THE NIGHTMARE NETWORK - Writer Nic Pizzolatto on Thomas Ligotti and the Weird Secrets of ‘True Detective’

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Re: Writer Nic Pizzolatto on Thomas Ligotti and the Weird Secrets of ‘True Detective’

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Cohle is unequivocally a saved man. He has been redeemed from his pessimism by a Near Death Experience.

In the words of another viewer of the show:

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I wonder if anyone has noticed that TD turned out to be a supernatural story after all, despite Pizzolatto’s gibbering that it isn’t. What could have been more supernatural than Rust Cohle’s near-death vision, which he clearly embraces, of an afterlife in which he’ll be reunited with his daughter, father, and maybe a pet he had as a kid. What a disgusting mockery of the pain of loss in human life. Geez, how could he be the nihilistic guy he seemed in the first two episodes, the ones that viewers said they liked best, the ones which NP says were rewritten after writing of the last six episodes.

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So a man who hates being revived from a coma and has an overwhelming desire to die is a "saved man" because he alludes to an afterlife? This is a rather narrow view of philosophical Pessimism.

The odd thing is that Rust's supposed afterlife and near death experience (he didn't actually commit to any views on the hereafter) sounds a lot like Schopenhauer:

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/scho.../chapter7.html

I think the vast majority of Religious optimists would follow Thrasymachos in frowning upon Rust's view of the hereafter.

Re: Writer Nic Pizzolatto on Thomas Ligotti and the Weird Secrets of ‘True Detective’

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Originally Posted by matt cardin (Post 100011)

Just thought I would add this to the mix. It's a quote from The Yellow Jester himself, from that interview he gave to Jeff VanderMeer last year for Wonderbook:

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VanderMeer: On the page, what are the worst ways that a talented writer can self-sabotage or self-betray?

Ligotti: I don’t know what you mean by “on the page,” but I think the worst way a writer can self-betray is by not being true to his or her experience of being alive. It’s my belief, for what it’s worth, that a lot of writers consign to the page what they think will meet with the approval, especially in the moral realm, of what their society has preached to them since they were children, almost all of which is utter bull####. This is particularly evident in the practice of screenplay writers who write about characters being “redeemed” in some way or other. That is, whereas a character began with a bad attitude about life, he ends as if he had swallowed whole hog a course in positive thinking.

I think Tom's opinion, at least, of where True Detective went (if he even watched the series) is probably not in doubt (although Pizzolatto's after-the-fact comments about the whole-series arc indicate that he wasn't and isn't really coming at things from a personally held pessimist or antinatalist stance, so maybe he sidesteps Tom's point here).

That interview will appear as the final item in Born to Fear, by the way.

I don't know anything about the TV series in question.

However, I will quote the end of an essay I've been writing along these lines, if you'll indulge me:

"Back in the 1990s Ligotti wrote a little essay called “The Consolations of Horror”. In it there was an intriguing passage concerning horror and reality, which I'll quote; “after a devoted horror fan is stuffed to the gills, thoroughly sated and consequently bored – what does he do next? Haunt the emergency rooms of hospitals or the local morgues? Keep an eye out for bloody mishaps on the freeway? Become a war correspondent? But now the issue has been blatantly shifted to a completely different plane – from movies to life – and clearly it doesn't belong there.”

Apparently it does, and your next logical stop, all you horror fans after an even stronger dose of the good hard stuff, is the philosophy of life (or rather, of death) detailed in CATHR.

I cannot help confessing that, for me, Ligotti, or rather the Ligotti-persona of CATHR, frequently brings to mind the character Mr. Kurtz from Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness. His carefully crafted aura of reclusive mystery, his professed philanthropic aim to end all suffering, his moving eloquence and august benevolence, it's all on display. But, in the end, so too is the dead soul, the monolithic and righteous sarcasm, but, above all, the despair and horror of having examined one's innermost self and come to Kurtz's same final conclusion; “Exterminate all the brutes!”

Jose Luis Borges, the Argentinian fabulist, once contended that it was hazardous to suggest a combination of words could much resemble the universe, and that philosophy was only another branch of fantastic literature. The appearance of CATHR surely adds weight to this notion. As a work of horror fiction, and a portrait of the crummy side of reality, the book is as brilliant as any other of the books Ligotti has authored. So it goes.

But for my own part, I would identify the motive behind weird fiction as essentially primal and not rational. It is experiential in nature, and not philosophical. It is an attempt to delineate engagement with the totality of existence itself, not only in the cosmos, but in the realm of one's own imagination. It is not simply a foreshadowing of the death of the physical form that must come to us all, and a concentration on that fact to the exclusion of everything else.

