A new story of mine – 'Suicide Watch' – has just been posted at Thomas Ligotti Online. Many thanks to Dr. Bantham for his work in formatting and so on.
For those who prefer not to read from a screen, the print version is here.
And the PDF file should be here, I think.
cap writes:Thanks for making this available. I found it quite comforting, in a way.Also, there’s something about the narrator’s stated theology, at the end…. I had always automatically read a sort of deep compassion into Ligotti’s work, which I’m not sure is there. This passage has for real what earlier I may only have projected, as well as much of the “icy bleakness of things”.I’m sure (or I hope) I will internalize the narrator’s stated theology.
Thanks for making this available. I found it quite comforting, in a way.If a story is of comfort, then I would consider it a major success, so I’m glad to hear this.Also, there’s something about the narrator’s stated theology, at the end…. I had always automatically read a sort of deep compassion into Ligotti’s work, which I’m not sure is there. This passage has for real what earlier I may only have projected, as well as much of the “icy bleakness of things”.Thank you.Strangely, I was thinking something similar about Ligotti’s work recently. I mean, not comparing it to anything, but just wondering about the status of compassion in his work. The title The Conspiracy Against the Human Race says something about Ligotti’s position with regard to humans. Humans, clearly, are victims. I think the sense of compassion comes in here. Where it becomes problematical – for me, at least, and perhaps for other readers – is that ultimately, it is not allowed, in the world view presented, that there is really anything in humans worth being compassionate towards, since anything that would elicit compassion is portrayed as a lie or an illusion. As made explicit in My Work is Not Yet Done, humans, cockroaches and the Great Black Swine that Wallows in a River of Darkness, are really all the same thing. The compassion – apparent or otherwise – in Ligotti’s work, is towards the illusion in which the suffering of nightmare is focused – human consciousness. The only solution to this suffering is an end to that consciousness.I do have the sense that Ligotti is not expressed as a person in his work as completely as it may seem. There are certain aspects of his human experience, I sense, that are ‘taken as read’, or disposed of in qualifying or explanatory clauses here and there, and, in other words, tidied out of the way of the central vision of the work. For instance, he has said that his ‘pessimism’ is a rational rather than emotional position, that it’s possible to enjoy life and still think it’s better never to be born. I agree, actually, but such qualifying clauses then tidy away the experience of what enjoying life might mean in order to focus wholly on the ‘it’s better not to be born’ bit. I feel like another aspect that is similarly tidied away might be the implications of compassion for other humans.This is all a question of Ligotti’s oeuvre, mind you. I know well enough not to confuse these things with the person. The effect of tidying away certain things in Ligotti’s work is to create a very powerful consistency of vision. I sometimes have the impression that Ligotti’s work exists on a necessary knife edge, that it is so stripped of all hope, and so vigorously bleak, that it’s on the very verge of becoming enlightenment, since if you really feel as you would have to feel if you inhabited a Ligotti story, after a while, perhaps you would say, “Well, if it’s all just a nightmare, then I’m a nightmare, too, and I don’t care anymore. There’s nothing I can do. Let it be.” And perhaps you would suddenly, in some, curious, surreal and existential way, turn inside-out. It’s a kind of artistic thoroughness that has brought Ligotti to this knife-edge, and it’s something I value.I’m sure (or I hope) I will internalize the narrator’s stated theology.I’m glad if the story is sufficiently memorable. I think the narrator is struggling on his own particular knife edge. I don’t like to dictate interpretations of anything I write, but… I suppose there’s something there about how ‘I’ becomes ‘you’, about how the attempt to crush the ‘I’ that some people or entities ostentatiously make actually becomes an attempt to crush the ‘you’. Maybe, in order not to crush the ‘you’, we have to see some value in the ‘I’ as well, since, in the end, the ‘I’ is the ‘you’, just depending on where you are standing. I, you, and…I am reading the novel We at the moment. This is fascinating because it reinforces to me that there absolutely is something suspicious to me in the attempt to crush the ego. Zamyatin is writing from the perspective of – actually I don’t know the date he wrote it, but I’m guessing – Stalinist Russia. Isn’t that, after all, a signficant and very valid example (Stalinist Russia, I mean) of the dangers inherent in the attempt to crush the ‘I’? The novel is quite explicit and thorough in its examination of such dangers. Individualism, as we’ve seen, also has its dangers, but I think that the biggest danger in individualism is that people (incredibly) forget that ‘you’ is as much an individual that must be respected as ‘I’.
Josh writes:excellent story thank you for making it available to me at no cost!
Thank you for reading. I’m very glad you enjoyed it.
Anonymous writes:I liked the story. Thank you!I don’t think I’ve ever heard of Ligotti before, or least I don’t remember if I did until a few days ago when I bought one of his books that I picked up randomly from the shelf at Barnes and Noble. I haven’t starting reading it yet, but it’s MY WORK IS NOT YET DONE. I think I’ll begin reading the book tonight. What a strange coincidence, or is it?I’ve heard someone say before that George Orwell’s 1984 was a rip off of Zamyatin’s WE. That basically Orwell stole all of his ideas from that book. I really liked 1984, but I haven’t read WE yet. Do you have an opinion on which one is the better book?
Hello. Thank you for reading.My Work Is Not Yet Done is one of my favourite stories. I hope you enjoy it.Because there have been a number of Nineteen Eighty-Four-style dystopia novels, I think it’s hard to imagine We being substantially different to them. It is certainly different to Nineteen Eighty-Four. Apparently, Aldous Huxley claimed not to have read the book when he wrote Brave New World, and Orwell did not believe him. I haven’t read Brave New World yet, though I have an idea of the story and concepts. I think it might be closer to We than Nineteen Eighty-Four is. One difference between We and Nineteen Eighty-Four is that the former has a slightly cartoonish quality to it. Nineteen Eighty-Four focuses on the idea of power – that the elite are in control because they pursue power for its own sake. We focuses on the tyranny of the rational. The idea is that society is moving towards the most rational, machine-like form it can take. It’s actually quite hard to describe the atmosphere, but it’s more interesting than I had imagined. I’m not sure which I would say is the better book. I suppose I would say that Nineteen Eighty-Four is less eccentric and less flawed. It has a more powerful sense of warning about it, and is a more harrowing read. We has a more visionary quality, somehow. It reminds me, in imagery and atmosphere, a little of Metropolis:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_SO86-cHHcTo give one example, all the buildings in We are made of glass, so that everyone can see what everyone else is doing. Details like this give the book a kind of visionary, surreal quality that Nineteen Eighty-Four doesn’t have.
Anonymous writes:Thanks for that explanation, I’m now much more keen on reading Zamyatin’s book. I’ve read Brave New World, and I have to say I believe Huxley when he said he hadn’t read 1984 when he wrote his book. The two are very different visions of a dystopia future. Huxley appeared to be have been inspired by attitudes and observations much different than Orwell.
I think my explanation was a little unclear on that point. Huxley claimed not to have read We before writing Brave New World, and Orwell, apparently, didn’t believe this. I don’t know, actually, how close the two books are, but I imagine, at least, that We is closer to Brave New World than it is to Nineteen Eighty-Four.I hope you enjoy it if and when you read it.