A World of Mystery and Harm
A Dialogue with Thomas Ligotti on horror, antinatalism and pessimism
Thomas Ligotti is a contemporary writer and thinker on existentialist horror. Most of his work has taken the form of short stories: haunting, supernatural landscapes that privilege atmosphere over narrative. He has also written essays and a philosophical text on the history of pessimistic thought, from Buddhism to nihilism to antinatalism. His work simmers in the dark, unpleasantness of nightmares, usually without any catharsis. His characters do not overcome and his stories often leave me feeling hollow and uncertain about reality. This work is not for everyone, or even most people, and I am not always of the mindset to appreciate his meditations on pain and suffering — but occasionally, the most vitriolic, bleak perspective helps is exactly what I need to feel alive.
I conducted this interview during the pandemic but have not published it until now.
- Ross Simonini
In your email to me, you signed off with “locked down and loving it.” I know you have a reputation as a recluse, but can you say a bit on what you are personally enjoying about the lockdown?
I wouldn’t say that I’m personally enjoying the lockdown. I ended my email as I did on the chance that you were was aware of my reputation as a recluse, which I thought likely since I’m described as such on several online sites. So my closing to your email was meant as an joke, given that some people strongly object to being in lockdown, but a recluse might not. Of course, I took the risk that what I intended as a good-natured joke might have come off as offensive. After all, you might be one of those people who strongly objected to the lockdown or perhaps suffered in some way due to this policy. I hope this isn’t the case.
I took no offense. If anything, I took delight in hearing alternate perspectives. The lockdown is certainly anxiety producing for us all, but it would simply be untrue to say that any situation is bad for all people all of the time. Personally, I have certainly been enjoying aspects of the quiet slowness, though I have also lost a family member to the pandemic. I suspect that others feel the same conflicted way, and I would imagine that those with reclusive tendencies (myself included) appreciate a moment of not fighting against society's extroverted busyness. To see the benefits in any situation doesn’t, I think, make light of the many hardships but is a way of refusing to reduce reality to a single perspective.
Do you feel that the characterization of you as a recluse is incorrect? Has it been exaggerated in the press? Do you think this portrayal of you affects the perception of your work?
My reclusive lifestyle is entirely a function of emotional disorders or diseases, whichever term one prefers, assuming that such conditions are considered real or just fabrications of a psycho-medical establishment. I really have no problem elaborating on this point, but hearing about people’s mental problems can be as tiresome. To quote Williams Burroughs: “Do not proffer sympathy to the mentally ill; it is a bottomless pit.” I don’t think of myself as a recluse. To my mind, a recluse is somebody like Ted Kaczynski or a Zen hermit-poet. I am a shy, self-conscious person, but I don’t avoid people because I hate them or am working off some bad karma. Both misanthropy and meditation with an eye to attaining Nirvana are full-time jobs, and I’m not that ambitious. It’s quite possible that being a recluse is not a bad public image for a supernatural horror writer, or any kind of writer. Ask Thomas Pynchon.
It all began for me with the onset of a panic-anxiety disorder in August 1970, when I was seventeen years old. From childhood, I had been a high-strung, moody individual. Mood disorders, or diseases, ran in my family on my father’s side. But not until the summer of 1970 did I become clinically unwell. I continued to attend school and work, but the symptoms of PA were unpleasant enough on a daily basis that I preferred not to leave the house if I could avoid it. It was during this time that I began to read. With the exception of reading assignments in school, I rarely picked up a book. After I entered college, I became an avid reader. In the early 1970s, Lovecraft was being reprinted in paperback, as were other supernatural horror writers of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries such as Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood. It was reading the works of these authors that led to my interest in writing. The world of mystery and harm depicted in their works harmonized with my own, and their ability to express this world in language made me want to do the same. Around this time, the worst symptoms of panic-anxiety abated for a while. However, in late 1975 I flipped into depression, specifically the kind of depression characterized by anhedonia. After about four years of that, I bounced back to panic-anxiety. For the past twenty years, my mood has been, by my latest psychiatrist’s diagnosis, a treatment-resistant form of bipolar depression with melancholic features. While plenty of people manage to lead relatively normal lives in severe states of emotional anguish, reclusiveness suits me. I don’t think of myself as a recluse. To my mind, a recluse is somebody like Ted Kaczynski.
The reading of horror is often discussed as having the ability to purge the experience of fear and to cultivate it. Is this a paradox? Or is the paradox the point?
