thread yet.

"I Have A Special Plan For This World"

followed by

"The Last Feast of Harlequin"

and

"The Shadow at the Bottom of the World".

Re: Favorite Ligotti Story
 

'Teatro Grottesco', no doubt. It's one of the great contemporary horror stories. Unlike many of Ligotti's stories, it engages the reader's compassion and empathy. The story uses weird and disturbing images to explore an individual's struggle with terminal illness. It's a passionate, sensitive, painful work that demonstrates Ligotti's fundamental humanism.

Re: Favorite Ligotti Story
 

THE BUNGALOW HOUSE
I recently discovered this extremely significant story in the history of Weird Fiction was first published in 1995, the same year as my wife and I moved to our Bungalow House (or known in UK as a Chalet Bungalow). Not relevant perhaps, but interesting to me. What is more relevant, probably, is that the Dalha tapes are reminiscent of the Dharma tapes in LOST. The Narrator arguably has a Lost-type ‘back-story’ co-identical with the artist behind the tapes.
The ‘deformity’ of what is in the Bungalow House has a sterilised mono ‘Purity’ by being ‘told’ between inverted commas by the voice on the tape, as does the familiar theme of the Derelict Factory (and the Bus Shelter).
The story has a precise narration of vague matters.
An Art Installation that is the story itself told by the Narrator disguised as the nemonymous artist. “Why should you care what his name is? Why should I?”
Cf. the lavatory in ‘The Clown Puppet’ etc with the optimum Art Installation lavatory here. The library that seems to have carrels. The icy bleakness of things. Killing sadness. The dismembered doll parts one of which kills Dalha. I cannot pretend to even begin to grapple with everything in this story. It is the archetypal Platonic Form of the Ligotti story. It is as if Ligotti has metamorphosed into the Reader. Or Himself.
“Yet I must observe that the effect, as I now consider it, has been just the opposite. If it was your intent to evoke the icy bleakness of things with your dream monologues then you have totally failed on both an artistic and extra-artistic level. You have failed your art, you have failed yourself, and you have also failed me.”

Re: Favorite Ligotti Story
 

"The Bungalow House" impacted me so deeply upon my first reading that I had to set the book aside several times in an attempt to re-orient myself to the world around me. It remains in my top five Ligotti stories. A gem, to be sure.

Re: Favorite Ligotti Story
 

Alice's Last Adventure or Dr. Voke and Mr. Veech... can't decide.

Re: Favorite Ligotti Story
 

I know this thread is a bit old but felt I should add my piece. Mine would have to be Drink To Me Only With Labyrinthine Eyes.

Re: Favorite Ligotti Story
 

I absolutely adore Nethescurial, it’s probably the story I’ve re-read the most,
that and The Damaged and the Diseased section of Teatro Grottesco.

It’s really too hard to decide.

Re: Favorite Ligotti Story
 

Like Umney, "The Damaged and Diseased" series impressed me. I think "Gas Station Carnivals" may be a favourite.
I'd read Ligotti on and off over the last few years and hadn't really appreciated his work properly until Teatro Grottesco. Now I can see where he's coming from I'm going to have the pleasure of going back and re-reading him. :)

Re: Favorite Ligotti Story
 

The Troubles of Dr. Thoss, his voice is very vivid in my head.

Re: Favorite Ligotti Story
 

I haven't thought the same way of theatres or nighttime since reading The Glamour.

Re: Favorite Ligotti Story
 

After some consideration, mine is a slightly unusual choice, I think. I was tempted to select The Bungalow House but, in fact, I think the vignette The Malignant Matrix is my favourite piece. There is something unique and powerful about the closing lines for me.

Re: Favorite Ligotti Story
 

"Alice's Last Adventure" or "The Troubles of Dr. Thoss". I'm quite fond, as most Ligotti fans are, of "The Bungalow House" as well.

Re: Favorite Ligotti Story
 

I certainly haven't read them all (to my great chagrin), but from what I have read, these are my favorite slices of Ligotti off the top of my head, in no particular order:

- "Conversations in a Dead Language"
- "The Glamour"
- "Our Temporary Supervisor"
- "Gas Station Carnivals"
- "The Red Tower"
- "Nethescurial"
- "The Town Manager"
- "The Bungalow House"
- "Teatro Grottesco"

Re: Favorite Ligotti Story
 

Gas Station Carnivals for today.

Re: Favorite Ligotti Story
 

In no particular order:
"The Library of Byzantium"
"Teatro Grottesco"
"Gas Station Carnivals"
"The Spectacles in the Drawer"
"The Troubles of Dr. Thoss"
"The Tsalal"
"Vastarien"
"The Clown Puppet"
"The Shadow, The Darkness"

Calling these 'favorites' isn't quite right. These made and continue to make such an impression (in the same way that being impaled by something leaves 'an impression') that I see them and hear them more vividly and loudly after the pages ran out than some of the others.

...anybody else feel stricken with physically painful anxiety when asked to choose favorites among cherished things? Not that I ever forget, but boy oh boy does this Tom fellow's work mean a lot to me.