Authors of weird fiction ought not to be valued simply as philosophers, social commentators or political theorists who hold views with which we agree, and who appear merely to have condescended to write weird fiction rather than academic dissertations. There is no need for us to make excuses for our art, insinuating that the best weird fiction has merit where it utilises metaphors in order to deal with more pressing philosophical, societal or psychological issues. Even when an accomplished author attempts to write weird fiction on this basis, the outcome is often that the work transcends whatever philosophical or socio-political message imposed upon it, and still savours of the ineffable.

After all, what could be more real than the awful mystery of our own existence and the strange enigma of this spectral universe we all inhabit? It has been an integral part of man’s experience since the first of our ape-like ancestors stood on two legs, turned his gaze upward to the night sky and felt a holy dread. Weird fiction does not originate from a philosophical or political impulse, or even an emotional response like misery, but is a reflection of the infinite cosmic Mystery. It remains a valid artistic end in itself, a response to being alive, and never just a form of apologia."

Mark S.

Re: Writer Nic Pizzolatto on Thomas Ligotti and the Weird Secrets of ‘True Detective’

Jose Luis Borges is, apparently, Jorge Luis Borges smarter brother...

Ahem.

Mark S.

Re: Writer Nic Pizzolatto on Thomas Ligotti and the Weird Secrets of ‘True Detective’

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Originally Posted by blackout (Post 100037)

welcome back mark.

Thanks. And to all those who share the sentiment.

My internet connection is now so patchy and degraded even an ultimate pessimist would not believe it.

Mark S.;)

Re: Writer Nic Pizzolatto on Thomas Ligotti and the Weird Secrets of ‘True Detective’

Mark! :)

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Originally Posted by Dr. Locrian (Post 100028)

For my part, that montage reminded me of the end of HALLOWEEN--letting us know that the Real Horror could not be contained in one place. It could be ANYwhere. It's an intrinsic part of the landscape and the people who live within it.

I wasn't thinking Halloween so much as The Wire and their "real life has no closure, it just keeps on going" season-finale montages. It seemed the series was going to end with that shot of the tree where it all began and I thought "yeah, that's good." Then... psych! Here's your redemption side-serving. :drunk:

Re: Writer Nic Pizzolatto on Thomas Ligotti and the Weird Secrets of ‘True Detective’

Yeah, it's from the New York Post (my favorite rag, sue me) but it's not complaining about anti-Christian bias or anything you might imagine; it's just one critic unhappy because too much was left unexplained.
Because that last episode got the adrenaline going I was pretty forgiving of such things, but I can see how others might not be. I don't always like everything wrapped up nice and neatly.
But the interesting thing is the author is an extremely conservative columnist and he doesn't seem to be looking at the drama through political or religious goggles. It's encouraging if that's what the power of a good story can do...
Give me the Post, my coffee, a hot buttered muffin, my cigarettes and some painkillers and I might make it through one more day...
Or not.

We all look like suckers again as fizzles out | New York Post

Re: Writer Nic Pizzolatto on Thomas Ligotti and the Weird Secrets of ‘True Detective’

Welcome back, Mark. Like you, I have not seen this TV programme. I agree with your sentiments above. We have interesting common ground there, despite my being essentially non-religious, and you now openly religious. The Art of Weird Fiction is something that binds rather than divides, I find. The Politics of Weird Fiction, meanwhile, sadly acts against that.

Re: Writer Nic Pizzolatto on Thomas Ligotti and the Weird Secrets of ‘True Detective’

H U G E

W E L C O M E

B A C K

T O

M A R K

S !!!!

*can't wait to read the essay in its entirety*

Re: Writer Nic Pizzolatto on Thomas Ligotti and the Weird Secrets of ‘True Detective’

TCATHR puts me in mind of the kind of Philosophy written by men such as Shestov and Kierkegaard: the desperate desire to escape the quotidian, the iron shackles of necessity and to pass beyond the visible realm, albeit in the opposite direction to those two gentlemen....

Re: Writer Nic Pizzolatto on Thomas Ligotti and the Weird Secrets of ‘True Detective’

I was one of the few who expressed suspicion of Pizzolatto when he was 'outed' re Ligotti, and claimed he was fully intending to credit the latter at the end of the series. His dismissive comments re weird fiction and so on do make feel a tad vindicated;)