Horror Literature through History

by Matt Cardin

  A part of Ligotti’s appeal may be the consistency of his thinking and the reality of his commitment to the nihilism of his writing. In addition to his literary work, Ligotti has also written a philosophical book, The Conspiracy against the Human Race (2010), advocating that humanity bring itself to an end as a species by ceasing to reproduce. This idea is sometimes called “antinatalism,” meaning “against birth.”

  Ligotti’s story “The Red Tower” is a reflection on the sources of his own fiction. The story has no character other than a nameless narrator, really only a voice saying “I.” There is no plot, but only a description of a mysterious red tower, which is continually producing horrific things. This tower does not seem to be inhabited, at least not in any normal sense. There is no reason why it should exist or create horrible things. In a way, the red tower is the imagination of the horror writer. One of the things that makes Ligotti’s work is so distinctive, and one of his innovations in the writing of horror stories, is this kind of self-awareness. Many of Ligotti’s stories “know” that they are stories; since he is usually writing about the unreality of what we think of as real, it is not inconsistent to write also about the reality of his stories. If reality is a fiction, then fiction and reality are not so different from each other. In other pieces like “Professor Nobody’s Little Lectures on Supernatural Horror” and “Notes on the Writing of Horror: A Story,” Ligotti transforms the discussion of horror fiction into horror stories, and so cancels the distance that would normally “protect” the reader from what he or she is reading. In this way, Ligotti is able to extend the work of the classic horror writers who influenced him—including Edgar Allan Poe, H. P. Lovecraft, Arthur Machen, M. R. James, and Algernon Blackwood—by introducing aspects of modern literary self-awareness, drawn from writers whose work is not normally considered horror fiction, such as Thomas Bernhard, William S. Burroughs, Vladimir Nabokov, or Bruno Schulz. Ligotti has himself gone on to influence a new generation of horror writers, makers of music, television, and film, who look to him for inspiration and guidance.

  Michael Cisco

  See also: Bram Stoker Award; Hoffmann, E. T. A.; International Horror Guild Award; “The Last Feast of Harlequin”; Lovecraft, H. P.; Shea, Michael; World Fantasy Award.

  Further Reading

  Calia, Michael. 2015. “A Master of Horror Blows Up.” Wall Street Journal—Eastern Edition, September 25. D3.

  Cardin, Matt, ed. 2014. Born to Fear: Interviews with Thomas Ligotti. Burton, MI: Subterranean Press.

  Joshi, S. T. 2001. “Thomas Ligotti: The Escape from Life.” In The Modern Weird Tale, 243–257. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.

  Ligotti, Thomas. 2010. The Conspiracy against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror. New York: Hippocampus Press.

  Schweitzer, Darrell, ed. 2003. The Thomas Ligotti Reader. Holicong, PA: Wildside Press.

  Tompkins, Stephen. 2006. “The Nemesis of Mimesis: Thomas Ligotti, Worlds Elsewhere, and the Darkness Ten Times.” Studies in Modern Horror 4: 1–28.

  Interview with Thomas Ligotti

  October 2016

  Ligotti here talks about the use of dolls, dummies, puppets, and manikins in both his own writing and that of other horror writers. He does the same for the use of dreams and nightmares as well. He also talks about the differences between short-form horror fiction and novel-length horror fiction, the changing status and permanent importance of H. P. Lovecraft to the field, and the central purpose of horror literature.

  Matt Cardin: One of the most characteristic elements of your stories is the frequent presence of dolls, dummies, scarecrows, manikins, puppets, and other artificial representations of the human form, used to uncanny, unnerving, and horrific effect. These are always tied into an extremely dark view of reality, and of the place of conscious life within it. Dolls and dummies also have a venerable history in horror literature at large, stretching back centuries. Why is this so? What is it about these effigies of human beings (and sometimes other life forms) that makes them such a powerful presence in horror fiction? And why do you personally find them so useful and expressive of your authorial calling?

  Thomas Ligotti: It’s probably not possible to offer a definitive explanation to the question, “Why is there a potential for alarm in all approximations of the human figure?” I use the word “potential” because such representations have seldom been intended to alarm in such a way that violates their nature as representations. Only our perception that a violation of this kind might occur, or has in fact occurred, instills in us a sense that something which should not be in fact is. This is the essence of the uncanny, and the uncanny is always alarming. One might argue that all horror fiction is based on some uncanny phenomenon. To some degree this is true, as in the case of people who are bitten by zombies and afterward themselves become zombies. There is a moment of the uncanny when one form of being turns into an entirely different form. Subsequently, though, the new form is normalized into a monster and bears no resemblance to what it once was. Monsters aren’t uncanny. They’re simply a threat to humans. Ghosts aren’t uncanny. They’re not even by nature alarming. And monster trucks driven by vengeful ghosts definitely aren’t uncanny. The harm posed by these unusual things and many others featured in horror stories is a strictly physical harm to human bodies. The harm of the uncanny is psychological, that is, the wreckage of some metaphysical viewpoint deeply ingrained in us. It’s a threat to how we believe the world should be and violates the categories, so often proven false, of our conception of existence in general and of our existence as persons in particular.

