# Nov 8, 2011

Interviews
Exclusive Interview: Thomas Ligotti on Weird Fiction
Includes Ligotti's top picks for under-appreciated weird fiction!

Thomas Ligotti (1953 ) is an iconic American writer of weird short fiction whose oeuvre
has been as ground-breaking as, if not always as well-acknowledged as, that of Edgar Allan
Poe, Franz Kafka, and H.P. Lovecraft. His first collection, Songs of a Dead Dreamer (1986),
is an outright classic in the field, with a subsequent compilation from several collections, The
Nightmare Factory (1997), cementing Ligottis reputation. The influence of workplace
experiences infused Ligottis fiction with fresh energy, resulting in the masterpiece My Work
Here Is Not Yet Done (2002). The Town Manager (2003), which we reprinted in our The
Weird, showcases Ligotti in this phase of his writing. An underlying dark sense of humor is
more prevalent in his fiction generally than is acknowledged by most critics, which becomes
clear in the interview.
Two of the stories cited by Ligotti below are featured on WFR.com this week: Algernon
Blackwoods classic The Willows and, in a new translation by Edward Gauvin, the Jean
Ferry story on Ligottis list of under-appreciated weird stories/writers.
Ligotti tells us that this is the first time that he has been asked specifically about weird
fiction, let alone did a whole interview on it. On a personal note, one of our most prized
possessions is the hardcover In a Foreign Town, in a Foreign Land by Thomas Ligotti, with
soundtrack by Current 93, pictured above. - Ann & Jeff VanderMeer

Weirdfictionreview.com: What writers were your introduction to the weird, whether the
Weird Tales kind of weird or something stranger?
Ligotti: The first story I read that is usually classed as a specimen of weird fiction was
Arthur Machens The Great God Pan. I didnt fully understand the story, but I felt
immediately captivated by it. There was a real whiff of evil behind the events of the narrative.
I then read other stories by Machen The White People, The Three Impostersand
sensed that I had found a world where I belonged: a kind of degenerate incarnation of the
Sherlock Holmes tales I loved so much. Immediately after reading Machen, I read Lovecraft
and recognized the resemblance between the two authors, no doubt because Lovecraft was
influenced by Machen. I was never enamored of the Weird Tales writers. There was nothing
distinctive in their style, and their plots were embarrassingly conventional. Lovecraft wrote in
one of his letters that he felt that writing for Weird Tales had a detrimental effect on the style
of his later stories, and I think he was right. Not that these stories were not brilliant in their
conception and imagination, but they had lost a poetic quality present in his earlier stories. By
the early 1980s I had read practically every horror/weird/ghost writers there was to read. And
by that time I had already begun to read foreign writers of every nationality in translation.
These were mostly Symbolist and Decadent writers as well as writers influenced by these
nineteenth-century literary and artistic movements. What these and subsequent authors
I consumed had in common was a temper of pessimism, whether it was overt or implicit.
Around the early 1990s, I had stopped reading horror stories altogether, unless someone sent
me something they wanted me to read or a publisher was kind of enough to supply me with
a free copy of a book they had just published. For a while I became interested in the
uncanny, which accounts for my use of this concept in The Conspiracy against the Human
Race. Quite a number of literary critics and European philosophers have taken an interest in
the facets of meaning suggested by the uncanny, which I consider to be interchangeable with
the weird. In fact, if I had to use a word that most accurately describes most of my own
stories, it would be uncanny.

WFR: Do you see a difference between horror and the weird and even if so, is the
difference important?
Ligotti: I think that if it werent for Lovecrafts Supernatural Horror in Literature, no one
would ever have thought in terms of the weird, which is used copiously throughout his
1927 monograph. This is rather odd since the subject matter of the work is designated in its
title as supernatural horror. On occasion Ive thought in terms of the weird without being as
invested in it as much as Lovecraft. I once wrote an essay titled In the Night, In the Dark:
A Note on the Appreciation of Weird Fiction. Toward the end of this piece, I asserted: By
definition the weird story is based on an enigma that can never be dispelled. Semantics
aside, the important thing to me in a so-called weird tale is an impenetrable mystery that
generates the actions and manifestations in a narrative. A good example is Lovecrafts
favorite weird story The Willows by Algernon Blackwood. Theres nothing in the willows
themselves that is responsible for the phenomena that menace the two men who stop on an
island while boating down the Danube. The willows are only a symbol of some invisible,
unknowable force that means no good to those who are unfortunate enough to be caught by
bad weather in this atmospheric locale. This force is patently supernatural or, given
Blackwoods view of nature, preternatural but it need not be. In Poes The Tell-Tale
Heart, the narrator can explain his motive for killing the old man only because there is
something about one of his eyes that maddens him to murder. Again, there is an enigma at the
heart of the story, a mystery that cannot be solved and that keeps the story alive. With horror
stories, its the exact opposite: there must be a legend for the horrific goings-on and this
legend must be revealed in the story or movie, even if the explanation is rather vague.
