Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe

I was tempted to compare Ligotti’s writing to a music album, in the sense that each story is essential in the overall collection (in the same way each song is essential for an album). But, I realized, that’s not true for Ligotti. Whereas you can pluck a Stephen King and H.P. Lovecraft short out of the batch and place it into an anthology book in the same way you can pluck a song from an album and use it in a movie soundtrack, you can’t do that with Ligotti.His short stories are those aggressive fish you see at your local supermarket or pet store that are in separate containers because they’ll kill other fish. Yet, that’s not a perfect analogy—because Ligotti’s short stories work with one another. Therefore, each of Thomas Ligotti’s short story collections (Songs of a Dead Dreamer, Grimscribe) are songs. And each short story is a verse or a chorus or a bridge or guitar solo, etc., etc., etc...While SOADD is slightly more accessible than Grimscribe, I feel as though Grimscribe was written with more fervor—an acid trip, plain and simple; grim and dreary and depressing; nightmare after nightmare after nightmare—and, like a nightmare, it’s hard to remember what it was about after waking, but it made an impression upon you nonetheless.Ligotti is a literary descendant of H.P. Lovecraft. But whereas Lovecraft salivates over the science fiction and horror elements, Ligotti sticks to madness and the weirdness. Thus, alas, makes him not very accessible.Personally I loved Ligotti’s nihilistic writing. It’s almost so depressing and deplete of hope that you feel hope (kind of like discovering a literal Satan makes you, by default, believe in a literal God). These two dark songs were therapeutic and written with expert precision.

As a fan of Lovecraft, Poe, and Kafka, I was seduced into acquiring this collection of short stories by the promises held out in the jacket notes suggesting that they somehow embodied the spirit of works by those earlier authors. They do not. However, my initial disappointment engendered by the marketing hype was quickly transformed into admiration for Ligotti’s works as I soon realized that their merits in the realm of horror fiction are wholly original.Due to the elements of suspense that pervade his stories, I will not substantiate my opinions by giving examples from his writings because I do not want to give away plots lines that would serve as spoilers.Suffice it to say that his writings are psychologically disturbing at an existential level because the experiences of the characters in his stories challenge conventional conceptions of reality.Ligotti does so not merely by employing naïve subjectivism, which is based on the idea that perception is reality, a view that is preposterous because perceptions often vary from person to person and whatever is to count as “reality” must at least be inter-subjective, i.e., be the same for all.Nor does Ligotti incorporate the more plausible realist viewpoint that objectively interpreted perception is reality, a position designed to preserve a univocal reality, and attempt to create the sense of existential disorientation based on quirky psychological interpretations of the characters .Rather, his stories have a Postmodern cosmological twist with mind-bending epistemological implications: these stories are based on the notion that there are no criteria for determining what is real, for what are called “objective interpretations” of perceptions are merely perceptions of perceptions, i.e., there is no way to break out of the realm of perceptions to discover some underlying reality.As a result, the stories are truly horrific because, in the final analysis, they leave his characters, and so too the reader, with the ultimate nightmarish vision of life as a series of experiences that we call people, places, and things that cannot be trusted to actually represent anyone, anywhere, or anything.

Songs of a Dead Dreamer by Thomas Ligotti is a masterful collection of short horror stories. I enjoyed this work for many of the same reasons that captivated and unnerved me with H.P. Lovecraft's stories. It is unsurprising that Ligotti cites Lovecraft as one of his primary influences along with Edgar Allen Poe. What I find so intriguing about these three titans of terror is that their stories walk the fine line of "Is this really happening or is it all in the person's head?". Fear is being uncertain of what the future holds. It is that doubt of our security and well being that feeds our anxiety and causes our imaginations to run amok. Regardless of whether or not the supernatural is playing a part in the odd events surrounding one of these characters life it is equally terrifying how the mind can fall apart and do these things all on it's own. Although Ligotti does toy around with the reality of his characters that isn't to say that he doesnt have his share of goblins and ghouls as well. In the story "The Lost Art of Twilight" Ligotti presents us with a character struggling with their hybrid identity of being a human and something else. The way he depicts the inner struggle and then the disturbing conclusion is exquisitely terrifying. For me personally when an author writes with a loftier diction it enhances the quality of the story and the tone that the writer is trying to get across. I love authors like Stephen King for their ability to penetrate into the mind of middle America but with writers like Ligotti and Lovecraft their descriptions are so profound that the terror comes to life off the page. This along with the Necronomicon are frequently a part of my suggestion to friends and family looking for stuff to give them a good scare. If you're looking for horror stories that transcend the overwhelming amount of cliches and formulaic storylines I cant recommend Songs of a Dead Dreamer enough.

