At this point, the attentive reader may have begun to think that I am confusing categories in my argument. Supernatural realism, the reader might say, is a stylistic approach, whereas Lovecraft’s weird-fictional ideal of evoking mood is a fundamental authorial motivation, prior to and separate from the selection of a literary style. In other words, supernatural realism was merely one of several stylistic vehicles that he employed in pursuit of his emotional goal, and therefore to oppose the two is to commit a category error. In my defense, I do not think I have committed this error, because what I have been attempting to show is precisely that primacy of his emotional motivation for writing stories at all. My point is not that his stories can be discretely divided into “mood-based” ones and supernatural realist ones, but simply that he was more emotionally invested in the idea of writing stories to convey ethereal moods than he was intellectually invested in the idea of writing stories to create a convincing air of realism or to offer a coherent explanation or reconciliation of supernatural motifs. When he reached middle age and began to take stock of his writing, he felt that the work he had produced prior to adopting the realist approach had more successfully achieved and fulfilled his emotional goals. And in this opinion, he is at one with Ligotti.
Nor does this identity of opinion stop there. Although an author’s assessment of his or her own work should not always be taken as valid, it is a telling fact that Ligotti’s opinion about Lovecraft’s fiction echoes that of Lovecraft himself. Late in life, Lovecraft maintained that he regarded “The Music of Erich Zann” and “The Colour out of Space,” each of which in its respective way defies the conventions of supernatural realism by leaving the narrative’s central horror utterly unexplained, as his most successful stories. Of course, Joshi, too, admires “The Colour out of Space,” specifically—and oddly, in light of his criticism of “The Music of Erich Zann”—for the way it “captures the atmosphere of inexplicable horror” perhaps more effectively than any of Lovecraft’s other stories (Joshi 1996, 420). Ligotti, for his part, has said of this story that he admires the way it “delineat[es] a condition of pervasive strangeness and unease,” the achievement of which is necessary for his enjoyment of horror fiction (Schweitzer 27). So on this point, regarding this story, Ligotti and Joshi are in agreement. But we have already seen that Joshi holds reservations about what he perceives as the possible overuse of underexplanation in Lovecraft’s “The Music of Erich Zann,” whereas for Ligotti the same story serves almost as an Ur-type template.
The overarching point that I have been laboring to make through all of this is that Ligotti’s sense of identification with Lovecraft is so profound, and their sensibilities are so closely aligned, that the two of them even share Lovecraft’s self-opinion as a writer, no matter whether this clashes with the expressed opinions of the world’s foremost Lovecraft scholar or anyone else. If this seems an overstatement, I will at least argue for the heuristic value of the idea by pointing out that Ligotti’s position enables him to offer an explanation for Lovecraft’s late-in-life lament about his self-perceived failure to realize his authorial goals. The answer is really quite simple: Lovecraft’s experimentation with supernatural realism may have produced the stories that he has become most known for, but they failed to satisfy him as much as his earlier work had done. For both Lovecraft and Ligotti, these later stories failed to approach the same summit of suggestive horror, and failed to capture and express the same delicate emotions, that his earlier ones had achieved, and thus both men prefer the earlier work to the later. Thus it was natural for Lovecraft to claim at the age of forty-five that he was farther from producing the work he wanted to produce than he had been at twenty-five. But Joshi can only be baffled by the claim and call it an “astonishing assertion” (Joshi 2000). Or perhaps (and this is more likely) he fully understands Lovecraft’s subjective reasons for saying such a thing, but still finds it astonishing because he considers the stories from Lovecraft’s supernatural realist period to be patently superior, meaning more significant, meaningful, and mature, than the earlier ones. In any event, the question here is not that of the objective literary value of Lovecraft’s pre- or post-1926 work, but of the way that he, along with Ligotti, felt about such things. And the answer is clear.
