It's a collection of short stories by Thomas Ligotti who writes what could be called "existential horror". If you're a fan at all of Lovecraft, Poe or any other classic horror writers, then you should check him out. He has a very nihilistic view of the world and writes very beautifully
Very good description, man. I'd say the
leitmotif in Ligotti's work might be just that: The march towards annihilation. In that sense, he echoes Lovecraft, who said
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. In terms of literary tone, he's more like Poe, though. I think Ligotti once named Poe and the Polish writer Bruno Schulz two of his influences.
For those about to burrow into Ligotti: Don't expect instant gratification with his stories, though. They take their time and need to be revisited and reread. It's more like he plants an idea inside your mind, a seed, something that starts to grow. Sure, that's what all good writers should do, but I think I misunderstood him quite a lot the first time I read him. These are stories of horror and dark fantasy alright, but moreso of the existentialist kind, just like unknown wrote.
On a sidenote, I think Ligotti stated in an interview once that "literature is entertainment, or it is nothing." That redeems him even more in my book. It's a pretty humble statement coming from a person with such bleak a worldview to acknowledge and accept the fact that stories and fiction are, most importantly, entertainment, yarns that need to be able to catch us and weave us in in order for us to ... succumb.
I dunno. Just read the guy.
I'm almost done with China Mieville's Kraken. It's my least favorite so far in comparison with his others (and I'm expecting it to maintain that status unless the ending absolutely rips the ground out from under me). It's a great concept, but not quite as serious as his previous efforts. That's not saying a novel has to be serious to be good, but Mieville's humorous side gets a bit too long-winded; if he wanted to write a somewhat comic book, it should be a bit shorter and not the mammoth undertaking that Kraken is. I think of Melville's quote "To write a mighty book, one must choose a mighty theme;" the Kraken, of course, is a mighty theme, but to add to the irony it would have been great if about 200 pages were cut. There's a lot of mindless running around and dark, grotesque London underworld buffoonery (which, despite its redundancy, is madly entertaining) comprised of "gunfarmers," whose bullets grow in their hosts' bodies to produce more "gun-spawn;" "knuckleheads," who have fists where their heads should be; a crimelord who's made up of nothing more than ink in a tattoo; two terrifying hoodlums for a crimelord who are in the nasty habit of practicing origami on human beings; and much more...
Thank you so much for the description of the novel. I had
Kraken pinned down as some sort of fantasy version of
Moby Dick, but I love it when authors weave in all kinds of details and stuff that might or might not have to do with the main story, but that adds to the
milieu. Some say this might be basic fiction writing, but what the hell. The bullets growing inside people is like Giger by way of Barker and Vandermeer (who has a penchant for water based creatures such as squid). I also recall a story by Australian writer Terry Dowling in which there was a theory about a gun that grew its own bullets. I love shit like that.