Indispensable to your existence?

B

Bleak&Icy

Grimscribe
Which is the one Ligotti story that is crucial, absolutely necessary, to your continuing existence? Which text has woven itself into the very fabric of your personality? If, like me, you never leave your apartment without a book, which Ligotti text always accompanies you? When you feel death breathing over your left shoulder, which story do you turn to? Understandably, it is an excruciating task to chose only one story but I (deep breath) choose "The Bungalow House".
 
I can't say that it's indispensable to my existence, but one story by Mr. Ligotti is indispensable to my understanding of existence. "Mad Night of Atonement" is a personal touchstone and consolation.
 
I don't know if I can do this. I have to admit that when I first began reading Ligotti, I was extremely aroused by the imagery, but turned off by the seemingly unfinished style of the stories. I found that the more I read however, the more I understood. I have stated before that I believe Ligotti's 'fiction' is filled with as much magickal learning as 20 non-fiction, scholarly books on the subject.

So many of the stories go hand in hand and/or depict individual aspects of WEIRD phenomena.

The Tsalal speaks to me. The Shadow, The Darkness continues the conversation. My Work is Not Yet Done distills the philosophy to the understanding of mundanity.

Dr. Voke and Mr. Veech sing of the Voice in the Bones, as my head hatches.

I deal with medusas everyday, use them to cultivate coincidence, to werk with the parasites Mrs. Rinaldi feared so. I fear and welcome the Teatro, the soft, black stars multiply within me.. I work at the Red Tower, an annex of Blaine. I make Dolls and Puppets, listening to the Clay, tending to histories and anecdotes few would comprehend. I have been a patron of Gas Station Carnivals in my youth. I have lived bungalow houses in Moxton, in Crampton, in Holstenwall.
I am one of the Mystics of Muelenberg.
I am The Clown Puppet.
I am The Showman.

But the one that I always return to for sustenance is The Order of Illusion. It is the story of my life, over and over again. Always the baneful discovery of a deeper stratum of preciousness in things.

Sin cerely,
The Black Ferris
 
Bleak&Icy said:
Which is the one Ligotti story that is crucial, absolutely necessary, to your continuing existence? Which text has woven itself into the very fabric of your personality? If, like me, you never leave your apartment without a book, which Ligotti text always accompanies you? When you feel death breathing over your left shoulder, which story do you turn to? Understandably, it is an excruciating task to chose only one story but I (deep breath) choose "The Bungalow House".
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It's truly hard to understand a living nihilistic writer (living and nihilism are contradictory words, as I see it). If I understood Ligotti well, and if and only if, I consider myself to be a true follower of Ligotti's ideas, I would burn his works (give them away for free or for money would be the same but burning his work is more poetic), why? perhaps am I mad? Perhaps. But, see my logic.

What would I win by burning his work? Nothing, Therefore Ligotti was right, life is nonsense.

What purpose would I have? None. Therefore Ligotti was right again, life is purposeless.

Wouldn't I suffer? Yes, very likely. Therefore Ligotti was right once more, life is an unutterable pain.

If his work "has woven itself into the very fabric of your personality", as you stated, then you don't need the written pages anymore. No matter which one I would choose to be my favorite Ligottian story, (I touched my head) Ligotti is already here. Does it sound logical to you?

Otherwise, we read but understand nothing.
 
For me it is a three-way tie between "The Shadow at the Bottom of the World", "Purity" and "The Clown Puppet"—the first for the prose and mood, the second for the plot and characters, the third for the philosophy and humour.
 
I used to be better at memorising text. I mean, I could naturally quote verbatim from favourite texts, without having taken the trouble to learn them by rote. I don't think I have that ability anymore.

However, rather than name particular stories of Ligotti's that are indispensible to my existence, I will try and quote a few lines here that seem to me perfect expressions of perfect thoughts that fit perfectly into some part of my heart.

There are those of us who believe that the only value of this world is its ability, at certain times and under certain conditions, to suggest the existence of another.

*****

We have been force-fed, for so long, the horrors of a thousand graveyards, that we have come to acquire a taste for it.

*****

Say what we will about it and deny it till we die—we have had a knowledge imposed upon us that is too much to know and too secret to tell one another if we are to pace along our streets, work at our jobs, and sleep in our beds. It is the knowledge of a race of beings that are both specters and spectators in this cobwebbed corner of the cosmos.

I have to admit, I cheated with that last one, and looked it up.

Can you now tell me which works I have (mis)quoted from?


 
Particularly indispensible to my existence are:

The Last Feast of Harlequin - For it shows me who I am (and have always been).

In A Foreign Town, In A Foreign Land - For it shows me where I want to go (especially 'A Soft Voice Whispers Nothing' does that).

My Work Is Not Yet Done - For it shows me what I want to do (and must).

And then there's The Bungalow House - For a whole different set of reasons.

And oh... the way in which these stories do those things..
 
