Il nesso spettrale

by Thomas Ligotti, Luca Fusari (Translator)

Con gli occhi chiusi, il mondo appare diverso: minuscoli umanoidi escono dalle loro tane, a bordo di inquietanti giocattoli, riappropriandosi delle stanze che sono state loro negate; misteriosi esseri mutanti rivelano antichi segreti in lingue sconosciute; le ossessioni e i deliri dei folli diventano indistinguibili dalle lucide ragioni degli assennati; il reale e l’indicibile si fondono l’uno nell’altro. Storie che sono allegorie, finzioni che rivelano verità sull’esistenza da cui vorremmo fuggire: con Il nesso spettrale Thomas Ligotti ci spinge ancora una volta a confrontarci con «la realtà stessa, o con ciò che passa per la realtà», con i suoi vuoti incolmabili e con le disturbanti maschere che dobbiamo indossare per sostenere lo sguardo dell’abisso.

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Fiction, Weird Fiction, The United States Of America, American, Lovecraftian

112 pages, Paperback

First published June 29, 2014

About the author

Thomas Ligotti is a contemporary American horror author and reclusive literary cult figure. His writings, while unique in style, have been noted as major continuations of several literary genres—most prominently Lovecraftian horror—and have overall been described as works of "philosophical horror", often written as philosophical novels with a "darker" undertone which is similar to gothic fiction. The Washington Post called him "the best kept secret in contemporary horror fiction"; another critic declared "It's a skilled writer indeed who can suggest a horror so shocking that one is grateful it was kept offstage."

Reviews

[BlackOxford · Rating 5 out of 5]

An All-New Context

Salvation is the pervasive neurosis of the Western world - that everything will work out just fine. It’s religious genesis from Judaism to Christianity and hence to Islam is obvious enough. But its secularised versions - from the political ideologies and terrorisms of the right and the left to the self-help and self-improvement programmes of entrepreneurial intellectuals - have become even more pervasive, and destructive, as global society has tried to shed its religious roots. The slogans have changed from those involving redemption from sin and the alleviation of spiritual misery to the functionally equivalent clichés of being the best you can be and improving the world. All rely on the fallacious presumption of human perfectibility which is thought to be achievable either through concerted effort or with divine assistance.

That such salvation is the most obvious aim of the 20th century’s most popularly embraced form of neurosis - psychotherapy - is not something one typically discusses in polite company. Which of course is precisely the reason Ligotti writes about it. Being a human being makes us defective as such. The industry that has emerged in response to this recognition has one central function, that is, to convince us that our defects are reparable, that we are able, if we work very hard and pay a great deal of money, to become whole, truly human, productive, loveable, and valued as much as we think we ought to be. In other words, we will achieve “the condition of being ‘saved’—that is, of having no need to fret over the plight of human existence.”

Salvation means in short that all our problems will be solved. Worry will disappear as the purely mental construct it is. We can either presume there is light at the end of the metaphysical tunnel and work our way toward it, or we can be demoralised by the misery, squalor and pain that surrounds us. Most of us don’t want to think through our position at all and so settle for someone telling us where to go next. We let someone else think the big thoughts. That’s why they get paid the big bucks. We are merely along for the ride. This way we avoid “terminal demoralisation,” the modern firm of eternal damnation.

Just occasionally, metaphysical mutants like Ligotti show up, however. They create a sort of metaphysical upheaval, an all-new context, by pointing out that salvation in all its historical forms is utter bunk (as if we needed more than Donald Trump to make the case decisively). “Question: How could we know we were keeping certain truths from ourselves regarding how things truly are in this world at its deepest level? Answer: Because we have done it before.” This is, of course, unpalatable. But it might be considered a form of redemptive demoralisation, an unofficial license to end it all... or at least to stop spending money on shrinks. There are things worse than doom.

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

On April Fool’s day 2012, Thomas Ligotti—who had been writhing on the floor, waiting for the ambulance—was transported to a local hospital for emergency diverticulitis surgery. In a 2014 conversation with Jon Padgett, he recalls “lying on a gurney outside of the radiology department while I screamed for help or euthanasia,” before “being slit open in a couple directions.” Ligotti’s reaction to this traumatic episode? He felt “revitalized” and began to write again after a ten year period of silence.

