Penguin Classics
has done a great service for the world of literature and letters by
adding this superb edition to their collection, a book combining two
previously published Thomas Ligotti - Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe. Also included is an incisive introductory essay by Jeff Vandermeer.
One
Vandermeer quote I especially enjoy: "Every time you read these
stories, not only do you reimagine them, but they seem to change shape
and substance through some power rising from behind the words. These are
not uncanny effects - they're merely another manifestation of the
universal in Ligotti's fiction."
Thirty-three tales included
here, with some of the most frightening scenes and happenings you're
likely to encounter, like the shabbily dressed clowns in The Last Feast of Harlequin, the dream sequence in Vastarien, lifelike dolls in Dream of a Manikin, cosmic horror in The Mystics of Muelenburg.
Thomas
Ligotti has been associated with Poe, Lovecraft and Kafka, but, for me,
his distinctive short-stories serve as dark counterpoint to the weird,
highly imaginative microfiction of writers like Barry Yourgrau, Russell
Edson, Peter Cherches, Fernando Sorrrentino. Thus my list of Ligotti
reviews, a list I plan to expand over the next months.
Having
said that, I feel obligated to quote the following that's part of an
interview with the author: "From the beginning of his career as a
published writer in the early 1980s, Ligotti has identified himself as a
horror writer. He doesn’t want to be known as anything else. He has, on
occasion, taken exception when people have tried to label him
otherwise. But when he says he writes horror, he means he writes from
the center of what he knows best as a human being, and this is what
elevates him to the status of a true literary artist."
To share a
small taste of Ligotti's distinctive storytelling, I'll cast the light
on the very first tale listed in the Table of Contents, one with pointed
teeth capable of chomping away at our sanity -
THE FROLIC
The
Trickster is a character from mythology, folklore and religion, one of
the archetypes in the psychology of Carl Jung, a character exhibiting
keen intellect and secret knowledge in order to play tricks, defy the
ordinary and mock convention and rules.
In The Frolic,
Thomas Ligotti presents a character whose both archetypal trickster and
(gulp!) psychopathic murderer, an eerie, unsettling combination that
will give anybody the creeps. 
It's
evening and we're in the town of Nolgate, site of the state prison.
Prison psychiatrist Dr. Munch speaks with wife Leslie while daughter
Norleen rests in her upstairs bedroom. Dr. Munch fumes with anger, tells
Leslie that perhaps it was an unwise decision to have taken this job.
He admits he was somewhat masochistic: he wanted a thankless, impossible
job and that's exactly what he has.
One prisoner has pushed the
good doctor to the edge, a prisoner refusing to divulge his name or
where he is from or where he was born, a prisoner known to the
authorities as John Doe. What's particularly maddening about John Doe:
he claims he wanted to be caught so he could spend time in the
penitentiary – and he tells the doctor that he can leave anytime he
wishes.
Dr. Munch details his session with John Doe. “There's
actually quite a poetic geography to his interior dreamland as he
describes it.” John Doe provided Dr. Munch with the grizzly details in
his “phantasmagorical mingling of heaven and hell” as he relates his
'frolicking' with what he terms his 'awestruck company.' Unfortunately,
the 'awestruck company' could be seen by the state as helpless victims
of heinous crimes. But the doctor observes: “There is always a
paradoxical blend of forsaken topographies and shining sanctuaries in
his mind.”
What's particularly fascinating about this Thomas
Ligotti tale is all in the blending, not only in the mind of John Doe
but in John Doe's very identity. Seen in one way, we're talking John Doe
the prison inmate, the psychopathic killer. But viewed from a different
angle, John Doe's 'frolicking' can be taken as the rule-busting,
convention smashing, creative dance of the Trickster.
Herein
lies the author's magic with echoes of one of his frequently cited
quotes: “Most people learn to save themselves by artificially limiting
the content of consciousness.” Is the Trickster aka John Doe beckoning
us to expand our world by transcending rules, regimentation and
conformity, beckoning us to also abandon artificiality and peer into the
chaos of a trickster cosmos?
The Frolic, a remarkable
tale that can be read as slice of life realism or modern mythology with
strong Jungian archetypes – or both together.
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