  Cartesian dualism is a classic attempt to wrestle with our anxiety about what we are and how we work. Perhaps, as Descartes wrote, we really are because we think, but that doesn’t mean we are the way we think we are. When dolls or puppets or manikins behave as we do, declaring their possession of a mind and a will like our own, there is a confusion of categories and an uncanny horror arises from this confusion. How can these lifeless things, these purely physical things of parts, also present themselves as being things that are whole, things that have a reality we thought belonged only to us? We feel there is something deranged about this, something fundamentally wrong. But is it deranged, is it wrong, because of the way these purely physical things of parts behave—and they always behave menacingly—or because they behave with the same appearance of mind and will as we seem to do? Two things can’t be one. Things of parts can’t amount to anything whole, anything real, and, above all, anything “human.”

  MC: Another typical trope in your work is the use of dreams and nightmares. These, too, are also staples of the Gothic and horrific literary traditions. Both for you individually and for the tradition in general, why?

  TL: To play off my response to the previous questions, dreams and nightmares are the principal locus of uncanny experience, and looking back on what I’ve written it’s the effect of the uncanny that is dominant in my stories. I didn’t deliberately intend this to be the case. I don’t think it’s possible to do that. One simply has to be the kind of person who feels, as I indicated above, that there is something fundamentally wrong about being alive and aware in this world. When I contemplate how the whole melange of organic existence evolved, I can’t help being overwhelmed by a sense of the weird and grotesque oddity of it all. Some people find the slide from bacteria to conscious beings to be something marvelous and enchanting. I don’t. I’m not saying that those who don’t share my perception of existence are wrongheaded. Quite obviously they possess a different sensibility from my own and find it easier to accept what I view as a maddening showcase of whimsical biology and pointless experience that trails off into nonexistence. I’m just saying that given the accidents of my personal evolution, I can’t see the big picture of life as anything but a sequence of scenarios that add up to one great uncanny nightmare.

  MC: With the exception of My Work Is Not Yet Done and The Conspiracy against the Human Race, you have published exclusively short-form work. Many people have n
oted that short stories and novellas seem an especially suitable vehicle for horror fiction, and that the mass birth of the horror novel in the late twentieth century represented a kind of combined literary and publishing experiment. Are there any long-form works of horror that you, as a reader, personally like and recommend, or do you find yourself drawn exclusively to the traditional short forms?

  TL: It’s not only horror novels that are perceived as freaks in the history of genre fiction. Excellent arguments have been made by better brains than mine that the novel itself was an artistic aberration in the march of literature. With the advent of modernism at the latest, writers have been attempting to do something different, something more expressive and faithful to human experience, than telling—or, even worse, “showing”—a lengthy story for the purpose of edification and entertainment. There’s nothing inherently evil about a long work of fiction, but there’s no argument that this form is for the most part rigidly conventionalized in subject matter as well as form, and everything else is relegated to minor, miniaturist, or cult status. Jorge Luis Borges once said that he could imagine a world without novels but not without tales. Admittedly, massive, mass-market page-turners make more people happy than any other literary form. How can anyone honestly say that this is a puke-making or terrible phenomenon? When it comes down to it, everyone reads for entertainment or they don’t read at all. As for horror fiction as such, it’s a fact that the classics of this genre and the works cherished by its most avid aficionados exist almost exclusively in short form.

  MC: After decades of occupying a strange hybrid status as pulp author, respected literary author, cult author, and underground pop culture icon all at once, Lovecraft has now exploded onto the scene in an even stranger status. He is at once a canonized American writer and a controversial, polarizing, lightning rod–type figure who is both lauded and reviled. He is also, for you, as for so many other horror writers, a chief and cherished influence. What do you think readers need to know about him right now?

  TL: Despite all attempts to derogate or trivialize them, Lovecraft’s works will resonate down the ages for their brave and expansive view of the universe and a unique vision that hardly exists elsewhere in literature. The last thing on the mind of Lovecraft was the highly perishable effort to convey what it was like to live at a particular time and in a particular place in world history. His ambition went far beyond documenting the contemporaneous or an engagement in mere wordsmithing for art’s sake. While superb work has been done in the field of illuminating Lovecraft’s writing for a specialized audience, my hope has always been that the literary elites might better appreciate the mind behind the monsters, thereby enabling them to express a wider view of the human experiment.

  MC: What is the point, purpose, or value of horror literature?

  TL: To entertain and disillusion its readers at the same time.

  MC: What do readers of horror literature need to know?

  TL: If you read a lot of horror literature because you like to be scared, then you’re probably a normal, healthy person. If you read horror literature to fulfill some deeply personal predisposition, be assured there is probably something odd and unwholesome about you. Don’t ever let anyone tell you it’s not all right to be that way.