A strange reaction? If you know Thomas Ligotti, not so much. Ligotti is a man profoundly alienated both from himself and his environment, who believes birth is a mistake and suicide a virtue, and who views himself either as a changeling or a fiction in a half-world filled with puppets and dreams. It is difficult for him to enter into the shadows far enough to engage his own nightmares, and he speculates that “the traumatic events I had undergone swung me into the hypomanic phase of my bipolar disorder.”

Whatever the explanation, Ligotti fans should be grateful for this “revitalization,” for it led to the writing of the two short novellas which make up the entire contents of this volume. Both feature narrators who resemble Ligotti, each of whom is telling his story to some kind of therapist. Metaphysica Morum focuses inward on the self, nightmare and suicide; The Small People focuses outward toward the shadow world, hallucination and murder.

The bottom line? Each tale is distinctively Ligotti, worthy of inclusion in his body of work, and somewhat better than My Work is Not Yet Done, his last major fictional effort. Yet neither tale achieves what the best Ligotti stories accomplish: disorienting the reader until he participates in the hallucination, until he enters into the nightmare.

[Jack Tripper · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The Small People," one of the two novelettes contained herein, is not just my favorite Ligotti story of all-time, but one of the very best pieces of fiction I've ever read, and I've revisited it every year since I first bought this mini-collection back in 2015. It's beautiful, haunting, weird-as-hell, and (somewhat unique for Ligotti) quite emotionally moving. And it freaked the shit out of me.

It's narrated in the first person by a possibly mentally ill man to his doctor. He recounts his lifelong fear and hatred of "the small people," these little doll-like humanoids who build their fake-looking, movie set-like communities wherever they please, encroaching on normal towns, and yet the man is baffled by the fact that no one talks about them, his family always calling him a "shameful little bigot" when he'd bring up his revulsion of them as a kid. He can't even find any info in the library on them, almost as if the small people are an aspect of the world that people just choose not to see. But he does find a friend (as a child) who hates them even more. I shouldn't say more.

This tale is rarely mentioned as being among Ligotti's best, but that's probably due to the relative obscurity of The Spectral Link compared to his major collections. In my opinion, it's his masterpiece, and had Ligotti not collapsed from severe abdominal pain due to diverticulitis in 2012, he may have never written it. He hadn't written anything in years, but this event and subsequent emergency surgery supposedly reawakened his creativity, at least for a short while. Here's hoping he has another crisis like this in the near future. Not really. It's just such a powerful and imaginative story, and I'd hate to think we may never get any more fiction from Ligotti.

The other story produced in the wake of this event, "Metaphysica Morum," is more mid-level Ligotti, imo. In other words, very good. Also a first-person narration, it details a man who considers himself a "metaphysical mutant," and tries to convince his therapist to euthanize him, only to slowly infect the doctor with his debilitating worldview. My favorite aspects of this one are the nightmares, or "dream occasions," the narrator relates to us, nightmares that start to bleed into the real world. It's been a while since I'd read this one, so my memory may need refreshing. Really I just wanted to say something about "The Small People" after having just read it for the fourth time in four years. It was long overdue.

5 Stars. (Okay, probably a 4.5 when averaging the two, but "The Small People" is somehow better than a 5. So there).

[Jon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful, wonderful book, and a welcome return for the Master of Horror. There are only two, long stories in this collection, but the quality of both of these tales is worth the cost and much more.

"Metaphysica Morum" is indeed highly unusual for Ligotti, but it's also beautifully and carefully crafted -- while being experimental and ambitious and often downright off-the-wall.

I don't think any other writer alive has Ligotti's talent for getting under the skin of the reader via "dream occasions" in his stories. "Metaphysica Morum" moves in and out of such modes, and "The Small People" is one, self-contained dream-tale, with its own peculiar dream-logic and dream-history.

"Metaphysica Morum" is horrific, chilling, hilarious, and altogether a powerhouse of creativity... just superb writing. The story shook me and kept me shaken up for hours afterward. "Metaphysica Morum"--upon several readings--has a disorienting effect on at least this reader, and it's fascinating how the dream-reality complete with Dealer and detailed instructions for the dreamer bleeds into the "real world" of the tale until there is no real difference between the dream occasion and the real ones.

