Me, Interviewed

There's a new micro interview up at Innsmouth Free Press. This one, though, is a bit different. I am no longer the interviewer. Instead, I got interviewed. If you want to know a bit more about my interest in publishing (and me in general), you should head on over and check it out.

Me, The Weaving Knight, and an Interview

My good friend Travis Knight just posted his interview of me over at his excellent blog, The Weaving Knight. It is, if I do say so myself, a rather interesting read, complete with a mention of my writerly beginnings in fanfiction of all things. Check it out.

[And have no fear, book reviews will be returning come next Tuesday with a look at Poppy Z. Brite and Caitlin R. Kiernan's Wrong Things, by far the greatest piece of Weird (and horror) fiction I've experienced since I reread The Case of Charles Dexter Ward last October. Between now and then I do also have a small quotation/comparison between Lovecraft and a rather unexpected (and quite Christian) source that I'll be posting on, I believe, Friday.]

Interview: Thomas Ligotti

Thomas Ligotti is the author of Songs of a Dead Dreamer, Grimscribe, Noctuary, My Work is Not Yet Done, Teatro Grottesco, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race, and others. He has won the International Horror Guild Award, multiple Bram Stoker awards, and has been nominated for several World Fantasy Awards. Often considered a successor to Poe and Lovecraft, Ligotti's developed an incredibly dedicated following on fan sites like Thomas Ligotti Online and The Art of Grimscribe. On a personal level, I can think of no living author who's had a greater impact on the way that I think and perceive the world. The results of our conversation are as follows…

1. The Subterranean Press reissues are definitive editions of Songs of a Dead Dreamer, Grimscribe, and the forthcoming Noctuary are, we're told, the "revised, definitive edition[s]." So, of course, the question must come: what's different? Was there a specific element you looked for with your changes, an intended change of focus, or were they more focused on strengthening the effects already present? Would it, perhaps, even be possible for you to quote some later-altered line and its newer counterpart, and state the reason for the changes therein?

One thing I did not do is deliberately seek out changes. Of course there would be errors that needed corrections and phrases that needed to be polished. But I didn’t look to shorten or lengthen the stories or any part of them, or to make my prose leaner or more baroque, or to in any way alter the tone of a given story. I just read the books carefully from start to finish and keep on the lookout for additions and deletions that would enhance each story, at least to my mind. The following paragraph was chosen at random and illustrates typical revisions I made throughout Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe. It’s the penultimate paragraph of “The Last Feast of Harlequin.”

At certain times I could almost dissolve entirely into this inner realm of awful purity and emptiness. I remember those invisible moments when in disguise I drifted through the streets of Mirocaw, untouched by the drunken, noisy forms around me: untouchable. But in instantly I recoil at this grotesque nostalgia, for I realize what is happening and what I do not want to be true, though Thoss proclaimed it was. I recall his command to those others as I lay helplessly prone in the tunnel. They could have apprehended me, but Thoss, my old master called them back. His voice echoed throughout that cavern, and it now reverberates within my own psychic chambers.

At certain times I could almost dissolve entirely into this inner realm of purity and emptiness, the paradise of the unborn. I remember how I was momentarily overtaken by a feeling I had never known when in disguise I drifted through the streets of Mirocaw, untouched by the drunken, noisy forms around me: untouchable. I was the feeling that I had been liberated from the weight of life. But I recoil at this seductive nostalgia, for it mocks my existence as mere foolery, a bright clown’s mask behind which I sought to hide my darkness. I realize what is happening and what I do not want to be true, though Thoss proclaimed it was. I recall his command to those as I lay helplessly prone in the tunnel. They could have apprehended me, but Thoss, my old master, called them back. His voice echoed throughout that cavern, and it now reverberates with the psychic chambers of my memory.           

               

It would be a lengthy process for me to point out every change and why I made it. One thing I particularly like is the sentence that includes the added phrase “the weight of life.” I feel that it bolsters and encapsulates the theme of the story in four words. I’ll leave it to the reader to consider other additions and deletions, and to judge whether they improve this passage. In several stories throughout the two books—including “Flowers of the Abyss” and “Eye of the Link”—I sat back at some early stage of revision and thought, “What is this story really about?” These cases might involve the addition and deletion of whole pages to focus the original intent of the story.              

2. Revising these stories must have involved countless rereads of them. How did it feel to revisit in your older work in that fashion? If you were to articulate one major way your writing's changed or evolved in the time since Songs of a Dead Dreamer, what would it be?

Well, since I’ve revised only my first two collections, I can’t say that I’ve seen that much change in the stories gathered in these books. If anything, I would have to say that with Grimscribe I started to venture further into more symbolic narratives and landscapes while still keeping them leashed to typical “reality” of the horror tale. I should point out that “The Last Dream of Harlequin” and “The Dreaming in Nortown” were written before the stories in my first collection.

3. Your work is complex and thematically rich, the stories well suited to sprout a variety of different interpretations on TLO and elsewhere. Amidst all that, do you have any stories that you feel have been continually misunderstood? Also, has there ever been a theory (or theories) so strange that you couldn't at all understand how they drew that from your words?

I’ve read only formal reviews and essays on my stories, and I can’t say that any of them have veered toward readings that I didn’t intend for the most part.

4. You write fiction about the darkness of the world, and yet so many have gained great pleasure from your works, myself included. How can you reconcile this? Is there something wrong with enjoying such dark fiction, some sort of suicidal mechanism that makes the rare defective organism enjoy being told of its inadequacies?