Perhaps most telling of all, in the same letter where he averred that a serious weird tale sets out to be “a picture of a mood,” Lovecraft reflected on his then-current approach to fiction writing and expressed confusion over the most effective way to achieve his goals: “I’m pretty well burned out in the lines I’ve been following . . . that’s why I’m experimenting around for new ways to capture the moods I wish to depict.” He specifically classifies “The Thing on the Doorstep” and “The Shadow out of Time,” both of which he had written in his realist mode, as counting among these “experiments,” and asserts, “Nothing is really ‘typical’ of my efforts at this stage. I’m simply casting about for better ways to crystallise and capture certain strong impressions . . . which persist in clamouring for expression.” Then he makes a most interesting statement: “Perhaps the case is hopeless— that is, I may be experimenting in the wrong medium altogether. It may be that poetry instead of fiction is the only effective vehicle to put such expression across” (SL 5.199).
In this same vein, only a month after writing the letter to Price from which I have quoted extensively above, he wrote Price another one in which he disparaged his own earlier work, lamented the influence of pulp fiction on his thought process and therefore writing style, and then hinted indirectly, and tantalizingly, that he was groping toward yet another shift in his writing. And in this second expression of dissatisfaction, he made it clear that his lament from a month earlier referred not only to the quality of his work, but to its very form. “[F]iction,” he stated, “is not the medium for what I really want to do” (emphases in original). But regarding the type of writing he did want to do, he expressed confusion: “(Just what the right medium would be, I don’t know—perhaps the cheapened and hackneyed term ‘prose-poem’ would hint in the general direction)” (SL 5.230). Lovecraft, we will recall, had already written four prose poems earlier in his career: “Memory,” “Ex Oblivione,” “Nyarlathotep,” and “What the Moon Brings.” In keeping with the conventions of the form, each of these pieces is characterized by a poetic, dreamlike tone and an atmosphere of unabashed surrealism. In fact, we might anachronistically describe his prose poems as some of the most Ligottian things he ever wrote.
This is a clue worth following. Certainly, Ligotti himself has made extensive use of the prose poem form, or something resembling it, in what Joshi has described as “the vignettes, prose poems, sketches and fragments that so far [as of 1993] constitute the bulk of his output.” It was Ligotti’s repeated use of this semi-fragmentary form that led Joshi, with his preference for supernatural realism, to say that Ligotti “will, I believe, have to start writing more stories—as opposed to [prose poems etc.]—if he is to gain preëminence in the field” (Joshi 2003, 152). Regardless of Joshi’s judgment here, are we perhaps justified in speculating, based on the considerations already offered, that the different medium and/or style for which Lovecraft was blindly groping; the one that would have expressed to his satisfaction the poignant and powerful subjective impressions and imaginings that had dominated his life; the one that would have given him the same sense of creative fulfillment that his early works gave him in retrospect—are we perhaps justified in speculating that this new type of writing which he unsuccessfully sought to conceive may be found today in the works of Thomas Ligotti?
In pursuit of this idea, let us consider Ligotti’s metafiction “Notes on the Writing of Horror,” which stands as his quintessential statement on matters of literary style as they relate to the horror story. In this tour de force, he expresses, through the voice of the narrator, his thoughts about the various styles or “techniques” available to horror writers. These are, he says, essentially three in number. First is the realistic technique, which i
s simply another name for conventional supernatural realism. The description that he gives would serve well as a textbook definition: “The supernatural and all it represents, is profoundly abnormal, and therefore unreal. . . . Now the highest aim of the realistic horror writer is to prove, in realistic terms, that the unreal is real.” The second technique is the traditional gothic technique, which places characters and plotlines in a recognizably gothic-fantastic setting and can therefore dispense with the strictures of realism by, for example, employing an “inflated rhetoric” that would seem hysterical in a more realistic context. Third is the experimental technique, which a writer adopts when the first two would fail to tell the story rightly, and which is defined by the writer’s “simply following the story’s commands to the best of his human ability. . . . [L]iterary experimentalism is simply the writer’s imagination, or lack of it, and feeling, or absence of same, thrashing their chains around in the escape-proof dungeon of the words of the story” (SDD 104, 108– 9, 110–11). By way of example, Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu” and Ligotti’s “The Frolic” may be cited as instances of the realistic technique. Lovecraft’s “The Outsider” and Ligotti’s “The Tsalal” may be cited as instances of the traditional gothic technique. For the experimental technique, it is more difficult to pin down a Lovecraft story. Probably his prose poems are the best ones to single out, and perhaps “The Music of Erich Zann,” which also qualifies as gothic. For Ligotti, so many stories fall into the experimental category that it is impractical to list them here. Examples include “Dr. Voke and Mr. Veech,” “The Night School,” “Mad Night of Atonement,” “The Red Tower,” the entire contents of “The Notebook of the Night” (the final section of his collection Noctuary), and the chapbook Sideshow and Other Stories.
