/lit/ - Literature

>Neddal Ayad: Incidentally, do you notice much of a gender split in your readership?
>Thomas Ligotti: It’s pretty much all maladjusted guys with advanced university degrees, although there are some outstanding female exceptions with advanced degrees and literary talents. They’re not what people think of as nerds living in their parents’ basements. The ones with whom I’ve been in contact over the years live far more normal lives than I do. In any case, I’d like to put in a good word for nerds living in their parents’ basement — they’re an undeservedly maligned subculture that I’m proud to count among my readers if they’re out there.

Of course I was curious about this building from the time I first moved into one of the old houses in the neighborhood. I immediately noticed what I then considered the primitive, virtually primal nature of the little store, and I would at great length observe this darkly luminous structure whenever I went out walking, as I often did, in the late hours of the night. I followed this practice for some time, never noticing any change in the little store, never seeing anything that I had not seen the first night I began observing the place.
Then one night something did change in the little store, and something also changed in the neighborhood around it. It was only for a moment that the dim glow burning within the little store seemed to flare up before returning to its usual state of a dull, smoldering flicker. This was all that I saw. Nevertheless, that night I did not return to my home, because it was now glowing with the same primordial light as that within the little store. All the old houses in the neighborhood were lit up in the same way, all of their little windows glowing dimly at that late hour. No one will ever again emerge from those houses, I thought as I abandoned the streets of that neighborhood. Nor will anyone ever desire to enter them.
Perhaps I had seen too deeply into the nature of the little store, and it was simply warning me to look no further. On the other hand, perhaps I had been an accidental witness to something else altogether, some plan or process whose ultimate stage is impossible to foresee, although there still comes to me, on certain nights, the dream or mental image of a dark sky in which the stars themselves burn low with a dim, flickering light that illuminates an indefinite swirling blur wherein it is not possible to observe any definite shapes or signs.

>Neddal Ayad: Incidentally, do you notice much of a gender split in your readership?
>Thomas Ligotti: It’s pretty much all maladjusted guys with advanced university degrees, although there are some outstanding female exceptions with advanced degrees and literary talents. They’re not what people think of as nerds living in their parents’ basements. The ones with whom I’ve been in contact over the years live far more normal lives than I do. In any case, I’d like to put in a good word for nerds living in their parents’ basement — they’re an undeservedly maligned subculture that I’m proud to count among my readers if they’re out there.

why does he find dolls so scary?

III. THE ASTRONOMIC BLUR
Along a street of very old houses there was a building that was not a house at all but a little store which kept itself open for business at all hours of the day and night, every single day of the year. At first the store appeared to me as merely primitive, a throwback to some earlier time when a place of business might be allowed to operate in an otherwise residential district, however decayed the houses of the neighborhood may have been. But it was much more than primitive in the usual sense, for the little store declared no name for itself, offered no outward sign to give an indication of its place in the world around it. It was only the local residents who called it ‘the little store,’ when they spoke of it at all.
There was a small window beside the dark wooden door of the building, but if one tried to peer through the foggy glass of this window, nothing recognizable could ever be seen – only a swirling blur of indefinite shapes. And although the building’s interior lights were always left on, even in the middle of the night, it was not the bright steady illumination of electricity that seemed to shine through the window of the place but a dim, vaguely flickering glow. Neither was anyone spied who might have been regarded as the proprietor of the little store, and no one was ever seen either going into or coming out of it, least of all the people in the surrounding neighborhood. Even if a passing car stopped in front and someone got out of the vehicle with the apparent intention of entering the store, they would never get farther than the sidewalk before turning around, getting back inside their car, and driving away. The children in the area always crossed to the opposite side of the street when walking by the little store.

III. THE ASTRONOMIC BLUR
Along a street of very old houses there was a building that was not a house at all but a little store which kept itself open for business at all hours of the day and night, every single day of the year. At first the store appeared to me as merely primitive, a throwback to some earlier time when a place of business might be allowed to operate in an otherwise residential district, however decayed the houses of the neighborhood may have been. But it was much more than primitive in the usual sense, for the little store declared no name for itself, offered no outward sign to give an indication of its place in the world around it. It was only the local residents who called it ‘the little store,’ when they spoke of it at all.
There was a small window beside the dark wooden door of the building, but if one tried to peer through the foggy glass of this window, nothing recognizable could ever be seen – only a swirling blur of indefinite shapes. And although the building’s interior lights were always left on, even in the middle of the night, it was not the bright steady illumination of electricity that seemed to shine through the window of the place but a dim, vaguely flickering glow. Neither was anyone spied who might have been regarded as the proprietor of the little store, and no one was ever seen either going into or coming out of it, least of all the people in the surrounding neighborhood. Even if a passing car stopped in front and someone got out of the vehicle with the apparent intention of entering the store, they would never get farther than the sidewalk before turning around, getting back inside their car, and driving away. The children in the area always crossed to the opposite side of the street when walking by the little store.

>>16856998
Been reading some Thomas Ligotti. I would recommend The Last Feast of Harlequin for pure, undiluted Lovecraftian kino.

Anyone know of any antinatalist fiction? Fiction specifically, not philosophical works. I recently read The Last Feast of Harlequin by Thomas Ligotti, for example, which featured an antinatalist hobo clown cult.

>>15788284
based ligotti

Any thoughts regarding Thomas Ligotti? I have been looking foward to read his books, but I have never had a chance. What are your opinions /lit/?

Something like Thomas Ligotti

>>10653635
t. famous carbon monoxide salesman Thomas Ligotti

>>10471106
Thomas Ligotti

Is this man based? Does he really 'get' it?

Or is he merely a depressed, misled, apathetic husk of human potential?

[Also, best short story?]

>>8494210

Is he the new meme author? I just picked up Conspiracy Against the Human Race and I'm a few chapters in.

So basically everything we do is for external affirmation, otherwise life is pointless?

Anyone here have a pdf of songs of a dreamer and grimscribe? I've feel like I've searched everywhere

>>7816803
>>7817450

What are your favorite Ligotti stories?

Thomas Ligotti thread? I'm just about to read "The Shadow, The Darkness". The last story in the "Teatro Grottesco" collection.