Your question implies that there is an ideal human against whom those who read dark fiction may be compared. But there is no such organism. All human beings are randomly generated, arbitrarily conditioned units. What we would call “defects” in a given individual is probably best measured by characteristics relevant to its fitness to survive and reproduce. Everything else has to do with psychological or sociological conventions and peculiarities. By the broad conventions of modern Western civilization, reading dark fiction is a form of escapist diversion like any other. (Getting bored yet?) In this sense, it might be considered one of many survival mechanisms we employ to burn off the cognitive excess endemic to our species. We think too much, and thinking is the destroyer of what we need to live. And what we need are irrational, immediate pleasures or an unreasoning prospect of the same. Nothing of great importance in our lives—what we consider makes them worth living—is rational. This includes pleasurable emotions and sensations derived from a variety of sources, such as sex without reproductive purpose, mountain climbing, and rock and roll. Without these and other irrational enjoyments, life is not worth living for human beings. You could even add to the previous list irrational activities that are not usually considered hedonistic:  devoting ourselves to the well-being of others from whose survival we seem to have nothing to gain; prayer or meditation intended to release us from an egoistic, survivalist way of life; reproducing more human beings for the continuance of a race that cannot be proved to be worth continuing, and so on. All these irrational actions are of the conventional sort, and their purpose of which is not often questioned.

As for psychological or sociological peculiarities, reading dark fiction to burn off the cognitive excess endemic to our species is frequently viewed as a perverse pastime that is especially irrational and practiced with enthusiasm by only a small cadre of human beings. Although it does serve a survival need as an escapist from of diversion like any other, it does so in a roundabout manner that on its face is indefensible and at a deeper level is a negation of what makes life worth living. From the perspective of survival and reproduction, reading dark fiction is a degenerate indulgence that revels in what is against human life. Aside from the common self-satisfying pleasures that we believe make existence worth the trouble, there are other pleasures that are uncommon in their satisfactions. They are unhealthy and sometimes are demonstrably the pursuit of those who have been randomly generated by a corrupted line of genetics or arbitrarily conditioned by traumatic experiences or detrimental environments. People who tend to the use of alcohol or illegal drugs must have some reason for engaging in such self-destructive habits, notwithstanding that these reasons cannot be pinpointed with exactitude. Ultimately, however, their principal reason is analogous to that of more healthy individuals: to experience the pleasurable emotions and sensations that make life worth living over and against those and emotions and sensations which put in question the worth of life—physical or mental illness (either due to genetics, traumas, or pernicious environmental conditions), tragic events that cast a shadow over an individual’s existence, a general lack of existential satisfactions, and other types of awful experience. 

Even if the genetics, traumas, and environments that drive us to alcohol, drugs, or dark fiction are not obvious, they may nevertheless be in play all the same. What makes nightmares? More to the point, what make an individual dwell with a morbid excitement over his nightmares? And what makes someone wish to convey their nightmares in artistic form for the excited consumption of others with a taste for some of the most sick and morbid productions of the human brain? There are those who yearn for the days of carnival freak shows, to lay their eyes on the rare and repulsive beings nature is capable of sprouting forth. While such individuals may not wish to visit hospitals where such aberrations are given birth many times per day in this world, they shiver with delight to read of them on the page or see them on the screen. Like addicts of the emotions and sensations granted to us by nature’s bounty or a pharmaceutical laboratory, fanatics of dark fiction must have what they must have, because their lives would be deprived without it and their bodies and minds would tremble with craving for depraved imaginings. Thus, in my opinion, if your life—or some portion of your life—depends on the consumption of fiction founded on the darkness of the world for it to be worth living, then there is definitely something wrong with you both as a conventional and a peculiar being.

When I was a child reading horror comic books, I was told by my parents that a priest was coming to visit our house. Immediately, I gathered up my horror comics and him them under the cushion of one of the living room sofas. When the priest entered the house, he was invited by my parents to sit down. Of course, he sat upon the cushion of the sofa beneath which I had hid my horror comics. I was terrified because I believed he knew what I had hidden there. I was a very religious child, and I felt intensely that reading those horror comics was a sin. I’m not exaggerating this anecdote in the least. I felt it was diabolical for me to be enjoying horror comics for the same reason that you asked me if it was irreconcilable to take pleasure in reading dark fiction and wallowing in the darkness of the world—because it is diabolical and irreconcilable. Years later, when I had started writing horror fiction, I asked one of my co-workers who was a born-again Christian if he thought that I was doing something sinful. He was someone I considered a work-friend and had conversely with honesty on a variety of subjects. He said he didn’t think that writing horror fiction was sinful. Later, he wrote a book on the conservative thinker Russell Kirk, who wrote what I would describe as moral horror stories. Maybe my work-friend didn’t think that writing horror fiction was sinful because he was thinking of moral horror fiction, which is mostly the kind of horror fiction that is written. The point is that even when I was in my twenties, and an atheist, I still wondered if enjoying horror fiction was sinful—sinful and wrong. Sometime later in life I had ceased to care whether reading or writing horror fiction was wrong. I had read all kinds of literature that was considered sick and evil, and I loved it because it was sick and evil. I loved it because it was against the human race and its values. Perhaps that’s why other readers of horror fiction—or at least certain kinds of horror fiction—get pleasure from it. They can answer only for themselves. You have my confession.

5. The Agonizing Resurrection of Victor Frankenstein is clearly a very different work than the most of your stories, seemingly a homage in large part. What were your intentions when writing it?

I didn’t have any intentions of writing a book of “rewrites” of classic horror fiction and films when I wrote the first piece in Agonizing Resurrection. In the early eighties, I was asked to contribute a short piece to a one-off fanzine with the title and theme of “Animality.” I wasn’t sure what the editor wanted, nor what “anamality” might imply. After thinking a while, H. G. Wells’s The Island of Dr. Moreau occurred to me as a narrative that could be described as focusing on the idea of anamality. In the novel, Dr. Moreau’s mission was to turn animals not only into human beings, but into human beings of an ideal rationality (if you read the book). In my version, however, the manwolf’s behavior is wholly irrational by its display of courtly sentimentality when he kneels with loving devotion before Moreau’s female assistant (an extra character introduced for my purposes). This is not what Moreau had in mind at all, and once again he has failed. “Now the creature,” as I write in the introduction to The Agonizing Resurrection of Victor Frankenstein, “will require further adjustments in order to nudge its nature closer to that untainted rationality that Moreau values above all else.” He wanted to make men, not silly sops—brutes on the make that will as likely tear out their fellow creatures’ throats as they are to beg pathetically for what they want. Such a gesture implies the capacity for a range of actions endemic to human beings what it meant to be human, something that did not include the courtly sentimentality that the manwolf displays. Moreau’s House of Pain was intended to torture animals into becoming human, to mutilate and brainwash them into the kind of heartless because that Wells portrayed Moreau as exemplifying.

