What does /lit/ think of Ligotti? Either his philosophical non-fiction

>muh antinatalism
Into the trash it goes.

>>9552545
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxZpEFJhO6k

>>9552545
Really enjoyed about 30% of his short stories, but most of it was ruined by his unnessecarily pretentious vocabulary. Sometimes he finds the right balance though

>>9552545
Favorite writer alive, and Teatro Grottesco is my favorite book of all time, and Songs Of The Dead Dreamer.

I really love his poetry, Death Poems is a pretty darkly humorous book all about death and >>9552579 is one of my favorite poems ever.

The Conspiracy is probably my favorite philosophy book of this century (although i'll be honest when i say i have read very little modern philosophy).

>>9552615
>unnessecarily pretentious vocabulary
i'm pretty sure some of those are intentionally over the top. The Chymist in particular is incredibly ridiculous, so much so that it borders on the absurd, but it was done as an homage of sorts of Nabokov's verbose first person narrators.

Currently reading Teatro Grottesco. I love his themes and he can create some of the eeriest, most nightmarish atmospheres but sometimes his prose is overcooked and most of the times I feel like I'm just reading another chapter of "The Conspiracy Against The Human Race". I really do like him, tho. He's kinda unique in his Kafka / Lovecraft / Borges blend.

>>9552545
His philosophical book helped me. Despite its depressing nature the way I understood it was like this: yes, life is shit, but you got to suck it up and play along or an hero. I seem to remember him referring to people doing this as puppets. I explained it badly but yeah, he is on point.

Regarding his short stories I have read most. To be honest I think a lot of the time I get lost. It's fucking clear to me everything is symbolic and ashamedly it goes over my head like 60% of the time. The other 40% though I really like of his.

Just off the top of my head I liked these:
>Les Fleurs
>The Spectacles in the Drawer
>The Sect of the Idiot
>The Clown Puppet

>>9552545
Why the fuck is Drake on his book cover?

What is the most straightforwardly horror stuff of Ligotti?

I just like ghost stories and spooky shit like that. like M.R. James stories where a guy gets an old book and the climax is that a fuckin' ghost comes out of it. I want tons of shit like that.

File: 1486044297672.gif (56KB, 225x534px) Image search: [Google]

56KB, 225x534px

>>9552545
I've read his first two collections. He's no Lovecraft, which he obviously aspires to be, but he's pretty good. He'd be much better if he swallowed the red pill and became a white supremacist.

>>9554141
Epic

>>9554121
OP's pic related is a good start

>>9554121
Songs of A Dead Dreamer is your best bet. He doesn't write much straightforward horror.

>>9554277
This is why the idea of him "aspiring to be Lovecraft" is ludicrous. Kafka, sure.

>>9552545
Parts of Conspiracy were really awful, his treatment of ideas around Buddhism were childish and often empirically wrong.

That he thought Krishnamurti was enlightened in any sense relatable to the what Buddhism talks about showed how light his reading was.

It made me skeptical of his treatment of some of the other topics I am far less familiar with.

That said, I like most of his other work that I have come across. I would like to see a resurgence of more horror/dark short stories.

he's a far cry from an actual horror author and his works often tread the same ground again and again (grimscribe is nearly the same story told 14 different ways) but there are some gems to be found.

anyone who thinks he just wants to be another lovecraft should read nethescurial, because the difference between the two of them is plain as day in that story.

if you're looking for authors who write actual tension-based horror instead of just philosophical horror, you'd do better to look towards m. r. james, j. sheridan le fanu, oliver onions, or ramsey campbell.

>>9552545
his stories are a bit hit or miss, but the Schulz-esque ones like The Town Manager are good