Ligotti is Poe if his drug of choice was acid.Uniquely written nightmarish landscapes where’s something’s not quite right, but you’re not sure what.If you need something different than the run of the mill horror give Ligotti a shot.

I came to Ligotti partly from a a fascination with what has lately been called 'weird fiction' and partly through his connections to the British post-industrial music of Current 93. Does he deserve the 'Penguin Classic' status? Well, that's a moot point. He's certainly a peculiar fish - his prose can be taut and economic, but equally it can be prone to the florid flights of Lovecraft and Poe & though I don't doubt he has something special about him - whether he deserves to be in company of Schulz or Kafka is another matter. The stories in this collection hit and miss in equal measure - sometimes the endings are telegraphed so heavily that the plot itself seems to be an act of self-defeating nihilism on the narrator's part - though sometimes he's capable of a sort of savage metafictional whimsy which really does succeed in conjuring an unsettling sense of the uncanny. What makes his work 'weird' rather than simply 'horror' is the underlying philosophy - like Lovecraft, Ligotti emphasises the comparative insignificance of humanity in the face of a malign universe, indeed, there's an almost Gnostic sense that consciousness itself is a farcical accident, foisted upon us for our own torture. I don't think he's really in the same league as Arthur Machen or Robert Aickman - but he at least deserves some kudos as a skilled practitioner of a genre that seems to belong to a forgotten world.

Having read "My work is not yet done" and "teatro grottesco" before I bought this, perhaps I had my sights set too high. The stories in this collection are still very good, no-one else writes with anything approaching the high gothic style of ligotti, however they lack something. Difficult to pinpoint what that something is, but after some thought I think it's a sense of connection, many of the stories are about a horror contained in a kind of fixed situation, something that waits like a Venus fly trap for a victim to stumble by. The motivation needed however for this victim or victims to actually spring the trap are hugely unbelievable to my eyes at least. Ligotti's characters are very much primed by loneliness, and outright madness to be honest, into seeking or into complicity with their own demise. This pretty much isolates the reader, hopefully someone not overly lonely or mad lol, from the events described, and this lessens their impact, lessens their ability to chill.Ligotti's other works are usually much more tightly centred around (albeit) slightly more human protagonists, with more prosaic motivations, which can much more easily be empathised with, lending a sense of "yeah, I guess if I was there, I might do that too" which is much more disturbing than reading about obviously crazy people doing obviously crazy things.Tldr version, this book is a sideshow, the others are true theatre.

I feel that these stories -- based on my having first read them just under thirty years ago and now re-read them in this momentous Penguin Classics book -- represent an artful haunting blend of (a) literary or horror genre prophetic warnings about factors that have emerged in our world since their first publication and (b) a 'fabulous hoax' that is essentially an avant garde happening.They are couched in a beautiful original Gothic-Baroque prose style.The detailed real-time review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is far too long and impractical for posting here.

Whatever you could say about Ligotti's universe is applicable to this double book, gathering his first two short-stories collections, if I am not wrong. His writings leaves your soul infected of a nightmarish, alternate reality which stays. The edition is good value for money. Essential.

only read the first 1/4 and its brilliant. Everything you'd want from modern horror short stories. Bizarre, creepy, all not what it seems. Or is a documentary?