Now, my wont has never been to produce short, stand-alone pieces. Even my so-called poetry collections are cyclical and follow connective theme of some sort. So naturally I wanted to write more pieces along the same lines as “Moreau.” First, I did two more rewrites of horror narratives that featured other scientists—Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll—and thus had a short series of tales with like characters. I also had a theme that was common the series. In my early horror stories, I seldom produced any works that turned on romantic or strongly emotional relationships between people. (Examples include “Les Fleurs” and “Dr. Voke and Mr. Veech.”) At some point I made a conscious decision not to include this element that was so common to horror, and especially Gothic literature. It just seemed irrelevant to what I was trying to do as a writer, which was to portray a wholly nightmarish existence. This was the essence of my experience of being alive, and everything else seemed of little or no import. However, it so happened that around the time I was asked to contribute a work of short prose on the theme of animality to a one-off fanzine I was again ready to write about romantic or strongly emotional relationships, and to use them to express the most excruciatingly painful scenarios I could conceive that were based on such relationships. This was how I expected The Agonizing Resurrection of Victor Frankenstein to be perceived by readers, although I’m not sure it was. Nevertheless, the first person to read the entire book, believe it or not, described it as an “apotheosis of pain.” Bingo.

Titling the first section of the book Three Scientists, I proceeded to write other sections of a like nature, taking my characters and narratives from famous works of horror fiction and films and giving each of them a twist that I thought made them more appalling than the originals. Some of the sections contained pieces of my own devising. These were stylistically and thematically similar to the pieces based on the Wolfman and Dracula, The Phantom of the Opera and the Phantom of the Wax Museum, etc. These were not intended to be homages to the works featuring these characters but extensions or mutations of them linked by a common
subject. Ultimately, the book was an entirely fortuitous project, if I may be generous to myself.

6. The majority of your fiction is not only out of print but scarce, with the rarer works regularly commanding prices well beyond a hundred dollars. How do you feel about the exclusivity that brings, and the cost that any potential fan must pay before reading your work? Are there any authors that you collect in such a manner (by which I mean the hunting down of rare and costly volumes, or the obsessing over particular editions)?

I’ve never been a book collector, but I’ve always found that I had enough money to spend on the books I’ve wanted. I feel bad that readers of my books have to pay high prices for some of my books. I wish my books had more readers and brought in more money. Just because the cost of my books if high doesn’t mean that I make a lot of money from them. In my experience, the more a book cost is in inverse ratio to how much an author makes on the book. Authors receive a certain number of copies of their books from a publisher. Sometimes I make more money selling these books than I do from the advance I received for the book itself. On the other hand, having a pricey book released means that it will be of a higher production quality and will probably be around longer than an author whose book was published in a print run of five thousand copies.

7. A major tenet of the brand of antinatalism you discuss in Conspiracy is that most men are unaware of the horrors around them, that they are deluded in their faiths and securities. But, if asked, the devout Christian would answer that those without Christ are deluded, and the happy atheist would confirm that answer with different words along with the Jew, the Muslim, and anyone of any other faith that you cared to ask. How can you be sure that antinatalism is not just another delusion, that the rationality of depression and/or ego-death is not just another false enlightenment?

I don’t think that a Christian or a believer in any religion is less aware of the horrors around than an atheist. Ask Blaise Pascal. They may be less aware, but it’s not a major tenet of antinatalism that they are or that they are specifically because they believe in Jesus. If I believed in God, I think I would go mad with the horror that the universe is some kind of moral laboratory. Fortunately, no one can prove that God exists, not even God. Whatever wonders He performs for us could be attributed to an advanced life form, even if it tries to pass itself off as one or another of the gods portrayed in religious scriptures. But that advanced life form would have a time of it impersonating all gods at the same time. If he did, then we would be in the same position of factional belief we are in now. Of course, an advanced life form might be able to do anything it wanted. Then we would have to decide whether we are all being fooled into believing in multiple gods or an advanced life form that can impersonate multiple gods.

Antinatalism is based on the principle that suffering of whatever kind or degree should not be caused or perpetuated, and that human existence necessarily entails suffering that we can neither escape nor justify, least of all by experiencing pleasures. Thus, the only way to end all suffering would be to cease producing beings who suffer. In the abstract, I hold to that principle and believe that those who do not hold to it are simply of a different mindset. In everyday life, I live for the most part as a deluded individual except when I sit down and recall what I believe in principle. Writing Conspiracy against the Human Race was the same kind of drug for me as believing in Jesus is for some people. If it hadn’t been, then I wouldn’t have written it. I say as much in the book. As for ego-death, we don’t know what it is or how it happens. Personally I believe that ego-death is a neurological condition that by many accounts mimics what has been called “enlightenment” among those who are concerned with this phenomenon. I also believe with Thomas Metzinger and many other philosophers that ego-life is an illusion. Now, whatever one believes or does not believe, as I wrote in Conspiracy, is an opinion. I quote a lot of antinatalists in my books, but I don’t think that I argue that if someone isn’t an antinatalist they are immoral or knowingly perpetuate pain in the word. To quote from Conspiracy:  “Opinion: There are no praiseworthy incentives to reproduce.” I can’t prove that there are not praiseworthy incentives to reproduce. If someone has an opinion that there is a praiseworthy reason to reproduce, I’d love to hear it. For years I’ve queried parents or women who are pregnant if they could offer a reason for having children that was based on the good of the child and not on the good of the breeders and their society. I do try to contrive perspectives from which this opinion may appear sound, which is why I subtitled my book “A Contrivance of Horror.” And I do say that no one can prove either that life is desirable or undesirable. And no one can. Most people think that they can prove that reproduction is praiseworthy and that life is by nature desirable. But their opinions don’t stand up to scrutiny. They absolutely can’t prove that their opinion proves mine to be wrong. This is not a problem for me, because I will never contribute to the produce of a child whose life may, by conventional opinion, not be worth living. I won’t ever have to imagine the pain of that child or experience pain for having produced it. I can be sure of this. But no prospective parent can be sure that they won’t be responsible for the making of a child with such a fate. No one can say what vicissitudes may cause a life to become not worth living. Parents may or may not blame themselves for producing a life that in the worst way becomes not worth living. But they can always take comfort in the fact that it was not their intention for their offspring to end up having such a life. However, we can at this point in time prevent children from coming into the world with defects that would almost surely—or sometimes surely—make their lives not worth living. I’m not speaking of birth defects of all types. I’m speaking of defects that, barring any beliefs that would preclude abortion for fear of hellfire, would cause few but radical pro-lifers to disallow the parents from exercising the abortive option. So while no one can prove that there is any praiseworthy incentive to reproduce, there are cases in which most would agree there are praiseworthy, or at least not blameworthy, incentives not to reproduce. This fact is not definite proof that antinatalism is the correct stance to take, but it’s not just an opinion either.