Bleak&Icy said:
Which is the one Ligotti story that is crucial, absolutely necessary, to your continuing existence? Which text has woven itself into the very fabric of your personality? If, like me, you never leave your apartment without a book, which Ligotti text always accompanies you? When you feel death breathing over your left shoulder, which story do you turn to?
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tough questions. but worth answering.
Necessary to continued existince - The Conspiracy Against The Human Race. it's opposition to continued existence is what makes it necessary for continued existence. I think this is because Continued Existence is like water. without suitable constraints it just sort of dribbles and flows off everywhere and you can't do much with it, but a bit if opposition acts as a container to give it shape and let you do things with it.
Woven into fabric of my personality - My Work Is Not Yet Done. before i even read it, it was in there, and once i read it, i was glad to know what it was.
Which Ligotti always leaves the house with me? This Degenerate Little Town and I Have A Special Plan For This World, audio versions. the print versions are safely enshrined in my Ligotti shrine, but the audio went everywhere with me on my itouch, and when I upgraded to iphone, it went there too. it has beent here longer than the noctuary ebook, but that comes with me to, though i don't refer back to it as much as the audio.
When death is over my left shoulder? Death Poems. may as well go out with a laugh.
 
Bleak&#1048 said:
Which is the one Ligotti story that is crucial, absolutely necessary, to your continuing existence? Which text has woven itself into the very fabric of your personality? If, like me, you never leave your apartment without a book, which Ligotti text always accompanies you? When you feel death breathing over your left shoulder, which story do you turn to?
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The One story crucial, absolutely necessary, to my existence?
In the Shadow of Another World. When I read this story I was 17 and after I finished it, I realized that THIS is what I had been feeling all my life and though everyone told me I was crazy, I felt it in my bones to be true. It allowed me to continue in this world in a very real way when everyone and everything around me told me I was not only wrong but crazy.

The text that has woven itself into the fabric of my existence?
In the Shadow of Another World for the reasons given but also the poem "I Have a Special Plan for This World". It spoke like a whisper in the darkness and continues to speak to me despite (perhaps because of) its brevity. It is as much a part of me as some people's religious text is a part of them (though hopefully I'm not as much of an a$$hole as those people).

The book I leave my apartment with?
My old, battered, beaten copy of The Nightmare Factory. Until I break down and join the 21st century by getting a Kindle, it'll do. The first Ligotti book I ever read and it holds a special place in my heart despite its dilapidated appearance.

When death is breathing over my shoulder which story do I turn to?
The Agonizing Resurrection of Victor Frankenstein in its entirety, perhaps for the same reason as DoktorH. In addition, when I feel that breath over my shoulder, I imagine its voice sounds (and I believe has sounded) like Thurston's wife.
 
"The Bungalow House" - Because it showed me I was not nearly as alone in my perspective of many things.

"The Conspiracy Against The Human Race" - The work that connects philosophical pessimism and the notion of transcendence, aligning both sides of myself, the pessimist and idealist, for what else is a cynic or pessimist but a frustrated idealist, one who believes the universe should--if it had any common decency--strive towards certain mighty and lofty goals...and notes its failure to do so.

"The Shadow, The Darkness" - It connects the notion of the fraud and the reality, binding them up in a dialectic that throws up its hands in defeat even as it reveals meaning.

"The Clown Puppet" and "The Red Tower" both reveal deep strata of reality and the self.

Finally, Severini reveals the self, in all its shame and glory, deconstructing (and decomposing) all the normal markers of personality and identity.
 
Teatro Grottesco - The Clown Puppet. The opening line: "It has always seemed to me that my existence consisted purely and exclusively of nothing but the most outragreuos nonsense."CHG
 
What a difficult question...(one made all-the-more difficult by the fact that I've not yet read all of the stories).

If I had to pick one, I'm thinking it might be "The Last Feast of Harlequin", because of its chilling/riveting take on extreme depression, clowns, and worms.

Close seconds...

"Mad Night of Atonement" (which I just read recently, and really, really dug)

"The Shadow, The Darkness" (which encapsulates philosophical pessimism just so)

"In a Foreign Town, In a Foreign Land" just because I remember it really sending me for a loop when I first read it
 
gas station carnivals is my fave. i love short stories more than any other form, and its a perfect short story.
clown puppet and town manager were also in the running.
 
Hmm.. The Cocoons, The Glamour, Gas Station Carnivals, Severini, The Red Tower, Our Temporary Supervisor, The Troubles of Dr. Thoss.....
 
I'm thinking "I Have a Special Plan for This World". That would be the poem, not the short-story that shares the title. Between its many verses and ideas it feels almost as a distillation of Ligotti's main themes and imagery, and some portions are just a wonder to read ("we went to see a little show..." or to speak out-loud ("...and the wind that would come to blow the dust away.")

Sadly, can't say I can quite carry it with me, as I think it's only been published in the Durtro Teatro Grottesco, which is beyond my means. But I make do with the Current 93 recorded version of it.
 
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Last Feast of Harlequin, The Medusa, Nethescurial of course. but of all these, The Dreaming in Nortown which seems now to describe, impossibly, something I have lived.
 
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