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

I have been thinking about that as well. However, the same argument could be made about The Yellow Jester himself, for example in MWISNYD, The Bungalow House, Our Temporary Supervisor and other stories which simply state ideas in between 'bits of plot'. I think that is fine in narrative fiction, but it struck me as flawed storytelling in the show.

The thing I asked would be the following: How would you convey antinatalism visually? Is it really possible to convey an idea as complex and as alien as that without misleading or confusing a large audience (most of which have never heard the term and could not grasp the concept without explanation)?

Then again, we do not get paid for an answer to that question, so the creators of TD should have answered it for us. Regarding Twin Peaks... well, I don't think there ever was a larger coherent philosophy underlining that show. Even Coop's 'spiritualism' is barely mentioned and never really relevant to the plot. Or is it?

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

That might be true. Then again, you can only win an argument with a dead philosopher I guess.

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

Whereas there's no equivalent one liner from Schopenhauer, Schopenhauer expresses the same ideas in "On The Vanity of Existence" in Parerga and Paralipomena - that humans are so unfit and strange to exist that we should think of life as unnatural. The passage is quite lengthy - and I have to cut and paste to compensate for different translator's omissions - so I posted it under the Pessimistic Passage of the Day so as not to throw a giant block of text into the middle of this thread:

Pessimistic Passage of the Day... - Page 52 - THE NIGHTMARE NETWORK

Now, the fact that I have to cite an extended passage of Schopenhauer to capture the sentiment Ligotti expresses in a single sentence goes to show that Ligotti certainly isn't "regurgitating" Schopenhauer. Ligotti distills Schopenhauer's point in an eloquent and memorable fashion, and this is valuable intellectually and as well as artistically - but it remains that Ligotti's philosophy only differs in exposition rather than content from Schopenhauer's. I'm not dismissing packaging in pointing this out. I also couldn't defend a show like True Detective if I thought very highly of originality.

Returning to True Detective itself, I doubt True Detective would have made a different impact on audiences if Pizzolatto mined choice statements from Schopenhauer rather than Ligotti (Schopenhauer definitely has his own one liners and "quotables"). This is doubly true given that many, like Malone, did not see Rust's philosophy spelled out in a few key statements but rather spewed out in rants.

This also brings me t o a good reason why Pizzolatto might be referring to Schopenhauer more in interviews than Ligotti: right or wrong, we expect authors to know the full history of the ideas they engage with and go back to the source firstahnd. For example, when someone uses Nietzschean concepts but attributes them to Ayn Rand or Marilyn Manson, they are usually written off as ignorant or just stupid. Regardless of what anyone here thinks of either Rand or Manson, this is unfair for numerous reasons I won't go into - but it is the way things are. It's entirely possible that Pizzolatto only knows Schopenhauer (or Cioran) through reading Ligotti, but if he refers to Ligotti the response would probably be something along the lines of "You're an idiot! Ligotti is just a horror writer. Surely you know that it's Schopenhauer's philosophy you're talking about."

[...and I must emphasize that I object to this sort of reaction - but it is one I know many "intellectuals" would have.]

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

Regarding people who dismissed or dislike what Cohle said in the show - well, it's to be expected. But there's also many people - and not just Ligotti fans or self-proclaimed Pessimists - who were intrigued by his character and what he said, and among those some who sympathized. It's no coincidence that TCAHR's sales spiked after the show premiered.

As for philosophy, it's introduction into fiction automatically causes a large segment of the audience to turn away in disgust. People in real life discuss philosophy - even rant and scream about it - all the time, but like death and sex, some feel it should only be alluded to or avoided altogether to avoid bogging down a good story. I always wonder what exactly is left over for a good story...as I see it, aside from sex and death, there's only philosophy...but different strokes, as they say, different strokes.

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

Addicts have a saying: Methadone is a lot stronger, but oxycodone is a lot more fun.
I don’t know if Schopenhauer is “a lot stronger” but I do know Ligotti is more “fun.” LOL.

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

I can agree to that - though on Schopenhauer's behalf, we are comparing a modern English-language fiction writer to a 19th century German-language philosopher. I've also been told by German speakers that English translations of Schopenhauer are horrendous and that he was actually a very conversational and breezy writer. But this is of little consequence to anyone not fluent in German...

...and, for the record, I do consider Ligotti's prose among the best I've read in English.

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

Actually, I like Schopenhauer’s prose…and you did a fine job with the Pessimist Quotation. I was thinking of Ligotti’s stories…which are really quite wonderful.

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

Excellent response.

But I think you're giving Nic Pizzolatto too much credit. The reason he didn't initially mention Ligotti is because he was directly paraphrasing whole paragraphs of his work (and--in some cases--lifting his passages word for word). Ligotti is a living writer whose work is copyrighted, but I suspect Nic P thought he would get away with it because he assumed Ligotti was an obscure enough writer that no one would notice.

If Rust had simply said "Life must be a mistake," or some other Schopenhauer quote, there would've been no controversy, and--I argue--the power of Cohle's establishing monologues in the first three episodes would've been greatly diminished. I suspect Nic P would have been very happy for everyone to have assumed that those monologues came straight from his own head--a remarkable distillation of Schopenhauer, Cioran, and--especially to my mind--Zapffe.

Indeed, most viewers have no idea who any of these folks are--let alone Ligotti--and probably still think something on the lines of, "Wow, the guy who wrote TRUE DETECTIVE is a freaking GENIUS!"

At any rate, we can definitely agree that Ligotti has written some of the best prose in the English language. And I'd argue that CATHR is no exception. Part philosophy, part philosophical criticism and response, part literary criticism, and a metafictional expression of horror -- I've never read anything like it, and I probably never will.

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

It's been interesting to witness all the occasional furor over TCATHR -- readers taking one position or another in response to it. I was surprised by nothing in the book, though, because a) Ligotti's fiction--especially the more metafictional examples--has always clearly projected a pessimistic take on the world and b) TCATHR itself is not just simply an extended philosophical or even philosophical criticism essay. It's also a parodoxically life-affirming work of art on par with and often exceeding any story he's ever written. That's always been the irony of Ligotti's work (to me) -- his expressions of extreme negativity act as a kind of balm to like minded or sympathetic readers.

And I can't imagine any new, sympathetic reader consuming TCATHR and not wanting to read every other word the man has written.

Note: I don't pretend to personally take Ligotti's worldview as scripture. But that's not the point. I do know this, though: Ligotti's worldview is utterly earnest and passionately expressed. It is not philosophical sophistry as some readers (e.g. Laird Barron) have claimed. That misguided take insults the writer, the man, and minimizes the impact of Ligotti's painstaking and ethically sound work.

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

True Detective even made it onto the pages of Germany's most respected weekly quality paper Die Zeit - even though the show is aired on a channel that only a tiny fraction of the population have subscribed to.
In the text the author writes about Cohle : "Like a dark monk he paraphrases the pessimistic voices of the 20th century, like Lovecraft, Cioran, Ligotti".
I'm wondering if he has actually read the authors he is enumerating or if he has simply just copied what he found on the Internet. Anyway, great to hear Ligotti mentioned in the German press.
But I must say the way he reads the ending -"After walking through Conrad's Heart of Darkness in eight episodes the light at the end of the tunnel seems dubious" - is something I cannot quite subsribe to. Nevertheless I must say that like some others here I enjoyed the show.