Given Ligotti’s assertion that a writer adopts experimentalism when the more traditional styles prove inadequate, we might speculate that it was this style that Lovecraft had in mind when he was searching for a new means of expression. Statements he made around the same general period that might seem to contradict this idea by cementing him firmly and exclusively in the role of scientific realist, such as his late-1936 claim to Fritz Leiber that one of his “cardinal principles regarding weird fiction” had always been the idea that “an air of absolute realism should be preserved (as if one were preparing an actual hoax instead of a story) except in the one limited field where the writer has chosen to depart . . . from the order of objective reality” (SL 5.342), may be taken simply as one more sign of the confusion he was then experiencing over stylistic matters, since it was this very approach that he had been expressing frequent and severe doubts over, almost to the point of repudiating it, during the preceding months. Moreover, his words to Leiber are perhaps doubly suspect since they echo sentiments he had expressed three years earlier in “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction,” where he had counseled prospective weird fiction writers to “be sure that all references throughout the story are thoroughly reconciled with the final design” since “Inconceivable events and conditions have a special handicap to overcome, and this can be accomplished only through the maintenance of a careful realism in every phase of the story except that touching on the one given marvel” (MW 114, 115). Throughout literary history, the descriptions that writers have given of their own compositional and creative processes, and also, especially, the prescriptions they have offered to other writers based upon these, have proven notoriously unreliable, in that these writers have not really practiced what they preach, or have not done so as casually and easily as they make it appear. It almost seems as if the principles and points where writers present the greatest appearance of self-assurance are those where they should be most carefully interrogated, since these are the areas where they privately experience the greatest doubt and confusion. What we have already seen from Lovecraft should indicate that his words in “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction” and in the letter to Leiber are no exception to this rule, since they resound with a dogmatic certitude that conceals a very real, deep, and sincere uncertainty.
Having said all this, it may not be experimentalism alone that Lovecraft, or even Ligotti, was/is reaching for. In “Notes on the Writing of Horror,” Ligotti/the narrator makes brief mention of “another style” that would supersede and obliterate all others. In order to do full justice to the story of Nathan, the protagonist whose example story he has been taking through permutations of the three standard styles, Ligotti/the narrator says he “wanted to employ a style that would conjure all the primordial powers of the universe independent of the conventional realities of the Individual, Society, or Art. I aspired toward nothing less than a pure style without style, a style having nothing whatsoever to do with the normal or abnormal, a style magic, timeless, and profound . . . and one of great horror, the horror of a god” (SDD 112). In other words, he was trying to burst the bonds of the written word (which recalls the narrator’s thoughts in “Nethescurial”) by writing a horror story that presented pure horror, the pristine experience in and of itself, on a veritably cosmic-divine level, and that would therefore be able to invade the reader’s experience and become, instead of just a story on a page, his or her existential reality. The attempt failed, of course, because it was necessarily founded upon the very unreality (of the world of fiction) that it was attempting to overcome. That is, the whole idea was a categorical impossibility. But the passion behind it was and is real in the minds of both the narrator and Ligotti himself, and also, I think, in the mind of Lovecraft, whose passionate desire to give literary expression to his deepest emotions, and thereby to affect his readers deeply, at least equaled that of his successor.