Example: Something must have gone wrong with the laboratory experiments they was doin
on them monkeys that made em so ferocious and 28 days later infected almost everyone and
turned em into those zombie things that run around like nobodys business. Horror legends
are endlessly reusable and have a logical or pseudo-logical explanation. Weird narratives are
usually one of a kind and leave an enigma behind them. Thats the difference I see between
horror and the weird.
WFR: When the weird in weird fiction fails for you, whats usually the reason?
Ligotti: I believe that if a work of weird fiction fails the reason for its failure is that the
author is innocent of the emotional states and experiences that are necessary if one is to
conjure a sense of the weird in the reader. Without question, Lovecraft was possessed of the
emotional states and experiences required for writing superb weird fiction. And it wouldnt
be going out on a limb to surmise that they were indicative of an unhealthy psychology in
Lovecrafts case. In fact, I would say that to be a successful weird writer, it cant hurt to be
afflicted with one mental ailment or another. There are numerous cases in which weird fiction
writers suffered from some pathology, and when the pathology isnt the stuff of legend as
in the instance of Poe it may be something that has simply never been exposed. Personally,
Im utterly perplexed why anyone would want to write weird fiction without being at least
a little over the edge, if not a basket case. Of course, it may be that there are no such
individuals. Ultimately, I dont think its a matter of weird fiction that fails as it is of weird
fiction that differs in type and is not to a given readers taste. (One factor that contributes to
a liking for one weird writer over another is prose style, a characteristic that has made
Lovecraft a favorite for some and a joke for others.) Certain weird writers are obviously
preoccupied by obsessions that mean nothing to others. Nevertheless, the all-important
ingredient in every weird writer is that of having been born in the vicinity of mental
institutions the world over. This line of argument is naturally subject to dispute. My opinion
is based on personal emotional states and experiences that seem conspicuous to me in my
fellow weird writers.
WFR: Frankly, The Town Manager is one of dozens of stories from you we could have
included in The Weird. What drew us to it in part was a kind of dark sense of humor
underlying the story, possibly better expressed as absurdism rather than humor. Do you
see any of your stories as humorous, albeit in a dark way?
Ligotti: Im quite aware of the humor not only in my stories but also in the stories of many
authors I admire. Nabokovs fiction is uniformly comic, although the endings of his stories
and novels are usually grim, sad, or spooky in some way. The same could be said of Gogol,
who was a big influence on Nabokov. Stories like The Overcoat and The Nose are comic
nightmares. Bruno Schulz wrote highly weird stories in which humor was essential and
natural. In the work of all three of these authors humor was organic to their purpose. It wasnt
an element injected into a given narrative in order to provide laughs in the manner of a low-
budget horror movie. In contrast, Poe wrote some stories that were intended to be purely
comical. These he designated as grotesques. His weird stories, which called arabesques,
are always serious from beginning to end. Some critics would call them self-serious or
parodic of the Gothic fiction of the day. Lovecraft also made a strict distinction between the
few humorous pieces he wrote and his weird fiction. I like to think that the kind of humor in
my own stories is integral to their weirdness. But at the time of writing, Im not consciously
trying to produce a concoction of humor and weirdness (or horror or the uncanny). Even
though Im writing a weird story, I want it to be all of a piece. I wouldnt want anything
humorous in the story to undermine the story as a whole, which is definitely not supposed
to funny.

WFR: Is there such a thing as too weird? What does too weird mean to you when
someone says it about your own work?
