Thomas Ligotti
Thomas Ligotti
Thomas Ligottiis a contemporary American horror author and reclusive literary cult figure. His writings have been noted as rooted in several literary genres – most prominently weird fiction – and have overall been described by critics such as S.T. Joshi as works of "philosophical horror", often written as short stories and novellas and with similarities to gothic fiction. The worldview espoused by Ligotti in both his fiction and non-fiction has been described as profoundly pessimistic and nihilistic. The Washington Post...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth9 July 1953
CountryUnited States of America
While a modicum of consciousness may have had survivalist properties during an immemorial chapter of our evolution – so one theory goes – this faculty soon enough became a seditious agent working against us … we need to hamper our consciousness for all we are worth or it will impose upon us a too clear vision of what we do not want to see … Consciousness has forced us into the paradoxical position of striving to be unself-conscious of what we are – hunks of spoiling flesh on disintegrating bones
Madness, mayhem, erotic vandalism, devastation of innumerable souls - while we scream and perish, History licks a finger and turns the page.
To my mind, a well-developed sense of humor is the surest indication of a person's humanity, no matter how black and bitter that humor may be.
We live in a permanent state of bad faith, a mutual representation of ourselves to one another for the sake of remaining sane and following our biological imperative to continue as a species.
Personally, I'm afraid of suffering and afraid of dying. I'm also afraid of witnessing the suffering and death of those who are close to me. And no doubt I project these fears on those around me and those to come, which makes it impossible for me to understand why everyone isn't an antinatalist, just as I have to assume pronatalists can't understand why everyone isn't like them.
Human life moves only in one direction - toward disease, damage, and death. The best you can hope for is to remain stagnant or, in certain cases, return to a previous condition when things weren't as bad as they've become for you.
I'm completely indifferent to what genre I read provided that I feel sympathy with how a writer perceives being alive in the world.