Of extra special note are the singularly Ligottian phrases/words present in "Metaphysica Morum": "chain of galaxies showroom"; "an all-new context"; "metaphysical mutant(s)"; "dream occasions"; the use of "fix you/me up" not to mention the nefarious "Dealer"; various riffs on "demoralized" and "demoralization." The repetition of these words and phrases is used to hypnotic effect in the story, and that repetition worked on my mind, my emotions and my nerves to spectacular effect.

"The Small People" is one of the best short stories I've ever read -- utterly riveting and moving. It made me cry. With this one, Ligotti wrote the very story I've wanted to tell all my life (not for the first time): the old suspicion that everything is unreal and shabby -- little more than a cheap community theatre set. That thought has always haunted me, particularly during my childhood. And, further, the feeling that my parents were somehow to blame or at least part of the grand charade has been a suspicion ever since I was a kid listening to the murmuring of my parents in post-bedtime conversation and imagining them as giant preying mantis things hovering above my prone body, experimenting on me for unknown reasons. "The Small People" explores the idea of this kind of conspiracy, but with an epic twist that involves and implicates everyone and everything on the planet.

[Ajeje Brazov · Rating 2 out of 5]

Con un titolo di siffatta evocazione, con una illustrazione così evocativa quanto inquietante e, per chiudere il cerchio, scritto da un autore tra i più sbalorditivi che io abbia letto, negli ultimi anni, fra gli scrittori contemporanei del weird, mi aspettavo qualcosa di esplosivo, ma girata l'ultima pagina avrei voluto buttare il libricino dalla finestra!
Partiamo dall'inizio: il libro che ho appena finito di leggere trattasi di una raccolta di due simil-racconti, simil-autobiografici e simil-speculativi. E fin qui nulla di nuovo, almeno per uno che abbia già letto almeno un libro dell'autore. Poi, se prendiamo in considerazione la scrittura, ancora nulla di nuovo... è Ligotti, non ci sono dubbi. Infine, le storie... ecco che vengono i dolori. Seppur molto identificativi di Ligotti: psicosi, complotti, alienazione ecc..., però ho notato, in tutte le pagine che giravo inesorabilmente, che qualcosa stava andando per il verso "sbagliato". Non saprei come definirlo, un po' come quando guardi, cito un esempio a caso, una foglia ed invece di vederla per quello che è, la visione è costellata da una infinità di immagini distorte e sovrapposte.
Ecco, la lettura di questo libricino si è rivelata come un infinito delirio da eccesso di sostanze psicotrope, dove l'autore vaneggia a destra ed a manca. Sinceramente mi ha fritto il cervello, in senso negativo ovviamente.
Purtroppo, sono incappato nella prima delusione cocente con l'autore.
Ligo... alla prossima, magari meno però XP

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

"...aunque todos los indicios parecían indicar que lo que había experimentado era esencialmente real, lo real seguía siendo una suposición."

Qué manera de escribir!! Cada vez estoy más y más segura que con Ligotti sí tiene sentido decir, "Él tiene el don de la palabra". La forma en la que representa su visión, y nos la expone, es apabullante en muchos sentidos y pocas veces visto, leerlo es un disfrute total.

Las historias son misteriosas, mantienen expectante y están cargadas de una atmósfera oscura e inquietante que te hipnotiza por completo.

Con respecto a esta edición traducida(se agradece que traigan más de Ligotti), lamentablemente me encontré algunas frases mal redactadas, que lo más seguro fue error de tipeo, pero que entorpecieron la fluidez.

[☆LaurA☆ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Schegge di paranoia conficcate nella carne


༼ ༎ຶ ෴ ༎ຶ༽ ‧º·(˚ ˃̣̣̥⌓˂̣̣̥ )‧º·

(╥_╥) (ಥ ̯ ಥ)

¯\_( ͠° ͟ʖ °͠ )_/¯

Primo Ligotti e sono completamente confusa, in paranoia, non ho capito 'na mazza proprio.
Mi sa che non è il mio boccale di birra 😅

[Quentin Crisp · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not sure I'll have time to write a proper review for this.