Ligotti: When someone says that something Ive written is too weird, I take it to mean that
they didnt enjoy what they read. Why else would someone who likes weird fiction consider
a story too weird? I do my best to make my stories work on two levels. On a superficial level,
I want to tell an enjoyable weird story. On a deeper level, I want to write a story that is
enigmatic in the way I mentioned above. The example I gave was Poes Tell-Tale Heart.
Another story by Poe that works on two levels is The Fall of the House of Usher. On first
reading, this story seems to make all the sense in the world. But the more you think about it,
the more you say to yourself, What the hell was that story about? Its on the first level that
I think a story of mine might be considered too weird. Ive had people write to me and ask
what some part of a story was supposed to mean. This usually has to do with the deeper level
of a story. Sometimes, though, I realize that I could have given more clarity to either the
superficial or the deeper level of the story. Nevertheless, its still possible to write
a hypnotically appealing story without the reader understanding it either literally or
symbolically. Think of Kafka. And the whole of Bruno Schulzs output consists of stories
like this. Over the past few years, Ive had the good fortune to revise the stories of my first
three collections. And while many of the changes were technical or stylistic, I also altered
some stories to emphasize their sense in part or as a whole. I remember reading that T.E.D.
Klein rewrote his great novella The Events at Poroth Farm every time it was reprinted,
which was often. Ramsey Campbell said the same thing about revising whole collections of
his stories, at least the early collections, when they were reprinted. Then, of course, theres
the striking case of Henry James, who rewrote thirty-five volumes for the definitive edition of
his works. And speaking of Henry James, Jorge Luis Borges once wrote: I have visited some
literatures of the East and West; I have compiled an encyclopedic anthology of fantastic
fiction; I have translated Kafka, Melville, and Bloy; I know of no stranger work than that of
Henry James. If nothing else, Borges makes the case that weirdness is in the mind of the
beholder. Who else but Borges would say that he knew of no stranger work than that of
Henry James? On the other hand, if you think of Jamess Turn of the Screw, you may begin
to understand what Borges means. To my mind, its impossible to read this novella without
thinking that James somehow botched the narrative in such a way that from the time it was
published in 1898 to the present, no reader or critic has been able to produce a universally
credible reading of it. I analyzed and annotated every page of Turn of the Screw and went
away defeated. I think that says it all regarding stories that someone might consider too
weird. That is, unless one wants to get into the fiction of the Symbolists, the Futurists, the
Surrealists, or any number of modern and post-modern writers.
WFR: Whats the weirdest piece of fiction, story or novel, that youve ever read? Why?
Ligotti: The weirdest stories Ive ever read composed the collection Hollow Faces, Merciless
Moons (1977) by William Scott Home. The prose is so complex and recondite that its all but
unreadable, much like that of Clark Ashton Smith. Furthermore, Homes narratives are
baffling and sometime barely comprehensible, somewhat in the manner of Robert Aickman.
For a while I thought that Home was either an inexpert writer or a mental case. Then I found
an essay by him in a festschrift devoted to Lovecraft called HPL. The essay was lucid and
insightful. I forgot the title, but I included it in a compilation of criticism on Lovecraft when
I was working on a series of books called Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism for Gale
Research (now Gale Cenage). Its in volume 4 or 22.
Weirdfictionreview.com: Can you give us a list of five or so overlooked or
underappreciated weird writers, from any era, that readers should really take the time to
discover?
Thomas Ligotti: A Kayak Full of Ghosts: Eskimo Tales, ed. Lawrence Millman (I know that
the title of this book makes it seem an unlikely compilation of excellent weird stories, but it
is. I wrote a review of it for The New York Review of Science Fiction.)
Garden, Ashes by Danilo Ki (Ki called Bruno Schulz his god, so if you like the latter
author, you should investigate this unconventional novel by a major Serbian writer.)
The Fashionable Tiger by Jean Ferry in The Custom-House of Desire: A Half-Century of
Surrealist Stories, ed. J. H. Matthews (Ferrys story is an example of a crossover between
Surrealism and the uncanny. Most of the narrative is told in a matter-of-fact, rather banal
prose style that characterizes foreign works of the weird.)