No doubt some people are to a degree paradoxically purged of fear, or, in some perversely Baudelairean way, cultivate their hysteria by experiencing fear at a literary distance. But, no, that’s not the case with me. The kind of roller coaster thrill sought by some horror fans is best conveyed by novels, which isn’t my purview. I have read heaps of horror fiction and studies of its major and minor figures as well as critical analyses of the genre. However, I could say the same of non-horror writers and commentary devoted to them. For over twenty-five years I worked as an editor and writer at a reference book company that published compilations of literary criticism on authors from the pre-Classical Era to the present. That was really my dream job.
I find that fear often stimulates a fundamental, primal part of myself that I have rarely been able to access since childhood. Fear makes the imagination work harder, and makes the mind more receptive and desperate for resolution, which is probably why it makes sense that horror is so accommodating to the supernatural.
Do you have any particular intentions toward creating an experience for your readers? Is fear important? To what end do you use fear as a tool?
I would say that of course I intend to create a certain effect in writing a story. However, I’m not sure I can explain the exact nature of that effect. I only know where a story begins and that’s in a feeling. It may be a feeling provoked by a dream, an image, an idea, or any number of things. But it’s a particular feeling. In retrospect, it seems—and I emphasize “seems”—that the feeling that I’ve most often tried to create in a reader—wittingly or not—is that of the uncanny, which bears a family resemblance to horror but at the same time is distinct from horror in the same way that Ann Radcliffe argued terror was distinct from horror. For decades, I wasn’t aware of trying to create an effect of the uncanny, and perhaps I haven’t done it as precisely and consistently as I think I have. One thing I might say of use concerning uncanny stories is in their origins: I would contend that they are more likely than other types of stories to have their source in a dream. To cite Poe, I would say that, in the case of uncanny stories, the “unity of effect” he advocated for any literary work would be a dreamlike unity. From beginning to end there seems to be a pervasive oddity about them. This is in opposition to horror stories whose effect is based on a feeling of realism. Lovecraft asserted that a successful horror story—or “weird tale,” as he would put it—resides in its being realistic in every aspect except that of the weird, or perhaps supernatural, element. In a way, Lovecraft’s emphasis on realism in fiction intended to produce an effect of the weird is, well, weird. While I don’t think it’s worth arguing about this with Lovecraft, it does raise the issue of proper nomenclature with respect to the type of story in question: horror, terror, weird, uncanny, fantastic, strange, supernatural. And just now I realized that you asked about my use of the experience of fear. I can’t think of a single reference to “fear stories.”
Has writing fiction allowed you, in any way, to develop your philosophy? Or has fiction primarily been a means to expressing it? Both? Neither?
To the extent that I have written what has some of the earmarks of philosophy, it would fall under the category of pessimism, an attitude or outlook dominant in my fiction. So, yes, it’s worked both ways for me. Pessimism isn’t usually considered a philosophy as such, unless like certain nineteenth-century Germans you develop a complex system à la Schopenhauer to justify or illuminate your thought. I’ve never been trained in that field, and I have only a dilletante’s interest and aptitude for it. The advantage of horror fiction for a pessimistic writer is that it allows you to present a grim view of existence in your narratives and not be derided for it to the extent a so-called mainstream writer might be. At the same time, pessimism is not necessarily encouraged in horror fiction. However, at least in short stories, readers tend not to be scandalized when a tale ends on a downbeat note, as in Poe’s best work or Lovecraft’s canonical writings.
For the record, I appreciate thinkers such as yourself working outside the codified institution of philosophy, which has become too insular to be accessible many people who are interested in the state of contemporary thought. I find that reading your work on pessimism often creates a positive emotional response for me. I have found similar response to many philosophies that consider human life to be meaningless (Zen Buddhism, Existentialism, Cosmology, etc.). It seems that some people seem to find comfort in meaning, while others see it as an unnecessary burden.
You’ve said that “subversion in any art form is impossible.” Why is this the case, and what do you mean by subversion?
Well, I really put myself into a corner with that utterance. I should probably have been more intellectually prudent than to make such a statement. However, at the time an interview asked me whether or not I thought horror writing was necessarily subversive, my impulse was to air the view that literature was necessarily entertainment as opposed to social, political, or cultural bomb throwing. I think it was during the 1980s or 90s that “subversive” and “transgressive” became widely used to describe certain authors’ works. The interview was conducted in 2004, a year after the centenary of George Orwell’s birth. Thus, it was fresh in my mind, with the all the reprints of 1984 the previous year, that both conservatives and their worthy adversaries were both claiming Orwell for their side, and I had become mightily annoyed by the idea of subversion as a vital quality in literature. But now I’ve come around and can accept the fact that subversive thought, like everything other aspect of human existence, is right there in the entertainer’s toolbox along with love and death and horror. This is not to overlook works that subvert art itself, at least until they’re assimilated and become as entertaining as the art forms that preceded them. Without question, you can spend as much time in heated contention over the subversion of Mark Rothko’s painted squares or a piece of music composed of four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence as you can over the political stance, its subversive nature being assumed, of 1984. However, what most moved me most about Orwell’s novel was not its subversive quality—right, left, or ambiguous—but its great first sentence: “It was a bright, cold day in April, and all the clocks were striking thirteen” and many entertainingly horrific conceits that fill the book. I guess I’m just old-fashioned, as well as given to stating or misstating the obvious. In any event, I would have embarrassed myself less if I had said that subversion is any art form is impossible if it fails to entertain, either at the time or once it has been assimilated by the culture it was intended to awaken or undermine.