8. If the majority of people are existing in a fashion that they consider better than not existing, if they would answer that Life is Alright, how can it be stated that Life is Not Alright for the entirety of the human race?

This question is rather difficult to sort out. It’s certainly possible, subjectively, for an individual to feel that “it’s good to be alive,” but that doesn’t mean that it was always good to be alive for that individual or that it will always be good to be alive for that individual. I know that it’s possible for some number of people not to have a “good day” for practically their entire lives. It’s also possible for some number of people to never have a “bad day” for practically their entire lives. But it’s pretty futile to get into calculating how many people have never had a good day or a bad day, and by this means conclude whether or not being alive is all right. The whole proposition is so hypothetical that it’s not worth giving a moment’s regard. To my mind, it’s also rather crass and unfeeling to propose that as long as a majority of people exist in such a fashion that they consider it better to exist than not to exist, it can be said that life is all right for the entirety of the human race—that the minority counts for nothing in this useless calculation. Furthermore, those in the majority at one time may find themselves in the minority at another.  At the end of any given generation, it would be possible for almost everyone to occupy a place in the majority as well as the minority. Then you would be back to where you started. And where you started is where we are now and have always been, not to speculate that it is where we will always be. The pronouncement of the majority with respect to the value of live is the one that rules. Antinatalists must be insane. My children will not be one of those people who never have a good day for practically their entire lives. My children will be in the majority, if there really is a majority and not just a deluded consensus.

9. While I agree that the minority shouldn't be discounted, can it really be counted equally with the majority with regards to a subjective question (which, without the consideration of some kind of god or objective truth, that of life's worth seems to be)? Regardless of the malleability of the borders and the frequency of migrations between the two, if the larger of the two camps would argue that Life is Alright, can the negative be said to be true in any sense greater than the personal?

In Conspiracy I anticipated your question. On page 44, I wrote that one of the arguments used (by the majority) against the reason that pessimists believe certain things is their “intractable wrongheadedness, a charge that pessimists could turn against optimists if the argumentum ad populumwere not the world’s favorite fallacy.” That is, pessimism must be wrong because, even though it is an outlook that has lived for thousands of years and articulated in the most sophisticated terms, the majority denies its precepts. You’ve applied the same fallacy to antinatalism that others have applied to pessimism. You’ve also entertained the idea that holding to the question of antinatalism versus pro-natalism is a subjective matter. It’s hard to see how antinatalism could be any more subjective than many other, quite reputable, philosophical questions (determinism versus free will, for instance) just because neither side has proved its case, which by its nature may be not be subject to proof. Despite the fact that neither anti- nor pronatalists can prove their positions, pro-natalists have to live with the possibility that they might be wrong. That is a heavy burden to carry, and a heavier burden to pass on to subsequent generations. Antinatalists don’t have a similar burden. When action is taken on their side and a child is not born, no harm is done. No one has to suffer and die. If the whole species chose extinction, the situation would be the same, because extinction is our fate. Someday it won’t matter if anyone lived or died. But that doesn’t mean that we aren’t presently doomed to live in a world where people suffer and die. Personally, I’m afraid of suffering and afraid of dying. I’m also afraid of witnessing the suffering and death of those who are close to me. And no doubt I project these fears on those around me and those to come, which makes it impossible for me to understand why everyone isn’t an antinatalist, just as I have to assume pronatalists can’t understand why everyone isn’t like them. In an essay on David Benatar’s antinatalist book Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence, the Finnish philosopher, Sami PihlstrÖm (Metaphilosophy, Volume 40, Number 5, October 2009 , pp. 656-670), argued that whether or not life is worth living is a question that is intolerable and should never be discussed. I hope things don’t come to that.

10. It's one thing to argue, as you do in Conspiracy, that the joys of life are, essentially, delusions and escape mechanisms, but it's another to argue that that invalidates those joys. Even if our art is created solely to allow us to forget the darkness around us, why would that make the resulting joys less true?

Maybe I let my fingers slip across my keyboard at some time during the writing of Conspiracy, but I don’t recall arguing that joys are delusions. Here’s a quote from p. 43: “Optimists may have fugitive doubts about the basic desirability of existence, but pessimists never doubt that existence is basically undesirable. I you interrupted them in the middle of an ecstatic moment, which pessimists do have, and asked if existence is basically undesirable, they would reply ‘Of course,' before returning to their ecstasy.” Just because a given joy (such as reading dark fiction) is an escape mechanism doesn’t mean it’s invalidated  or untrue, whatever those words may mean  in this context. But the very fact that we can legitimately refer to joy as an “escape mechanism” doesn’t say much for joy.     

Metzinger's Being No One

11. For me – and, I suspect, for others – the section of Conspiracy that was most powerful was on determinism. One of its most memorable parts was your mentioning of a saying by Metzinger, namely: Can one really believe in determinism without going insane? In the light of those words – and your arguments surrounding them and quotation of them – do you believe in determinism? If so, how can you reconcile that with daily life?