The Colonels Photograph by Eugne Ionesco in The Colonels Photograph, and Other
Stories. (The Colonels Photograph told in a matter-of-fact, rather banal prose style is
linked in its bizarre, all but inscrutable events to Ionescos The Killer, a key play of the
Theater of the Absurd. Both works convey a feeling of what might be called dream terror,
that is, an inexplicable sense of a weird presence or set of circumstances. In his life, Ionesco
was an anguished individual who felt that human existence was nothing but alienation, fear,
and general misery.)
The Beelzebub Sonata by Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz (Witkiewicz wrote philosophical
novels and plays. He is best-known for the latter, and any one of his plays consists of
a bizarre ensemble of characters who collectively express a nightmarish vision of the
demonic and the nihilistic.)
The Magicians Garden, and Other Stories (also published as Opium, and Other Stories) by
Gza Csth (Among his other accomplishments, Csth was a short story writer and
a psychiatrist. His stories often feature a similar mix of cruelly demented characters and
morbid atmosphere associated with the tales of Edgar Allan Poe. Csth was addicted to
morphine, opium, and sex. He committed suicide by taking poison not long after he shot and
killed his wife.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
# Apr 2, 2013
Fiction
The Society Tiger
Jean Ferry
Jean Ferry (1906 1974) was primarily a screenwriter,
best known for his collaborations with Clouzot, Buuel, Louis Malle, and Georges Franju.
A satrap of the College of Pataphysics, he was known in his time as the greatest specialist in
the works of Prousts neighbor Raymond Roussel. His only book of fantastical tales, The
Engineer, was published in 1953 and recently brought back into print by ditions Finitude.
Andre Breton is said to have taken Ferrys wife Lila as the inspiration for his book LAmour
fou, and he called The Society Tiger, originally published in 1947, the most sensationally
new poetical text I have read in a long while. Thomas Ligotti, in his interview on WFR.com
lists The Society Tiger among his top under-appreciated weird stories. Readers in French
can find the story in a new edition of Ferrys fiction from Finitude, featuring 20 original
collages by Claude Ballar.
This story was originally reprinted here at WFR.com in November of 2011, in our first week
of operation, and the storys translator, Edward Gauvin, has recently updated and revised his
translation to this current form. The Editors
* * *
Of all the music hall acts as stupidly dangerous to public and performers alike, none fills me
with such supernatural horror as that old number known as the Society Tiger. For those
who havent seen it since the new generation knows nothing of the great music halls from
between the wars I shall recall this hoop-jumping spectacle. What I can neither explain nor
attempt to convey is the state of panicked terror and abject disgust into which this display
plunges me, as if into suspect and fearfully frigid water. I should simply avoid theatres where
this increasingly rare number still figures on the bill. Easier said than done. For reasons that
have always remained murky to me, the Society Tiger is never announced, I never expect
it, or rather, I do an obscure, barely expressed menace weighs on the pleasure I take from
the music hall. Though a sigh of relief may lighten my heart after the evenings final
attraction, I know but too well the fanfare and ritual announcing that number always
performed, I repeat, as if impromptu. As soon as the orchestra starts in on that brassy, ever-
so-typical waltz, I know what is about to happen; a crushing weight squeezes my chest, and
I feel the live wire of fear between my teeth like a sour, low-voltage current. I should go, but
I no longer dare. Besides, no one is moving, no one else shares my anxiety, and I know the
beast is already on its way. It also seems the arms of my seat are protecting me, but how
feebly
First, the theater is plunged into utter darkness. Then a spotlight comes up on the apron, and
the beam of that pathetic beacon comes to illumine an empty loge, usually quite close to my
seat. Quite close. From there, this pencil of light seeks out a door to the wings at the end of
the promenade gallery, and while the orchestras horns dramatically tackle into Invitation to
the Waltz, they enter.
The tamer is a heartrending redhead, a bit weary-looking. The only weapon she bears is
a black ostrich fan, whose plumes at first hide the lower half of her face; only her great green
eyes show over the dark fringe of undulating waves. A plunging neckline, bare arms
iridescent in the light as if in the mists of winter dusk, the tamer is sheathed tightly in
a romantic evening gown, a strange gown with a heavy sheen, black as the deepest depths.
The gown is cut from an incredibly supple and delicate fur. Atop it all, hair of flame spangled
with golden stars erupts in cascades. The whole thing is at once oppressive and slightly
comical. But who would think to laugh? The tamer, toying with her fan, reveals pure lips
frozen in a smile, and advances, followed by the spotlights beam, toward the empty loge
on the tigers arm, as it were.