I'm still finding the navigation on Goodreads a little idiosyncratic, and don't know whether, by writing this review, I am also wiping out the running commentary I was making on this book or not. If not, then that commentary will have to stand for the main body of the review.

I wasn't sure how to rate this - again, I hate star or number ratings, and the only reason I pander to them is because I don't want to give the impression I refuse to give stars because I dislike a book - largely because there seems to be a marked difference in quality between the first story and the second story here, and there are only two stories. I suppose I would give three stars to the first story, and four to the second. But two for the first story might be more accurate... It's hard to say.

Ligotti writes stories that evoke (this is just one way to describe them) a particular kind of psychedelic experience - the feeling of a creeping, sinister emptiness - and he does this exceedingly well. There's a psychedelic experience of everything being colourful, alive and eternally present, and there is one of everything being warped, stained, soggy, and eternally in decline. And the latter is the kind, of course, that we're talking about. Ligotti uses the word "crummy" as shorthand for this general sense of the world: he describes a crummy universe. A bargain bucket universe, you might say. (There was a YouTube channel called Everything Is Terrible, or something like that, which I used to watch, which, if it were more overtly macabre, might be a good reference point for such a universe. I can't find that channel now, so maybe I am misremembering the title, or maybe it was all a dream, etc.)

The second story in this volume, 'The Small People', is a particularly brilliant iteration of this general mode of expression, turning the whole uncanny valley effect, as it were, up to eleven.

There are one or two philosophical touches that I would consider dubious, but these are not as blatant as in the previous story, perhaps simply because they are more well-integrated. Therefore, I won't examine these here, as I've already made comments on the philosophy of 'Metaphysica Morum' (if those comments are extant).

Early on in reading this book, attempting in my own mind to describe the feeling Ligotti evokes, I hit upon the formula that in the Ligottian world it is as if what should have been avoidable has turned out to be inevitably unavoidable. I thought this was perhaps too vague and inexact a formula, but was then intrigued to find the line, near the end of 'The Small People', "And it didn't have to be that way." Contrast is needed - so some reference to a way things should or might have been - this is one of the laws of uncanny valley.

The ending of this second tale is very finely done. The protagonist is really - it seems to me - desperately in search of reason (he invokes "the real" near the end in the way that some might invoke God). It is - I think - the contrast implicit in the uncanny that makes him see a gleam of reason to reach for. The tale ends with a sense of that reason dissolving in his grasp, as, at best, he cannot get beyond relative truth or reason.

[Karl · Rating 5 out of 5]

A short small book containing 2 stories about forty pages each in length and a two page introduction.

It's new work from Thomas Ligotti! What more needs to be said. His ability to delight, enthrall, fascinate and confound through his manipulation of language is a joy to behold.

Your Doctor should proscribe this book.

[Heidi Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

I try and I try, but I just don't get Ligotti's stories. There, I've said it. I know he's one of the grandmasters, and massively influential, and yet . . ..

I don't exactly dislike him, but his brand of existential horror is just not for me. I don't find it scary, merely sort of dreary and enervating. Which is not to say I reject his nihilism -- in fact I agree with his philosophy in many of its particulars, and really enjoyed The Conspiracy Against the Human Race. But what was interesting in that context, often reads didactic in his fiction. Most disappointing of all is that Ligotti only rarely gives me the creeps.

That being said, there's no denying he writes beautifully, and his stories proceed to their gloomy conclusions with a dense, sinuous dream logic which sometimes reads like prose poetry. That alone is to be respected enough for three stars. And I will admit that "The Small People" riveted me in a most uncomfortable way, and discomfort is a key element in good horror. But I'm not sure my discomfort came from the drift into the shabby and uncanny, or from what felt a little like an apologia for xenophobia.

Please don't throw rocks at me.

[Vicente Ribes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Este breve libro incluye dos cuentos de Ligotti.
El primero se llama "Metaphysica Morum", y fue difícil leer algunos pasajes porque era muy metafórico y onírico.
El segundo cuento es uno de los mejores cuentos de Ligotti que he leído. La trama trata de un niño que está obsesionado con "la gente pequeña", unos seres parecidos a juguetes que nos rodean y le vuelven loco. La forma en que Ligotti describe a la gente pequeña y sus actos sin sentido es asombrosa y crea una gran atmósfera.
Ambos cuentos incluyen temas recurrentes de Ligotti como ideas suicidas, terapeutas, obsesiones y la imposibilidad de encontrar el sentido de la vida pero "La gente pequeña" es uno de los mejores cuentos de Ligotti y sólo por eso vale la pena leer este libro.
​

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

First, this book was unexpected. I thought we wouldn't see new Ligotti stories anymore, but here are two that have been freed from his mind by his recent medical trauma. My expectations for these two stories were already very high, and I'm happy to say the short book lived up to them.