I don’t argue that determinism is true in Conspiracy. To do so would be futile.  I do discuss the subject because it’s related to other matters in the book, especially the reality or unreality of the “self.” Whether our thoughts and behavior are determined or free is of no consequence if, as Metzinger argues, no selves exist or have ever existed and there is nothing that can be determine or free. I think the question of the self is far more interesting because scientists are getting closer to being able to test how our perception of ourselves, other people, and the world in general are formed. My own opinion regarding the issue of determinism versus free will is that it has no practical import in our lives. Either of these positions, or any of their many combinations and variations, function more as philosophical doctrines in which one believes than can actually experience in a definitive way. If I stop and concentrate on how I perceive other people, I have to say that they seem to me like robots in their behavior and their being. This is definitely the case when I see people on TV who are accused of murder. I never blame them or hold them morally responsible for their actions. It seems stupid to do so if you look at the situation with a cold eye. Surely such a radical act must have had radical causes, some of which seem obvious and others of which seem unknowable. This perception is more difficult when it comes to considering someone closer to you in your life.  I’ll look at someone I believe I know very well and think: ”Who is that? What makes them act the way they do and not some other way? What’s going on inside them, if anything?” That can be upsetting. People who are getting divorced have been known to say about their ex-beloved, “I thought I knew (him or her), but I couldn’t have been more mistaken about (him or her).”  Supposedly we extrapolate from our experience of ourselves and transfer that experience to other people, and that this gives you the sense that they’re like you—that you can read their minds in some way. While it may seem to work that way, it really can’t. When I turn from other people to myself, I can’t say much more about how I work. I can never know what my next thought is going to be—how it forms or where it comes from, so to speak. I absolutely don’t feel that I’m choosing my thoughts. They just come one after another depending on the circumstances of the past and present, some of which I could name but most of which I can’t. It’s the same with my behavior. In everyday life, none of this matters because we don’t think deeply about it on an hourly basis. I have impulses to do things, but I don’t know how those impulses formed or why they make me do a particular thing and not some other thing. Whether we’re puppets or real human beings, whatever the latter may be, we go on thinking and acting in certain ways because we’re moved to do by certain forces we’re not aware of. You could argue with this perception, but it’s my perception and the whole thing would come down to I say, you say. To me, determinism just seems common sense, but I couldn’t tell you why it does. Since it’s so ferociously opposed by most philosophers and lay persons, it must be a disturbing idea that they don’t want to be true. I can understand that. Even if determinism seems like common sense to me, it does seem to be a component of this world of horror we live in. And just by discussing it in Conspiracy, although not arguing for it, it was my intention to arouse a sense of the uncanny in my readers. When I’m writing for an audience, people don’t seem like robots to me. I’m not sure they seem like anything. In the end, I suppose the best thing is not to think about it.

12. Is antinatalism a philosophy or a lifestyle? By this I mean that, if the sane Christian attempts heaven and the sane Buddhist enlightenment, why do antinatalists not work towards their own paradise, their own nonexistence? Furthermore, how can antinatalists (and, for these purposes, determinists along the lines of those quoted and studied in Conspiracy) profess love or even have children? Do these things make them hypocrites or human? If life is a hell, and nonexistence a heaven, then are things like murder acceptable to the antinatalist? If it is better to not live, then, are murderers and even the perpetuators of genocide not doing good deeds?

I think that the antinatalist counterpart of the Christian’s heaven (Buddhist enlightenment actually is a type of antinatalism in a superficial sense) would be to reduce this world to a place where no one was ever born. Obviously, this is not sane idea. (I’ll leave it to others to decide the sanity of believing in heaven or enlightenment.) As for love or the desire to have children, these are powerful impulses in most people and not possible to override under normal circumstances. Galen Strawson, one of the most deterministic determinists, was asked a version of this question in an interview. He answered that in his everyday life, he was just like anybody else. David Hume said the same thing. This answer makes no rational sense, but neither do love or the desire to have children. They are nature’s way of keeping the species going until something happens and we cease existing, an eventuality that will certainly come about and has almost come about a number of times in the past. As for antinatalists, falling in love has nothing to do with their principles. Some antinatalists have had children before they became antinatalists. From what I’ve read, they love their children as most parent do but regret having reproduced. An antinatalist who does not have children would cease to be an antinatalist if they willfully and knowingly reproduced. Not all people who do not reproduce are antinatalists, although some of them do not reproduce for similar reasons as antinatalists. Nonexistence isn’t anything, so it would have nothing to do with antinatalism. The desire not exist would be a tenet of pessimism, and some antinatalists are pessimists. But pessimism isn’t required for antinatalism. A pessimist believes that being alive is not all right, and even if it occasionally seems all right, this is an illusion. As Cioran wrote, “Pleasure prepares pain.” Antinaltalists don’t necessarily think that life is hell, they just think that it necessarily involves such suffering that anyone would be better off not having been born. Interestingly, those who believe that life is worth living often begin making their case by pointing out the goodness of ice cream. If you’re not diabetic, lactose intolerant, obese, or have any number of other ailments, ice cream is indeed very good. Given the link made between antinatalism and murder or genocide, I hope that the replies I’ve given to this question demonstrate that no such link exists. An antinatalist may have a passion for murder and genocide, but this is by no means an element of antinatalism. Murder and genocide are two phenomena that antinatlists would offer as reasons for why it would be better never to have been born. I hope the logic of this statement is evident.    

13. Let's end on a happy note. What's the most enjoyable thing you did this week?

I watched Little Murders, an old favorite of mine.

Thank you once again for doing this interview, Mr. Ligotti.

Me, Reynolds, and an Interview

I've been interviewed over at Joshua Reynolds's blog, Hunting Monsters. Like his interview with me yesterday, it's a totally serious affair with absolutely no wise cracks or levity. We talk about my writing process, Historical Lovecraft, baboons, and necromancers. Check it out.

