The Last Feast of Harlequin by Thomas Ligotti

 


The Last Feast of Harlequin - weird, dark fiction brought to literary perfection by master of the craft Thomas Ligotti., a tale the author dedicated to the memory of H.P. Lovecraft.

Here's how Ligotti frames his story: the unnamed narrator, an anthropologist and college instructor with both scholarly and personal interest in clowns, tells us clowns and clowning go well beyond traditional notions of a circus, how clowns have performed many functions and roles in various cultures around the world.

Therefore, to both experience great self-satisfaction and further his own academic research, the narrator cherishes opportunities to participate in festivals as a clown himself. When he learns of a little-publicized festival with clowns in the Midwestern town of Mirocaw, his interest is piqued.

In late summer the opportunity presents itself to make a side trip to Mirocaw and he takes it. Right from the start, things seem peculiarly out of sync – the various parts of the town do not appear to fit together; the steep roofs of the houses behind the town’s main street, due to the hilly terrain, strike him as floating in air at odd angles. Indeed, he compares the entire town to an album of snapshots where the camera has been continually jostled that results in page after page of crooked photos.

Rolling down his car window to ask directions to the town hall from a shabbily dressed old man who looks vaguely familiar, he is greeted by a distant, imbecilic gaze. And after finally arriving at the building and making inquiries about the festival, he is handed a cheap copy of a flyer and learns the festival is December 19-21 and there are “clowns of a sort.”

If all this sounds creepy, even sinister, that’s exactly what the narrator feels, however, he continues to explore this most unusual town and vows to return with his clown costume for the December festival.

At this point, the narrator tells us how his former anthropology teacher, one Dr. Raymond Thoss, wrote a paper entitled The Last Feast of Harlequin with references to Syrian Gnostics who called themselves Saturnians. He also tells us that he now knows why that shabby man on the street looked familiar – he was none other than Raymond Thoss. The thick plottens.

Once back in Mirocaw, things turn very weird very quickly. He discovers, among other disturbing facts, this festival features two sets of clowns: more traditional clowns chosen from the townspeople that are, to his astonishment, picked on and pushed around as they walk the streets and a second group of clowns, shabbily dressed, gaunt, with faces painted white and mouths wide in terror, bringing to mind the famous painting by Edvard Munch.

Upon reflection, he now understands he is witnessing two festivals, a festival within a festival. Returning to his hotel, he makes the decision to dress up as one of those shabby, gaunt, wide-mouthed clowns. Events then take even weirder and much more frightening twists. Not a reading experience for the fainthearted.

Shifting to the philosophic, much of what happens in the concluding sections of this sixty-five page novella seems to revolve around Gnostic myth. What's particularly strange with Thoss and the others and the subterranean ritual the narrator witnesses is all these Mirocaw folk appear to take a Gnostic myth literally.

Such literal interpretation of Gnostic myth is ironic (to put it politely) since the ancient Gnostics were all about symbols and constructed complex mythologies to prevent attempts to reduce religion to literal interpretations. Incidentally, this is exactly the point emphasized by Dr. Stephan A. Hoeller, leading scholar of Gnosticism.

I first read The Last Feast of the Harlequin some thirty years ago and the strange happenings and images from this tale might qualify as among the most powerful I've encountered within the genre of horror fiction. Again, not a story for the fainthearted.