In the heart of Secrets

Had me all the stories of the book to be discussed here as fascinated as the first (Purity) and the last (The Shadow, The Darkness) I would not publish this review. What a close relation with myself way is great for me, I want to share only with the fewest. Maybe that's selfish, but mainly hidden behind the concern that under the eyes of others the magic is weakened.

Ligotti wanted his own words always be only an insider-author, and when one sees that no longer misplaced early work hei Amazon is trading at up to 200, can be assumed: He has succeeded.

As with HP Lovecraft horror stories have Ligottis a pessimistic superstructure. The horror is not only in response to singular phenomena, but in the final analysis, the existence itself. Anyone who has become this dark Gnosis once partakers, can, if at all, only through an admission of futility and perhaps an increasing identification with the ghastly in monstrosity of existence endure. To this end, a quote from the narrative fragments Sideshow and other stories:

I wanted to believe thatthis artist had escaped the dreams and demons of all sentiment in order to explore the challenge and crummy delights of a universe where everything had been reduced to three strong principles: First, what thatthere nowhere for you to go; Second, thatthere what nothing for you to do; and third, thatthere what no one for you to know. Of course, I knew that this view was an illusion like any other, but it what so One That had sustained me so long and so well as long and as well as any other illusion and longer Perhaps, Perhaps better.

In the cover story it says: It has always Seemed to me did my existence consisted Purely and Exclusively of Nothing But the most outrageous nonsense.

Much like Edgar Allan Poe himself Ligotti the decomposing insight into the absurdity of their own identity and the repulsiveness of the universe approaches often with sober observation and apparent rationality. Even the greatest absurdity (such as the factory in The Red Tower) is presented with a certain serenity: Before the inevitable any hysteria seems inappropriate.

In the genre of horror Ligotti one of the good stylist. In its limited resources as Poe, he surpasses linguistically Lovecraft with ease. Nevertheless Ligotti tends in some passages about a Lovecraftian too much. Although he knows that in the use of adjectives to be limited to what is necessary, but in time he repeats thoughts and slightly varied descriptions quite often without every time the probably desired suction effect (in the sense of Thomas Bernhard, who to next Nabokov, Poe and Kafka Ligottis models one would be reached). On top of that philosophizing the first-person narrator (eg in the mostly gripping story The Gas Station Carnivals) every now and then something about rampant in front of him and, unfortunately, thus weakening the impact of the most atmospherically extremely dense narratives.

In addition to his stylistic claim and its consistent and incorruptible pessimism, another strength Ligottis is that he focuses on modern working conditions. Texts like My Case for Action or Retributive Our Temporary Supervisor could be provided with the sub-genre label Corporate Horror. The recurring images of circles unsuccessful Künsterlerinnen and artists pose a subtle black humor that makes bearable along with the Gothic elegance of ligottischen phantasmagoria whose content darkness. Or, to put it with Ligotti itself: We may hide from horror only in the heart of horror.

PS: The translations into German are not to be particularly successful.