"Metaphysica Morum" features the crumbling urban settings and mysterious authority figures present in much of Mr. Ligotti's past work, as well as the blending of oppressive dreams with the waking world. Ligotti can write these scenes like no one else, and I enjoyed feeling the murky disassociation his work so often gives me.

"The Small People" reminded me at times of an earlier Ligotti classic, "Gas Station Carnivals." Ligotti conveys the sense of something sinister going on right out in the open, but not being able to figure out just exactly what it is or what it means. And again, this gives me a particular queasy thrill that few other writers can produce. I have read some Michael Cisco in the years since the last crop of Ligotti stories were published, and at times "The Small People" also gave me a Ciscoian vibe.

Like many of Ligotti's stories, these two share a lot of similar elements. Mysterious doctors and illnesses, faceless institutions, the bleeding of one reality into another, and the repetition of key phrases make welcome appearances. At the same time, these stories have a slightly different feel to them than what has come before. This is to be expected -- Mr. Ligotti has had another decade and another medical crisis since his last stories, and it would be strange if these two stories weren't a little different.

[M Griffin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A highly competent and focused literary achievement to be sure, but the degree to which a given reader may actually "enjoy" this will directly correlate to their level of desire to focus closely upon a state of abject, alienated demoralization.

If you've viewed Ligotti's previous works not just as great stories, but clear exemplars of your personal philosophy, you will love this. If like me you come to Ligotti not for the philosophy but for the singularly weird disquieting fictions, you may find these two stories quite good, but not as compelling as his best work.

[Kobalt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Metaphysical Morum
Nothing is as it seems. The doctor is not what he seems. The narrator's lineage is not what it seems. The world is run by people who are not as well off as they seem to be. Even the Ellison-esque obtusity of the story's prose is not what it seems. It seems to the narrator, in their demoralized state of things, that life is a thing better off left behind. Maybe he just needs an all-new context.

Maybe I need an all-new context for this story- wth did I just read. If you Paper Wingers see this, the impression I had of what I was getting into was something between The Beast That Shouted Love and The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, which would've been SPOT ON come to think of it—until it wasn't. Not even gonna try rating this one. 

Small People
Bit of an exploration of a pathological sort of bigotry told mostly from the position of a child. Pretty decent, not-much-to-write-home-about, the-kid's-racist kinda deal, overall, but the ending sold it for me. Made me wonder if there was something much bigger I should be putting together.

3.5 overall

[Mark Tallen · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are two stories in this Thomas Ligotti book, the second story, 'The Small People', is the superior story in my opinion and closer in quality to some of his excellent stories in his earlier collections that I've read.

[David Bjorne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thomas Ligotti returns with two stories that perfectly exemplify his standing in weird fiction. I hope the next return comes soon.

[Alex Budris · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read Thomas Ligotti and I am frightened. Truly. I'm also amazed. Not one wasted word. Near perfect craftsmanship. And so very frightening. The first five star read of the year.

[Jason Pettus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Earlier this year I had a chance to read two of the most recent projects by horror writer Thomas Ligotti -- contemporary corporate novella My Work Is Not Yet Done and his nonfiction primer on "pessimistic philosophies," The Conspiracy Against the Human Race -- and found both of them to be excellent, really dark and unique stuff that appealed to me as a non-fan of this genre. So I thought I'd take a chance and read up on a bunch of his short fiction too (Ligotti has never actually written a single novel in the thirty years he's been publishing, confining himself exclusively to the short-story format), and ended up picking just the first three books to become available through my local library system -- his very first book, Songs of a Dead Dreamer (covering pieces from the late 1980s), his newest book, The Spectral Link (featuring stories just from the 2010s), and the best-of collection The Shadow at the Bottom of the World (featuring a curated selection of pieces from the beginning of his career up to 2005).