Has writing fiction allowed you, in any way, to develop your philosophy? Or has fiction primarily been a means to expressing it? Both? Neither?
To the extent that I have written what has some of the earmarks of philosophy, it would fall under the category of pessimism, an attitude or outlook that is also dominant in my fiction. This isn’t usually considered a philosophy as such, unless like certain nineteenth-century Germans you develop a complex system à la Schopenhauer to justify or illuminate your thought. I’ve never been trained to that, and I’ve never been interested in doing that. The advantage of horror fiction for a pessimistic writer is that it allows you to present a grim view of existence in your narratives and not be berated for it to the extent a so-called mainstream writer might be. At the same time, pessimism is not necessarily encouraged in horror fiction. However, at least in short stories, readers tend not to be scandalized when a tale ends on a downbeat note, as in Poe’s best work or Lovecraft’s canonical writings.
Do you consider yourself a sick person? Do you identify with your chronic illness?
I guess that would depend on what you mean by a sick person. If a doctor diagnoses me as having a particular sickness, then I would normally take his word for it if my symptoms seemed to conform to that diagnosis, especially if they would so severe that they needed immediate attention. I’m not a distrusting person or a hypochondriac, but with the advent of the internet I thought it might be a good idea to check out that diagnosis on the relevant sites, if only to find out more about that sickness and its symptoms. I was once diagnosed twice in the same day with sciatica by two different MDs. Given its symptoms, I didn’t think it was far-fetched to think I really did have sciatica. However, I did have one symptom that wasn’t included in a diagnosis of sciatica. So I dug deeper and found that this symptom suggested I had a case of shingles. It was late Friday, so I couldn’t go back to the either of the doctors because they were closed. But given that, in case I did have shingles, I needed to take antibiotics as soon as possible, I called a doctor on an emergency medical line and told him my symptoms. He thought that I probably did have shingles and should start taking antibiotics right away, which I did the same day. On Monday, I returned to my primary care physician, who confirmed that I did in fact have shingles, not sciatica. Thereafter, I was treated for shingles. It was a bad case, but it could have been worse if I hadn’t gotten the antibiotics when I did. Thus, while I did consider myself a sick person, it occurred to me that I might be sick with some other disease that the one I was diagnosed with by two different doctors. I’m not sure what you mean by Identifying with an illness. I once collapsed in my home with terrible pains stomach pains. It turned out that they were stomach pains, but pains from a burst colon. The EMT guys who came to take me to the hospital after a family member called them weren’t sure what I had, and I couldn’t describe my pain to them in detail because it was so severe I couldn’t talk. The doctors and nurses in the emergency room didn’t know what I had either, even tough I was screaming in pain. X-rays and a CT scan were taken. I still couldn’t talk because the pain was so bad. In fact, in later describing this experience, I said that I not only had pain but I was pain. I was operated on about ten hours after arriving at the hospital. I had become septic and almost died. This was acute not chronic pain at the time, but I had to wear a colostomy bag for eight months before I could have a second operation to see if my colon could be reattached to my rectum. There was some chronic discomfort during that time, but I would not say that I identified with it.
The reading of horror is often discussed as having the ability to purge the experience of fear and to cultivate it. Is this a paradox? Or is the paradox of the point?
No doubt some people are to a degree paradoxically purged of fear, or in some perversely Baudelairean way, cultivate their hysteria by experiencing fear at a literary distance. But, no, that’s not the case with me. The kind of roller coaster thrill sought by some horror fans is best conveyed by novels, which isn’t my purview. I have read heaps of horror fiction and studies of its major and minor figures as well as critical analyses of the genre. However, I could say the same of non-horror writers and commentary devoted to them. Aside from personal reading and study, I also worked for over twenty-five years as an editor and writer for a reference book company that published compilations of the literary criticism on authors from the pre-Classical Era to the present. That was really my dream job.