 (This week's review – delayed by the sheer snaziness of the Katz/Reynolds interview bonanza – will be up on Friday)

Interview: Joshua Reynolds

The Facebook face of Joshua Reynolds...
is he man or beast?

Joshua Reynolds is the author of The Far Deep from Historical Lovecraft. His story can best be summed up as a mixture of John of Austria dancing, a knight and his man-at-arms fighting Turks and undersea monstrosities, and witty dialogue. If your first thought upon reading that was that you should go read the story, you'd be correct. If your second thought was that Joshua Reynolds would give a completely dry and serious interview, you would, alas, be wrong.

1. What should readers think when they hear Joshua Reynolds? Why should they sprint to the nearest bookstore/online bookseller/ezine and read everything you've written?

Ideally they should think ‘Hey, I ought to buy that!’, but since that’s not likely I’ll simply say that I write stories about steampunk cyborgs fighting werewolves on the moon in between blatant Lovecraft pastiches and the occasional heartwarming story about Aztec detectives and Italian spies fighting midget assassins dressed as chimney sweeps.  If any of that sounds good, you’ll enjoy my stuff.  If not, well…buy it anyway.

2. What about Historical Lovecraft intrigued you?

Well, the title for starters…it’s got two words I love to hear attached to anthologies-‘Historical’ and ‘Lovecraft’. And it’s a good fit…Lovecraft was all about the weight of history and ancient evils and centuries old secrets.

Also, people with additional melanin content in their epidermal composition being on his lawn and/or looking at him funny. But let’s just concentrate on the former, shall we?

3.  What's your favorite story in the collection (that is not, to avoid awe inspiring amounts of narcissism and/or nepotism, written by someone in this email conversation)?

It's a toss-up between Nelly Geraldine Garcia-Rosas' "Ahuizotl" and Aaron Polson's "Ngiri's Catch". 

4.. How did you choose the Battle of Lepanto? Is it something you've always known about, or did you research it for the story?

Both, actually! I’m a sucker for history, especially as it relates to the Mediterranean, and Lepanto was a focal point of several books I was reading at the time. It was one of the largest naval battles in history with a cast of characters that would make Joe Abercrombie and George R. R. Martin weep with envy. It had pirates, zealots, knights, pirates, cannons, pirates and pirates. 

Did I mention the pirates?

5. How important was historical accuracy to you when writing?

It ranges from ‘Very’ to ‘Historical what now?’ depending on the story. Honestly, I’ve come to believe that the concept of historical accuracy is, at best, wishful thinking. Every time we learn something new about the past, it changes what is considered ‘accurate’. Basically, as long as you’ve got the big generalities right, there’s little reason to sweat the small stuff.

6. What're your general writing process?

First, I turn on the computer. Then I stare at it blankly for ten minutes or so. Then I start writing. That’s it really…it’d be nice to have a process, but really, I just write until the story is finished. Then I move on to the next story.

7. Do you have anything coming up to keep an eye out for?

Well, if you really want to know…besides a number of short stories appearing in various anthologies and magazines, I’ve got two books coming out later this year. The first, from Airship 27/Cornerstone Books is called THE MARK OF TERROR and features Jim Anthony, Super-Detective, an old public domain pulp character, going up against a cult of killers who worship the ancient Greek god of terror. The second, from Pulpwork Press, is called DRACULA UNBOUND!-it’s a sequel to my novel DRACULA LIVES!, released in October of last year.

Oh, and in 2012, the Black Library will release KNIGHTS OF THE BLAZING SUN, my first (and hopefully not the last) tie-in novel for that company. 

8. What's your dream publication?

My dreams are crass, mercenary things so I’m going to say one that pays me more money than is entirely ethical in today’s economy.

Seriously, I want to roll naked in a pile of cash. Any publisher that can make that happen is the corporate entity of my small, sad dreams.

9. What's your advice to someone trying to publish short stories?

Ha! First, find someone both smarter and more successful to ask that question of. Second, it’s dead easy to get published…just write and submit. Repeat ad infinitum, ad nauseum. Third, when an editor asks for changes, don’t argue, especially if there’s a paycheck in it.

Really, just write. And write. And write. Keep writing until you sell something, and then write some more. Write what you want to read, and what you hate to read and what editors ask for and what seems to be the current ‘thing’. It all works, as long as you write and submit.

10. Favorite Lovecraft tales?

“Pickman’s Model” is the big one. I also like “The Dunwich Horror” and “At the Mountains of Madness”. Oh, and “The Hound”. Flying bat-dog-zombie-sorcerers are awesome!

11. Let’s say you meet someone who’s never read horror, but is curious about the genre. If you had three books to try and convert them, what would you give them?

Ooh, tough one. Lessee…THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE, by Shirley Jackson. THE GRIN OF THE DARK, by Ramsey Campbell.  Aaaaand THE RED TREE, by Caitlin Kiernan. If I had four I’d toss in something by Guy N. Smith just for contrast.

12. Any final words?

I was once bitten by a camel. It’s an experience that still haunts me to this day. 

Interview: Adam LG Nevill

There’s a bookstore a few minutes from my house with a vanishingly small horror section. You’ve got several shelves of Stephen King, one of Dean Koontz, and every once in a while you get a Lovecraft collection. A few months ago, I saw something new there: Adam LG Nevill’s Apartment 16. Now, having read and reviewed both Apartment 16 and Banquet for the Damned, I can say that Nevill deserves his spot on that shelf without the slightest doubt (though his proper shelf would have far more MR James, I believe). Nevill’s books blend the best elements of classic and modern horror, and they just might leave you quivering in a corner, drinking cup after cup of coffee because you are too afraid to go to sleep. If you’ve ever read and enjoyed a horror novel, Nevill is a name that you need to add to your list. Nevill was kind enough to say yes when I asked him for an interview, and we talked about everything from the horror genre at large to musical adaptations. The results are below:

Everyone knows that both M.R. James and Stephen King are horror, but the two are so different. The classic horror authors primarily stuck to short stories and were generally uninterested in character, while modern authors like the aforementioned King, have works that are built entirely upon the characters’ backs. What do you think unifies the whole field, and how do you go about melding both aspects of the genre together? On the same note, do you think that the supernatural is an essential part of horror, or have books like Silence of the Lambs changed that? If you think it isn’t, would you ever consider writing a horror novel with no supernatural element?