Unfortunately, though, the disappointing news is that these stories for the most part aren't nearly as good as the two full-length books I had read before, and in fact most of them are surprisingly dated to a specific time and place even just a couple of decades after their original publication; that specific time and place being the "emo goth" scene of the early 1990s, the same people who back in the day were obsessive fans of Neil Gaiman's Sandman and the music of Tori Amos, Kate Bush, Dead Can Dance and others. As a former industrial kid back in college, I had a sort of tangential relationship to this community, so I don't exactly fault them their pop-culture loves (my favorite band of those years, Skinny Puppy, was upon hindsight not much more than an emo goth caught on a bad day); but even then, and especially now, my tolerance is short for all the endless descriptions of lit candles and flowing curtains and masquerade masks and skinny pale dudes pondering the universe.

A huge amount of Ligotti's work features exactly this, much of it written in the style of someone explaining a dream (and we all know how much fun it is to sit and listen to someone describe one of their dreams); and that really surprised me, given Ligotti's reputation as a "writer's writer" and "the horror author all the other horror authors wished they were," especially disappointing after reading his Work and Conspiracy and seeing what he's capable of as a clear-eyed author of non-sentimental, coldly chilling looks at the black depths inside the human soul. As his reputation suggests, the best pieces in his oeuvre always tend to be when he's doing pastiches of HP Lovecraft, the main thing he's known for among casual fans of the horror genre; unfortunately, though, my recommendation today is to pick your way through these pieces to find those best ones, not necessarily to plow through it all indiscriminately and expect it to be great, as his diehard fans claim. A recommendation today, but a cautious one.

[Δημήτριος Καραγιάννης · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ligotti is a writer with a unique style, at least in my experience. Therefore, i recommend him to people who like to navigate through that obscure, thin line between supernatural horror and psychiatric delusions. That is because the ramblings of his characters echo those of the denizens of psychiatric wards and high-security prisons. At the same time, what if they are right, and normal people simply can't look past the veil of what is considered to be normal. What does actually lurk underneath the fabric of society? Is the perspective that is considered normal and average about the world the right perspective to have, or do certain dark and hidden aspects of it still elude us?
Ligotti plays with such musings and insecurities of the mind openly and without any shred of remorse or hesitation.

[Giordano Bruno · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mi ero quasi ripromesso "mai più Thomas Ligotti". Quello che ho letto o ascoltato in audiolibro di suo l'ho sempre trovato del gran fumo senza alcun arrosto. Poi ho visto questo volumetto in biblioteca e ho pensato che avrei potuto dargli un'altra possibilità. Non me ne sono pentito, ma non ho nemmeno rivisto del tutto l'opinione che avevo della sua narrativa. Infatti il primo di questi due brevi racconti conferma quanto pensavo, mentre il secondo è un po' più concreto e qualcosa lo racconta, ma comunque rimane sempre troppo generico, come se avesse delle buone idee che però non sa come concretizzare in una vera storia, continuando a girarci intorno. Ovvio, si capisce che la cosa è voluta e in questo è sicuramente bravo! Ma non so se sia davvero un complimento. Secondo il mio umilissimo parere, Ligotti si diverte troppo con la forma e si dimentica la sostanza. Difinirlo poi "l'erede di Lovecraft" è quantomeno fuorviante. Diciamo che sarebbero 2 stelle e mezzo, ma preferisco arrotondare a 3 anziché a 2 e (mi sento magnanino?) non escludo di dargli un'ulteriore possibilità in futuro.

[Neil B · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent return to fiction from Thomas Ligotti. Metaphysica Morum (3 stars) uses typical Ligottian motifs to put his bleak philosophy into fictive form. It is decent enough, but the real blockbuster here is The Small People (5 stars) which may now be one of my favourite Ligotti stories. This slim book has whetted my appetite for more new Ligotti material.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

My only wish was that there was more.

