Ligoddities

Pardon the neologism of the topic title. This portmanteau from my twisted mind is basically Ligotti + oddity = Ligoddity.

One doesn't have to look far to see the importance of color in Thomas Ligotti's stories. Color abounds among the darkness. The color green, for instance, is significant in "The Last Feast of Harlequin," "Nethescurial," and "The Bungalow House." Of all of Ligotti's stories, only one features a color in its title: "The Red Tower." Mr. Ligotti has somehow avoided the temptation to use "black" and "dark' in story titles. ("The New Blackness" doesn't count since it's a section of "Ghost Stories for the Dead.") Instead, he has opted for words like "shadow," "night," and "twilight." No big revelation here, but it strikes me as odd.

Do you have any Ligoddities to share?

G. S. Carnivals";p="4047 said:

The color green, for instance, is significant in "The Last Feast of Harlequin," "Nethescurial," and "The Bungalow House."

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In a word assossiation exercise within the Dark Moon Rising interview, Tom's response to GREEN was "A color that I've always favored".

Don't forget about the color yellow!

i find Ligotti's various literary styles to be odd, but in a good way of course. before reading TL, i always thought that you should re-phrase something each time you talk about it. for example, the first sentence might refer to a dark conjurer. The second sentence might refer to a black mage. And the third sentence might refer to a shadowy sorcerer.

Occasionally, Ligotti does this, but more often he uses the same exact words over and over again. it creates some kind of poetic, weird effect that works its way below the surface. he'll talk about the dark conjurer, for instance, and keep refering to him as the dark conjurer. Continually, he keeps coming back to that familiar phrase, the dark conjurer.

it seems like a kind of magic in a way, the repitition. it does have a larger than life effect. now i use it all the time in my own fiction. so that's my Ligoddity...

D

It has become evident that Thomas Ligotti's references to the color blue and its hues are few and far between. One should savor these gems when they are encountered, for they are even rarer than sapphires. A genuine Ligoddity is the following quotation from the vignette "The Unfamiliar" which appeared in Noctuary: "And these angular monuments, blocking the sun, covered the streets below with a thick layer of shadows, so that even though a radiant blue sky continued to burn above, down here it was already evening." Irving Berlin and Thomas Ligotti are not on the same page.

G. S. Carnivals";p="4047 said:

Mr. Ligotti has somehow avoided the temptation to use "black" and "dark' in story titles. ("The New Blackness" doesn't count since it's a section of "Ghost Stories for the Dead.") Instead, he has opted for words like "shadow," "night," and "twilight." No big revelation here, but it strikes me as odd.

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Oh, I'm so busted! Of course, there is "The Shadow, The Darkness" to consider, a story that was originally published off-campus as it were. It is quite easy to forget about the stories that are uncollected. Teatro Grottesco has since snatched this one up.

Colour appears to be crucial as a concept in Ligotti's work. It has symbolic heft and sensory stimulus, making it powerful. Green is a very lively colour in plant life, but sickly in animal life, giving it fabulous ambiguity, whereas yellow in its darker shades is usually an unhealthy colour in all multicellular life. Black, grey, and their various shades imply a lack of light, an inverted world, a night or dream world as in "Vastarien" or "The Voice in the Bones". Blue is too alive for Ligotti's worlds; it implies light, the sun, the façade of the infinite blackness of outer and inner space. Red is too familiar, too lurid and physical a hue to play a major part in most of his stories. These colours serve more to contrast the sicklier, more primal ones when they show up.

Now, I've noticed the sparseness of sound in his short stories, but when it appears, it's important, usually through voices (either inhuman or otherwise extra-ordinary) or straightforward silence. The supermundane voice in Ligotti's work could easily supply the base for a decent-length essay.

Speaking of silence, vacuum is something Ligotti uses a lot. Silence, lack of colour, empty space, emotional void...

Very heavy.

darrick";p="4052 said:

Occasionally, Ligotti does this, but more often he uses the same exact words over and over again. it creates some kind of poetic, weird effect that works its way below the surface. he'll talk about the dark conjurer, for instance, and keep refering to him as the dark conjurer. Continually, he keeps coming back to that familiar phrase, the dark conjurer.

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Yeah, I've noticed that as well... it has given me various impressions through my readings of TL, and this far he is the only writer I know who uses the same literary gimmick. I always leave with the feeling that I just read a hypnotic transcript written by some automatic electronic device: the effect is even more accentuated in c93's IHASPFTW where Tibet's use of a monotonous voice over TL's writing gives off the impression of it being a broken recording of an automaton's voice.

Another element I have noticed is TL's subtle use of humor. Not a "laugh out you guts through your ass" kind of humor, but a subtle, ironic, almost sinister form of humor, written in a very “matter of fact” tone in various points of the narrative.

I agree wholeheartedly with darrick and Karnos regarding the use of repetition by Mr. Ligotti. One of my favorite Ligotti quotations which I have been honored to post was from "The Clown Puppet." The Most Outrageous Nonsense is a perfect example of this mesmerizing power of repetition. I present the quotation once again with that context in mind.

"Who knows how many others there were who might say that their existence consisted of nothing but the most outrageous nonsense, a nonsense that had nothing unique about it at all and that had nothing behind it or beyond it except more and more nonsense--a new order of nonsense, perhaps an utterly unknown nonsense, but all of it nonsense and nothing but nonsense."

Karnos";p="6415 said:

Another element I have noticed is TL's subtle use of humor. Not a "laugh out you guts through your ass" kind of humor, but a subtle, ironic, almost sinister form of humor, written in a very “matter of fact” tone in various points of the narrative.

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Yes, Karnos! Thomas Ligotti's sense of humor is sly, wry, and verges on the absolutely wicked. A round baker's half-dozen of fine specimens would include "Drink to Me Only with Labyrinthine Eyes," "The Chymist," "Eye of the Lynx," "The Cocoons," "Dr. Voke and Mr. Veech," "The Red Tower," "My Work Is Not Yet Done," and "The Nightmare Network." It's obvious that I don't count too well. But then again, I have no pretentious aspirations of becoming the first quadruped Einstein. My math is much better than my baking, however...

Spotbowserfido2";p="6417 said:

Karnos";p="6415 said:

Another element I have noticed is TL's subtle use of humor. Not a "laugh out you guts through your ass" kind of humor, but a subtle, ironic, almost sinister form of humor, written in a very “matter of fact” tone in various points of the narrative.

Click to expand...

Yes, Karnos! Thomas Ligotti's sense of humor is sly, wry, and verges on the absolutely wicked. A round baker's half-dozen of fine specimens would include "Drink to Me Only with Labyrinthine Eyes," "The Chymist," "Eye of the Lynx," "The Cocoons," "Dr. Voke and Mr. Veech," "The Red Tower," "My Work Is Not Yet Done," and "The Nightmare Network." It's obvious that I don't count too well. But then again, I have no pretentious aspirations of becoming the first quadruped Einstein. My math is much better than my baking, however...

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Another example would be the Medea's Massage line in "The Dreaming in Nortown".