Speaking of categorical impossibilities, the idea that I have been advancing—that the different form of writing the middle-aged Lovecraft inchoately desired to produce may have been the very form of writing that Ligotti is producing today, and that both may have ultimately longed to write in an impossible godlike style—is of course a categorically unverifiable conjecture. It is also a somewhat outlandish one, and I fear that the very articulating of it may seem extravagant. But for all that, I still feel that it is a worthwhile possibility to consider, if only for the way it illuminates the writings of both men.
And having considered them together, as literary soulmates, it is now time to recognize their differences.
III. Lovecraft and Ligotti, sui generis
It should be obvious by now that in stating Lovecraft’s authorial ideal as “the use of maximum suggestion and minimal explanation to evoke a sense of supernatural terrors and wonders,” Ligotti was stating his own ideal as well. And this ought to lead us to suspect the objective validity of his judgment. In truth, it is probably the case that his understanding of Lovecraft is too strongly colored by his personal feelings to qualify as objective, and that it is Joshi, the scholar, and not Ligotti, the literary artist, who can validly lay claim to the most technically accurate assessment. For my own part, in poring over Ligotti’s essays and interviews, I have gathered the impression that his response to Lovecraft, and in particular his sense of identification with Lovecraft’s worldview, has been so intense that it has led him to impute too much of himself to his idol. In other words, he has to a certain extent reimagined Lovecraft in his own image.
A pertinent example of this can be seen in his descriptive analyses of Lovecraft’s nightmare vision of reality, which are, in my opinion, entirely Ligottian, but not entirely Lovecraftian. My own reading of Lovecraft has given me the impression that while he was entirely serious about the cosmic despair and philosophical concerns that undergird his stories, he did not experience precisely the same kind of existential torture and cosmic-ontological nightmare that characterizes Ligotti’s fictional world and personal life. Lovecraft, it seems to me, was emotionally and intellectually focused on the horror of “cosmic outsideness,” of vast outer spaces and the mind-shattering powers and principles that may hold sway there, and that may occasionally impinge upon human reality and reveal its pathetic fragili
ty. Even a minimal knowledge of his biography leads to the conclusion that this was an entirely appropriate focus for him, given his infatuation with, and wide-ranging knowledge of, astronomy in particular and natural science in general. The same personal interests also indicate that his forays into supernatural realism were far from being a waste, since they utilized a definite portion of his knowledge and side of his character that otherwise would have languished in muteness.
Ligotti, by contrast, seems focused more upon the horror of deep insideness, of the dark, twisted, transcendent truths and mysteries that reside within consciousness itself and find their outward expression in scenes and situations of warped perceptions and diseased metaphysics. As with Lovecraft and his own idiosyncratic themes, these themes are characteristically Ligotti‘s, characteristically Ligottian through and through, and they have grown out of his life. Whereas Lovecraft was passionately interested in astronomy, chemistry, New England history and architecture, and many other subjects that found their ways into his fictional writings, Ligotti’s “outside” interests include the literature of pessimism, the composing and playing of music, and the study of religion and spirituality, especially in its mystical or nondual aspect.2 Thus the idiosyncrasies of his typical style and themes are as natural and expectable as were Lovecraft’s.
Importantly, despite their significant differences, the Ligottian and Lovecraftian brands of horror do exhibit manifest family resemblances. It may even be that they represent opposite poles on the same continuum, with Lovecraft’s outer, transcendent, cosmic focus and Ligotti’s inner, immanent, personal one finding their mutual confirmation and fulfillment in each other. But the really important thing to notice is that the distinction between Lovecraft’s and Ligotti’s respective horrific visions, combined with a recognition of their underlying kinship, helps to answer our original question about Ramsey Campbell’s reasons, in that introduction to Songs of a Dead Dreamer, for mentioning in the same breath both Ligotti’s separateness from and perceptible relationship to Lovecraft.
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