For me, horror as a definition in fiction is that which is written to intentionally horrify, frighten, or to at least disturb a reader; whether it uses a supernatural or a human agent to deliver this result is the same. It’s why horror as a literary field is not solely restricted to stories and novels within the modern field of “horror”, but crops up in many other genres of fiction too. Often, the best examples of horror appear to me in non-genre books.

Like you, I first noticed a sea-change from the over-published supernatural, or animal horror of the late eighties and early nineties, to crime and thriller primarily through Thomas Harris’s Silence of the Lambs. He popularized the human agent as the horror in such an effective way, it made a lot of supernatural horror/crazy animal horror just look silly. The appetite for blockbuster serial killer crime just seemed to leap from there, and many people buying the jaded and over-published horror jumped ship, because serial killer crime was fusing two genres effectively, and more plausibly, and didn’t disrupt natural law so much (one of the hardest things to pull off in fiction, which is why most horror novels end badly, I believe). There are dozens of writers I could name who have been writing borderline horror, within the crime and thriller genres. This suggests to me that the appetite for horror in fiction was always there; it just needed reinvention to remain vigorous. It will not die, despite changes in taste, it just absorbs new influences and evolves. In fact, the first novel I read that seemed to be a precursor to the modern trend of serial killer horror, was John Fowles’s The Collector, which is very disturbing. I thought it was almost the first and last word on that topic: he gets the psychology of his characters just right, and it eschews the sensational aspects of commercial serial killer thrillers.

And yes, I would consider writing horror without the supernatural element. I think 1984 and The Road are two of the most affecting books, in that they are disturbing, that I have ever read. Everyone should read them. They have universal human dimensions that non-fiction and news footage cannot replicate as a warning to us all.

Whether the source of a story’s horror is supernatural or physical, unless a writer is manifestly driven to write about something disturbing – as opposed to merely choosing it to entertain a reader, or to catch a trend - it just doesn’t cut it with me. That’s the important thing; not the source, but the intention.

Banquet for the Damned seems like a very ambitious project in a lot of ways. The writing is present tense, and the novel is very realistically grounded, both in the location of St. Andrews and the number of referenced sources on the occult and witchcraft. What led to all those risks, and did you ever feel like it was doomed to fail because of them?

It was ambitious and more than once I sat back and thought I had failed at what I set out to achieve, massively. I wanted the power of a short story to endure throughout a long novel. What was I thinking? In hindsight, I realise many seem to believe that it cannot be achieved in a horror novel. So stylistically, it was a bloody ambitious book to write, though the occult element may appear conservative and ‘old school’ to many as it deals with possession and witchcraft.

I paid a lot of attention to cultivating subtlety through glimpses and suggestions, as opposed to full reveals. There are no better examples of this style in the field than in the fiction of M R James, who only wrote fiction with the full intention of frightening and disturbing a reader. It was my goal to combine the stylistic traits of the better late Victorian and the Edwardian authors, like James, within a thoroughly modern multi-plot structure that Stephen King and Dan Simmons made their own, and to also write in the present tense to emulate a cinematic feel. If a reader could accept that immediate-tense narration, I hoped the actual appearances of the supernatural in the novel might take on a more vivid nature within the reader’s imagination. Perhaps in a personal film.

Banquet was every bit as much of an example of a new writer trying to achieve a particular set of criteria within a novel, and also hoping that it would be a good story for an average reader who would be unaware of the scaffolding.

In terms of research, as a student at St Andrews, I remember having 40 books on witchcraft and the supernatural on my post-grad library card, when a curious librarian finally asked me what I was doing at the university. It was Lovecraftian – some of the books had not been borrowed since the sixties and I would scurry back to my room and pour over them. I had a year up there and had the time to read dozens of secondary texts on the subject of the unworldly. From that I took great creative license with specific histories and idioms to create the sense that my fictional scholars were authorities in order to make the supernatural element seem authentic. I blended bits and pieces from many documented stories and phenomenon to create my own history of a forgotten pagan god/witch’s familiar that had been called by many different names and moved through the ages, worshipped by one cult or another. I wanted it’s origins and long story to reflect the patterns of how real history is interpreted and revised, so that even the documentation and sources seemed authentic. Making the supernatural believable in a modern setting is no easy task, so the carefully wrought history, the scholars, the academic environment, are designed to add credence to a preposterous notion I wanted a reader to accept.

Elliot’s book, Banquet for the Damned, influences almost every character in the novel of the same name, but we never get to find out too many particulars about the book itself. Do you have the contents fixed in your mind, or was it more an idea than a concrete thing?

I spent a great deal of time reading Colin Wilson when younger, and I think his Outsider series is masterly. I imagined a book that was a curious blend of Crowley with Wilson’s Outsider. Wilson also wrote a book about music called Brandy of the Damned, which is what George Bernard Shaw called music. So my mythical book and Dante’s adoration of it, and the title of the novel, was a personal homage to Colin Wilson – a writer who meant a great deal to me. I’d say reading The Outsider definitely changed not only decisions I made in my life, but the way I saw the world too. Probably the highest accolade I can pay any book. Trying to write passages from an actual book would have been a mistake.

Apartment 16 shows us the world with its glossy veneer stripped away. It’s a place where the dominant emotions are apathy and rage and where people are horribly assaulted for no reason save bloodlust. Do you think there’s truth in such a vision, or did you construct it purely for the aesthetics/power of the landscape?

Apartment 16’s horror aspires to transmit itself in a cosmic sense of one’s total defenselessness; as if the apparently indifferent universe is actually conspiring to enact some terrible punishment upon the individual; a kind of living damnation. It’s horror is also of a gradual psychic dissonance that erodes a stable perception; of actually being confronted finally by the true nature of things, the true horror of humanity, by a swift unravelling of all previously held opinions and understandings taken for granted in life. Everything leads to and ends in incremental disintegration, inside the vortex.

