Great essay. I remember reading somewhere that
Ligotti preferred Lovecraft's earlier works, which I
thought was interesting since his current "literary"
reputation is based almost wholly on his later works,
so it was nice to this this expanded upon. The
comparison between the Lovecraft/Ligotti influence and
the Dunsany/Lovecraft influence was very fitting. It
reminds me of LOvecraft's own dissapointment with
Dunsany's later(at least in HPL's lifetime) fiction
because of the "jaded" and ironic point of view that
Dunsany started to bring to his fantasies-- perhaps,
in Ligotti's mind, analogous to Lovecraft's own switch
from supernaturalism and fantasy to science fiction
and a sort of "realism"? I think Robert Price called
it his "repudiation" of supernaturalism, which I think
might explain why Joshi, as an atheist, might feel
more of a connection to them. I'm currently reading
the Lovecraft LOA volume; when I got to "Pickman's
Model" I remembered a comment somewhere that the
story almost seems like a "justification" of
Lovecraft's later "realistic" technique, and I could
see how it could be read as such. I'm looking forward
to the rest of the essays.
bye bye
jty
--- mgcardin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> I'm crossposting this message to alt.horror.cthulhu,
> alt.books.ghost-fiction, Horrabin Hall, and Chapel
> Perilous.
>
> My new essay "The Masters' Eyes Shining with
> Secrets: H.P. Lovecraft
> and His Influence on Thomas Ligotti" is now
> available for free reading
> at the newly resurrected Thomas Ligotti Online
> (http://www.ligotti.net), in the section titled The
> Repository. The
> following URL should take you directly to the essay
> itself:
>
>
http://www.ligotti.net/nightmare/kb.php?mode=article&k=15&sid=da3c1663f97d8a80d694ba80a0a6ea4b
>
> If the posting interface I'm using here inserts a
> line break,
> resulting in an unusable link, then please just copy
> and paste the
> entire URL into your browser's address bar, sans any
> mistakenly
> inserted spaces.
>
> The essay represents my attempt to illuminate the
> influence that
> Lovecraft has exerted on Ligotti, not only in a
> literary sense, but in
> a deeply personal one. I have also attempted to
> elucidate not only
> the deep kinship between the two men, but also the
> very real and
> fundamental differences that exist between their
> respective literary
> visions and emotional casts. This angle on the
> topic required that I
> focus almost as much on Lovecraft as on Ligotti, so
> perhaps the essay
> will be of some interest to individuals who don't
> read or haven't read
> Ligotti but are interested in Lovecraft.
>
> A note on the format: This is the first of several
> planned essays on
> Ligotti's primary literary influences. Most will
> not be as extensive
> as the present one, which is over 12,000 words long,
> but all will
> follow the same basic format, which will include a
> biographical sketch
> of the author, followed by an annotated bibliography
> of primary and
> secondary works, followed by an analysis of the
> author's influence
> upon and/or relationship to Ligotti and his work. I
> point this out to
> remove the confusion that readers might otherwise
> feel if they decide
> to follow the link I've provided above, and the
> first thing they're
> greeted with is not an essay about Lovecraft and
> Ligotti but a kind of
> laundry list of information about Lovecraft alone.
>
> Speaking of which, please note the following error
> that presently
> appears in the text of the essay as I'm writing
> these words: due to a
> simple typo, I've indicated that Lovecraft's mother
> died when he was
> 21 years old. His actual age, of course, was 31.
> One of Thomas
> Ligotti Online's site administrators will be
> correcting this error
> shortly, but I wanted to note its existence anyway,
> because I know
> that the regulars in the groups where I'm posting
> this invitation are
> a fiercely, and even fearsomely, erudite lot, and I
> don't want to
> appear like an idiot who can't get his facts
> straight.
>
> Tangentially, if you indeed decide to visit the new
> TLO, whether to
> read my essay or just browse around, be advised that
> you can find
> several of my recent musical compositions available
> for streaming
> listening in the Media section of the site. This is
> the first time
> I've shared my music with the world at large,
> although composing and
> recording music has been a passion of mine for a
> great many years.
> The songs I've completed recently have possessed a
> Ligottian and
> Lovecraftian cast, or at least I've felt led to give
> them Ligottian
> and Lovecraftian titles, so perhaps they might be of
> interest to
> musically-inclined members of this group.
>
> And a note specifically to Chapel Perilous: I
> haven't checked in here
> and updated myself on the group's activity in many
> months, but it's
> nice to look in and see the conversation still up
> and running, and
> especially, from my point of view as a Ligotti
> junkie, to see him and
> his work being discussed. Upon a quick skim of the
> recent messages
> here, I noticed somebody (was it you, Andrew?)
> mentioning that a
> recent reread of Lovecraft's "The Music of Erich
> Zann" revealed it to
> feel surprisingly like a Ligotti story. This really
> caught my
> attention, because in my Lovecraft-Ligotti essay I
> focus specifically
> and lengthily upon Ligotti's love for Lovecraft's
> earlier, more
> dreamlike stories, most especially "Erich Zann"
> (which Ligotti praises
> as the quintessence of the weird tale), as opposed
> to the work
> Lovecraft later produced when he moved in the
> direction of
> supernatural realism, e.g. "The Call of Cthulhu,"
> "At the Mountains of
> Madness," et al. I go so far as to speculate that
> Ligotti may be
> writing today the very sort of thing that Lovecraft
> might have
> produced if he had continued along his earlier path.
>
> Anyway, as I said, it's nice to see that Chapel
> Perilous is still
> virile and active.
>
> Best wishes,
> Matt Cardin
>
>
>
>
>
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