The Most Shocking Thing About HBO’s ‘True Detective’
 

Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Calia has made the True Detective/Ligotti link!

The Most Shocking Thing About HBO’s ‘True Detective’

Bear in mind, this isn't a casual mention of Ligotti's work. This superb article explicitly links Nic Pizzolatto's protagonist, Rust Cohle, and--by extension--the thesis of the whole shebang to the philosophy delineated in Ligotti's THE CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE HUMAN RACE.

I urge all of you to read the article and make your comments/reactions to it there.

This is big. I'm hopeful that this article will lead at least some TRUE DETECTIVE watchers who have been deeply moved by Cohle's expressions of philosophical horror to the true source material.

Update: TLO member and ARKHAM DIGEST editor, Justin Steele, wrote the following:

Thanks so much, Justin!

Re: The Most Shocking Thing About HBO’s ‘True Detective’
 

Re: The Most Shocking Thing About HBO’s ‘True Detective’
 

Oh, wow. Love this. Thank you for calling it out, Jon. Methinks the dam is breaking.

Re: The Most Shocking Thing About HBO’s ‘True Detective’
 

Be sure to comment on the WSJ article site itself -- we want to make sure the powers that be know that this is important news!

Also--if you use any social networking contraptions--please link directly to the article.

I'm with Matt. This is exciting

Re: The Most Shocking Thing About HBO’s ‘True Detective’
 

I added my four cents over at WSJ a few minutes ago.

Re: The Most Shocking Thing About HBO’s ‘True Detective’
 

I was expecting an article with some reference to Ligotti but this is beyond my expectations and now well supplemented by TLO member comments.

This must make the HWA Lifetime achievement award a certainty. In any case, this is more significant than any award.

Re: The Most Shocking Thing About HBO’s ‘True Detective’
 

This is great! Quite a lot to think about here. Pizzolatto has inferred that there will be no "supernatural" element, but it seems Ligotti is redefining the word.

"Now we know that we are uncanny paradoxes. We know that nature has veered into the supernatural by fabricating a creature that cannot and should not exist by natural law, and yet does."

Ligotti has been scrutinizing the different facets of the supernatural throughout his career, and in a separate comment he made years ago from another perspective:

"Joseph Conrad said that he shunned the supernatural because it wasn’t necessary to depict the horror of existence. I wish he hadn’t. Because the supernatural is the metaphysical counterpart of insanity—the best possible vehicle for conveying the uncanny nightmare of a conscious mind marooned for a brief while in this haunted house of a world and being slowly driven mad by the ghastliness of it all. Not the man’s-inhumanity-to-man sort of thing, but a necessary derangement, a high order of weirdness and of desolation built in to the system in which we all function. Its emblem is the empty and inexplicable malignity that some of us see in the faces of dolls, manikins, puppets, and the like. The faces of so many effigies of our own shape, made by our own hands and minds, seem to be our way of telling ourselves that we know a secret that is too terrible to tell. The horror writer has the best chance of expressing something of that secret. It’s really a lost opportunity, or perhaps a blessing, that so few take advantage of this potential that lies in horror fiction."



Rottentomatoes.com lists True Detective as one of the most highly regarded programs currently on television: 88% of Critics and 97% of the audience likes the show.

And the few critics that do hedge do so for obvious reasons.

"Just because True Detective is exceptional doesn't make it great. There's plenty of depth here to sink into. I just wish it didn't feel so much like drowning." - Andy Greenwald


The most important thinkers and artists have always put questions to culture. I think Ligotti's questions are about to be heard by a large segment of the population. TL's ideas should be addressed one way or another. I envision a philosophical Zapffe's "Last Messiah" scenario and a deeper entrenching of religious values. No HPL's "... a new Dark Age", but that will be the general direction of the infinitesimal shift. Or not...

Re: The Most Shocking Thing About HBO’s ‘True Detective’
 

That's some nice exposure, not just for Mr. Ligotti and his work, but pessimist philosophy in general—and by way of it some good weird fiction authors. Nice.

And I see some familiar names already storming the comments section there :)

Re: The Most Shocking Thing About HBO’s ‘True Detective’
 

Personally, I'd like to see Ligotti getting some financial appreciation. I know he doesn't have a commercial mindset but he can use money as well as anyone. I didn't want to be too crass but I implied it would be nice if he were rewarded for his influence on this drama.
Those people can read between the lines.

Re: The Most Shocking Thing About HBO’s ‘True Detective’
 

That is funny. I didn't see that one coming.



Agreed. I think HBO should fly Tom out to the bayou for a cameo, ala Hitchcock. He isn't that far removed from Louisiana.

End Credits:

Consultant and seedy gas station carnival attendant - Thomas Ligotti

Maybe with this image peeking out under his greasy coveralls.


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