  LINK, KELLY (1969–)

  Kelly Link is an author best known for her Fabulations, which are stories that draw from the treasury of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, but that are not readily identifiable as belonging to any of those sole genres specifically. Another way of thinking about her work, and of Fabulation in general, is to consider its disregard for genre divisions even as it demonstrates a reverence for genre traditions. In Link’s hands Fabulation is neither parody nor pastiche (even if it sometimes incorporates these approaches), but a creatively and intellectually sincere engagement with the variety of motifs most broadly associated with speculative fiction. Additionally, it is important to note that her work is not defined by genre, but instead works in conversation with it. Her work differs significantly, then, from that of traditional genre writers in that it is more experimental at both a formal and a philosophical level.

  Put another way, Link’s work challenges genre readers precisely because it uses familiar tropes—ghosts, zombies, witches—in unfamiliar ways and with unfamiliar tones. Her stories engage, in some cases overtly, the storytelling tradition in all its diverse forms. Sometimes this means that plot and characters are secondary concerns. Often, her stories inhabit an indeterminate narrative state that eschews pat resolutions and closure. Her work is characterized by an ambiguity that resists interpretation. And yet, there is great, sometimes bleak, humor in her stories. Part of what makes Link so readable is that the heaviness often associated with experimental fiction is largely absent. There is always a sense of playfulness, of fun, running throughout her work that, sometimes ironically, intensifies its narrative.

  Her work has been widely praised by critics outside the fields of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. For example, her 2016 fiction collection Get in Trouble was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and her work has been included in such mainstream anthologies as The Best American Short Stories series (which usually adheres to traditionally realist fiction). At the same time, she has enjoyed much success within her home fields, having garnered Nebula, Hugo, and Locus awards, as well as the Theodore Sturgeon Award, the World Fantasy Award, the James Tiptree Jr. Award, and the Shirley Jackson Award.

  To date Link has published four short story collections: Stranger Things Happen (2001), Magic for Beginners (2014), Pretty Monsters (2010; includes stories from the previous two collections along with new material), and Get in Trouble. Standout titles of individual stories that represent Link’s nuanced complexity and breadth while incorporating elements of horror include “Water off a Black Dog’s Back” and “The Specialist’s Hat” in Stranger Things Happen; “Magic for Beginners,” “Stone Animals,” and “Catskin” in Magic for Beginners; and “The Summer People” and “Two Houses” in Pretty Monsters. Link has also been an active and prolific editor, overseeing, with husband Gavin Grant, Small Beer Press and the fiction zine Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. She has also edited the anthologies Trampoline (2003) and, with Grant, Monstrous Affections (2014).

  Javier A. Martinez

  See also: Monsters; New Weird; Shirley Jackson Awards; Vampires; World Fantasy Award; Zombies.

  Further Reading

  Baker, James Ireland. 2005. “Maverick Fabulist: Kelly Link, Rising Star, Goes Her Own Way.” Publishers Weekly, July 22. http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/print/20050725/20526-maverick-fabulist.html.

  “Horror Stories Are Love Stories: Helen Oyemi interviews Kelly Link.” 2015. Los Angeles Review of Books, May 26. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/horror-stories-are-love-stories.

  “Kelly Link.” 2016. Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit, MI: Gale.

  “THE LISTENERS”

  Written in 1912 and published that year by Constable and Company in The Listeners and Other Poems, “The Listeners” is perhaps Walter de la Mare’s most recognizable work for either adults or children in any form, noted particularly for its simple metric rhythm, its atmospheric setting, and its darkly romantic imagery.

  “The Listeners” recounts in brief the arrival of an unnamed traveler to a moonlit house late one night, and his unsuccessful attempts to gain admittance. The poem’s stark central image is that of the eponymous, silent listeners, a large group of (it is implied) phantoms who are thronging the halls of the house, and who remain steadfastly still and silent in response to the traveler’s calls.

  The horror underlining de la Mare’s poem is that of the uncanny, otherworldly nature of the silent listeners, and the mysterious relationship between the traveler and those who dwell within the house. Indeed, “The Listeners” poses many questions that de la Mare deliberately leaves unresolved, thereby heightening the numerous mysteries at the heart of the poem. The subtle threat running throughout the poem, and that (along
with its decidedly supernatural elements) accounts for the reader’s increasing sense of discomfort, is the primal fear felt in the face of the unfathomable actions of the phantom listeners, who represent a collective predatory threat to the lone figure of the traveler.

  Moreover, “The Listeners” compounds this sense of dread with the further existential fear of resolute silence, as de la Mare’s pointed refusal to answer the many questions his narrative implicitly raises echoes in kind the silence that meets the traveler’s repeated question: “Is there anybody there?” Like the traveler, the reader, too, encounters a void, an existential emptiness that de la Mare refuses to fill.

  Finally, “The Listeners” captures the quiet menace of unexplained occurrences or incidences and suggests that the most threatening thing of all to the human mind is the unanswered (or unanswerable) question, to which we necessarily demand a meaningful response. The poem presents several questions, such as who the traveler is and where he has traveled to/from; what his relationship is to the people in the house; who the listeners are and why they won’t answer him; what “word” he has kept, and to whom. De la Mare leaves the answers to these questions very much open, and the strength of “The Listeners” as a work of supernatural horror lies in the discomfort the reader feels at the poem’s thorough lack of resolution.