The tiger walks in a fairly human fashion on its two hind legs; he is suited up as a dandy of
a refined elegance, and this suit is so perfectly tailored that its hard to make out, beneath the
gray flared slacks, the flowered waistcoat, the blindingly white jabot with its flawless ruffles,
and the frock coat fitted by a masters hand, the body of the animal beneath. But there is the
head, with its appalling rictus, the crazed eyes rolling in their crimson sockets, the furious
bristle of whiskers, and the fangs that sometimes glitter under curled lips. The tiger advances
quite stiffly, holding a light gray hat in the crook of his left arm. The tamer walks with
a measured step, and if sometimes she arches her lower back, if her bare arm tenses, showing
unexpected muscle under the tawny velvet of her skin, it is because she has just made
a violent, hidden effort to straighten her suitor, about to fall forward.
Here they are at the door to the loge, which the society tiger swats open before stepping aside
to let the lady through. And once she has taken her seat, even nonchalantly set an elbow on
the worn plush, the tiger drops himself into a chair beside her. At this point, the room usually
bursts into blissful applause. And I I watch the tiger, wanting to be somewhere else so
badly I could cry. The tamer gives a noble greeting with a nod of her controlled blaze. The
tiger goes to work, handling props laid out expressly in the loge. He pretends to study the
audience through an opera-glass; lifting the lid from a box of bonbons, he pretends to offer
some to his companion. He pulls out a silk handkerchief, which he pretends to sniff; he
pretends, to the great amusement of one and all, to consult the program. Then he acts the
gallant and, leaning toward the tamer, pretends to murmur some declaration in her ear. The
tamer pretends to take offense and, between the pale satin of her beautiful cheek and the
beasts stinking snout sown with saber blades, coquettishly raises the fragile screen of her
feather fan. At this, the tiger pretends to fall into despair, and wipes his eyes with the back of
a furred paw. And all throughout this lugubrious pantomime, my heart beats fit to tear inside
my ribcage, for I alone see, I alone know that this whole tasteless charade hangs by but
a miracle of willpower, as they say; that we are all in a state of horrifically precarious balance
the merest trifle could shatter. What would happen if, in the loge beside the tigers, that little
man with the look of a lowly office worker, that little man with pallid skin and tired eyes,
should for so much as a moment stop wanting? For he is the true tamer; the woman with her
red curls is but a figurehead. Everything depends on him; he is the one who makes a puppet
of the tiger, an automaton more tightly bound than by cables of steel.
But if that little man should suddenly start thinking about something else? If he died? No one
suspects the potential danger of every passing moment. And I who know, I imagine,
I imagine but no, better not to imagine what the lady in furs would look like if Better to
watch the end of the number, which always ravishes and reassures the public. The tamer asks
if someone in the audience would like to entrust her with a child. Who could refuse anyone so
charming? Theres always some unthinking woman wholl tender, toward that demonic loge,
a delighted baby, which the tiger cradles gently in the hollow of its folded paws, turning
a drunkards eyes on the little fleshly morsel. In a great thunder of applause, the theatre fills
with light, the baby is returned to its rightful owner, and the two partners take a bow before
exiting the way they came.
As soon as theyve passed through the door they never come back for an encore the
orchestra erupts into its most deafening fanfares. Shortly after, the little man wilts into his
seat, mopping his brow. And the orchestra plays louder and louder, to cover the roaring of the
tiger, itself again once past the bars of its cage. It howls like hell itself, rolls around shredding
its handsome clothes, which must be replaced at every show. Vociferations, tragic
imprecations of desperate rage, furious and devastating leaps against the sides of its cell. On
the other side of the bars, the false tamer hurriedly undresses so as not to miss the last metro.
The little man awaits her in the bistro by the station, the one called The Great Never.
However distant they sound, the hurricane of howls unleashed by the tiger tangled up in
ribbons of fabric might leave an unpleasant impression on the public. That is why the
orchestra plays the Fidelio Overture with all its might; thats why the stage manager, in the
wings, hurries the burlesque bicyclists onstage.
I hate the society tiger number, and I will never understand the pleasure the public takes in it.
(Original French publication in book form: Le Mcanicien, Gallimard, 1953; repr. Finitude,
2010)