[Jake Abrams · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Small People is probably the strangest thing he’s ever written, and one of the best

[A. Redact · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5 This is the first Ligotti I've ever read, and I'm not super impressed with his writing, but "The Small People" is really interesting. One of two of stories in the book, "TSP" falls somewhere between a parody of parables about bigotry and an exploration of misanthropy. Told from a first person perspective, the narrator lives in a world where human society nearly silently shares the earth with another species of small, almost doll-like pseudo-human beings. The small people live in their own societies in some kind of arrangement with human beings, but their origins and the origin of the pact with humanity is mysterious and taboo. The main character loathes them even as a child (hence the possible bigotry parable), but he is scolded by his parents and most of society who silently accept their existence. The narrator's fear and hatred is semi-sympathetic, but it's clear that his hatred of them is their uncanny resemblance to human beings and society. The narrator unreflectively hates what he sees as the stupidity and meaninglessness of human life, but he can only see these qualities when they are one step removed in the lives of the little people. So the story ends up as a kind of parody of racism/bigotry itself, but, in what seems to be typical Ligotti fashion, the point is that everything is contemptible and cruel and meaningless, and the bigot is a coward for only seeing it in the object of his hatred, rather than in himself and the nature of reality itself. Hatred and disgust are "fitting attitudes," but only when they are universally realized.

[nethescurial · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nothing much to say about this one as it's ruefully short and is essentially "more Ligotti". Not a criticism at all however, as both of these stories are great and threaded together by a framing device of Ligotti's characters (the first presumably being a stand-in for the man himself) recounting their unsettling experiences to a psychotherapist. While both works in this small volume are meritorious, "The Small People" is the better of the two, combining said framing device and Ligotti's fascination with the disturbing implications of puppets/toys and the uncanny to his typically scintillating effect.

[Perry Ruhland · Rating 4 out of 5]

And now I have no more collections of Ligotti's fiction let unread.

[Jon Padgett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful, wonderful book, and a welcome return for the Master of Horror. There are only two, long stories in this collection, but the quality of both of these tales is worth the cost and much more.

"Metaphysica Morum" is indeed highly unusual for Ligotti, but it's also beautifully and carefully crafted -- while being experimental and ambitious and often downright off-the-wall.

I don't think any other writer alive has Ligotti's talent for getting under the skin of the reader via "dream occasions" in his stories. "Metaphysica Morum" moves in and out of such modes, and "The Small People" is one, self-contained dream-tale, with its own peculiar dream-logic and dream-history.

"Metaphysica Morum" is horrific, chilling, hilarious, and altogether a powerhouse of creativity... just superb writing. The story shook me and kept me shaken up for hours afterward. "Metaphysica Morum"--upon several readings--has a disorienting effect on at least this reader, and it's fascinating how the dream-reality complete with Dealer and detailed instructions for the dreamer bleeds into the "real world" of the tale until there is no real difference between the dream occasion and the real ones.

Of extra special note is the singularly Ligottian phrases/words present in "Metaphysica Morum": "chain of galaxies showroom"; "an all-new context"; "metaphysical mutant(s)"; "dream occasions"; the use of "fix you/me up" not to mention the nefarious "Dealer"; various riffs on "demoralized" and "demoralization." The repetition of these words and phrases is used to hypnotic effect in the story, and that repetition worked on my mind, my emotions and my nerves to spectacular effect.

"The Small People" is one of the best short stories I've ever read -- utterly riveting and moving. It made me cry. With this one, Ligotti wrote the very story I've wanted to tell all my life (not for the first time): the old suspicion that everything is unreal and shabby -- little more than a cheap community theatre set. That thought has always haunted me, particularly in my childhood. And, further, the feeling that my parents were intrinsically to blame or at least part of the grand charade has been in my head ever since I was a kid listening to the murmuring of my parents in post-bedtime conversation and imagining them as giant preying mantis things hovering above my prone body, experimenting on me for unknown reasons. "The Small People" explores the idea of this kind of conspiracy, but with an epic twist that involves and implicates everyone and everything on the planet.

[Zach Lisabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm blown away. I'm on suicide watch, but I'm blown away.

[Curtis · Rating 4 out of 5]

And with that, I finished my reread of Ligotti's four major collections and first-time read of his multiple smaller releases. Always fun getting better acquainted with the JD Salinger of cosmic horror.

[Joseph Malatesta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, I just read new Ligotti. Two great little stories. Classic Ligotti. You won't be disappointed.