But also, the story’s horror in a treatment of the material world, arises from the essential indifference of society to the individual. And a choking terror for Seth that not only is he scapegoated, exiled and brutally persecuted by those he has fallen amongst, down there at the bottom of the world, of which most people know nothing, but he is also despised by those in positions of responsibility and social superiority. By pausing to actually look about himself, he perceives only the futility of his every endeavour, of his entrapment by poverty and circumstance, of a hierarchy shaped by greed and envy and sociopathic will. The world of the novel is a suspension of decency, of humility, of anything noble or compassionate. And he is trapped within it. It’s why the book comes across as claustrophobic, relentless; I deliberately use repetition, deliberately exert the power of the horrid paintings as a subconscious force, to try and entrap the reader within this perception of the actual world as an unrelenting horror on every level.

Not a day goes by when I am not just aghast at my own species: life and mankind is the stuff of horror. And for so many their lives become an unrelenting horror on every level. So horror fiction is a legitimate reaction to the world, and affecting horror in a reader is as legitimate as affecting any other kind of emotional response in a reader.

You’ve mentioned that, in an early draft of the novel, Apartment 16 did not include Apryl’s storyline. Can you elaborate on the initial idea/version of the novel? Was Seth’s role the same throughout, or did that change over time as well?

Originally, it was just Seth and his dialogue with himself and with the unseen presence that may/may not have existed in the building. Imagine just those chapters? And there were many others I cut out of the later versions that were stream-of-consciousness, or prose poetry. One friend read that version and, fearing for my mental health, offered to come and save me from London. Then I added a female art historian in a later version. But her subplot became too academic and dry – in effect a reimagining of 20th century art, like an alternate history plot. It had to go. I kept bits of that material for Miles Butler and his book, but then added an innocent, receptive, sympathetic girl – Apryl. It was the right decision because her ordinariness then amplified the horror, while also serving to open a window for the reader to breathe some unpolluted air that was overburdening earlier drafts.

So far you’ve given two hints about your next novel. One is that it’s a “great outdoors” novel, the other that it would be awesome as a movie with Rob Zombie. Care to fill in a few more details for us?

The book begins at a moment of crisis just beneath the arctic circle in Sweden, in Europe’s last great wilderness. It features a walking holiday that has crossed the line from recreation and leisure to survival and horror. It’s almost entirely set in a wilderness scenario, and nearly every facet of character and story arises from the action, as in a film. I mostly eschew flashback etc. The story arises from reactions to an unfolding crisis as it unfolds. Very much written in a modern cinematic, thriller idiom too; my Edwardian overtones are absent, but the poetry remains. I also love the Rob Zombie film, The Devils Rejects, and both versions of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and how horror cinema is so often inspired by an urbanites terror of rural backwaters. It’s a horror staple, but one I wanted to reinvent with more McCarthy and Dickey aesthetics. I’d like to see Rob Zombie’s dark humour, rock and roll sensibilities, and character camaraderie used in a film with a strong supernatural horror element, as opposed to a human element. I like his music too; his overall vision, in fact.

We’ve got the perfect movie adaption covered, but that still leaves music. If your dream band came to you to ask if they could do a song or album based on your fiction, who would they be?

What a great question! I’d love to see American metalcore band Throwdown, conceptualise a book. Their Deathless album is loosely conceptual and a classic work. My gut says a power metal band like Nevermore would be perfect for a collaboration too. Marilyn Manson’s musical take would also be superb. Iron Maiden of course, for a song. Avenged Sevenfold of late also.

What’s your opinion on cover art? Is it the first taste of the novel’s atmosphere, or just a marketing tool? What do you think of the cover art you’ve had so far and how much say did you have in designing it?

My take is that I have been very lucky, and that cover art is vitally important. For the PS hardback limited edition of Banquet for the Damned, I had a superb Edward Miller painting; for the paperback, a very talented young designer at Virgin, to whom I only gave key words and a photo of St Andrews skyline, designed a cover that I loved, and that also caught the spirit of the novel.

For Apartment 16, Pan Macmillan scored perfect marks with the first design I saw. It captures both the supernatural element and the literary element I strive to achieve in my writing, as well as depicting the perfect building. It was perfect. The cover for the next book, is possibly the best cover I have ever seen on a horror novel.

Every publisher I have had has consulted me, but I have been pleased with their ideas straight away without any arguments whatsoever. That must be unusual. I blanch and gibber at the thought of having a terrible cover on one of my books. I’ve seen some shockers out there, though British publishers are pretty good. I’d say British publishers are the world leaders in book cover design. It’s the foreign editions and US covers that often confound me.

But writers do need to listen to their publishers. As an editor, some of my authors would want to design their own covers, which were always unacceptable. The sales force of a publisher knows the trade and its book buyers better than an author does.

Let’s say you meet someone who’s never read horror, but is curious about the genre. If you had three books to try and convert them, what would you give them?

World War Z by Max Brookes

The Terror by Dan Simmons

The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty

Any advice for new writers?

Read the best in your field; work at the craft, struggle with the craft; find a mentor on a creative writing course – and I’d suggest a good poet - to improve your actual writing, and get them to show you how to rewrite i.e. how to really think about the choices you make with descriptive language, and with syntax; take at least a one month break between all drafts, and never ever post first drafts to agents or editors. Also, try going ‘deep’ and writing something that makes you really uncomfortable and ashamed, and don’t let self- consciousness interfere and don’t self-censor at all, don’t worry about style, don’t mimic other writers, just let it flow from your core. And that might unlock your voice as a writer and point you in the direction of how affecting and original your own work can be. Nothing is written in stone; you can then work at it at your leisure.

Thank you once again for the interview, Mr. Nevill, is there anything else you’d like to add?

Thank you for having me, and for your gracious reviews! My hat is raised.

FURTHER READING

Nevill has done several other interviews, including one at Kamvision and one at Horror Reanimated.