Grimscribe: His Lives And Works (1994) - Plot & Excerpts
This is intimidating, how do I even begin? Late last year I was completely blown away by "Teatro Grottesco," in fact I thought it was the best collection of short stories I read all year. This book is almost as good, which means to say it's pretty damn incredible. I really can't think of a single disappointment in this collection, some are better than others, but none are bad.The Last Feast of Harlequin - This was a great tale, as I'd heard everywhere. Great setting, mood and it's quite creepy at times, probably the best tale I've read by Ligotti, although others such as "The Red Tower" still hold a special place for me. As far as updating Lovecraft to the modern age, this rates right up there with Ramsey Campbell's "Dark Print" or "The Voice on the Beach." An anthropologist becomes fascinated with a winter solstice festival in a small New England village because of his personal interest in clowns. He goes there to investigate and discovers that among the listless populace is a college professor he once knew. The Spectacles in the Drawer - Very weird story, I loved it. Dark, eerie, atmospheric, philosophic and feels really fresh in it's way of approaching the weird. A man who collects magic objects gives a pair of spectacles to a troublesome friend of his which reveal many secrets of the world. He hopes the man will become DISenchanted after seeing so much, but he turns the opposite way. Flowers of the Abyss - Weird little story, imaginative and with some good imagery. A teacher is dispatched by the town to investigate a stranger who has taken up his abode in the house where everyone is dead. The stranger explains how he projected his mind out of his body into an immense darkness where he brought out some flowers which have sprouted in his garden.Nethescurial - Great story here, reminds me of some of his other work where he has this frightening idea of an evil power behind, and within all of reality. The idea of "there are no persons here, only bodies." A man summarizes a manuscript of a man who seeks out pieces of an evil idol that were scattered by the cult which once worshiped them. In the processes he becomes convinced that all of reality is powered by an evil force which inhabits everything. The Dreaming in Nortown - Very unsettling and original story, very strange and a bit unclear until the end, then it becomes clearer and Ligotti really goes for some truly sadistic horror at the end. The plot reminded me a bit of Poe's "The Man of the Crowd." A man becomes convinced his roommate has entered into a cult of people who are engaging in a dangerous game interacting with strange worlds in their dreams. The narrator goes out to observe his friend as he tries to avoid sleep, and it turns into a night of horror. The Mystics of Muelenburg - A brief, strange story, reality-twisting, definitely weird but not as unnerving on as deep a level as some other stories here. A man realizes that the world of appearances is false, but he visits someone who claims to have been told of such a time when the psyches which hold the world in it's proper order gave it up, and let things...sag.In the Shadow of Another World - Good story, definitely reminds me of Lovecraft's From Beyond, but with a different twist on it, and perhaps a bit more depth, although I wouldn't say it's better necessarily. A man is shown a room where, when certain symbols are removed, nightmarish things start to appear, super-imposed on the world, from his own mind.The Cocoons - Whew, freakish story, short but packed, very weird and gruesome even. I liked this one a good deal, it has a gritty urban setting of a Ramsey Campbell story, but the atmosphere is all his own, very nice. As with some other stories, he's making a comment on psychiatrists here. A man is awoken by his doctor who takes him to see a fellow patient who has made some films he feels will help his "condition" -- this film proves very disturbing indeed. The Night School - This was a really strange one, dream-like and totally nightmarish. This one reminded me a little of his story "Severini" which also deals with this sort of "sewer of existence" theme. This was a far better story however, and among the better one's in the Grimscribe collection. A man visits a strange, decaying school on a whim to see if a professor of strange magic has returned after a bout of illness. He has returned, and his presence has transformed the building into a place of nightmare. The Glamour - Damn how this guy hits it out of the park, every time! This was excellent, very creepy, nightmarish and unsettling. Description in this story is often gory -- hair like that of a corpse, a room the color of a liver, a hallway the color of the inside of a brain, ugh! This was a good one. A man enters a strange theater where everything seems to be covered in a strange webbing, or hair, and watches a film where this substance seems to take over the body of a person. The Library of Byzantium - Weird story, not as creepy as some of these. Of course the title brings to mind Borges "Library of Babel" and the story does likewise. I also detected a slight presence of M. R. James perhaps. A boy visited by a priest is shown a strange book, when the priest snatches the book away the page is torn out accidentally. The boy uses the page to vicariously see the priest from afar. Miss Plarr - This one reminds me of the more dreamy, early works of Lovecraft at times in it's descriptions of the strange city. The descriptions of the house have very Gothic, dreary mood which recalls Poe, and the general vagueness of it reminds me a bit of Aickman. There's a lot going on in this short story, and it's very well-written and planned out. A boy gets a strange governess who inspires thoughts of an evil city in the minds of the narrator, a city which she is intimately familiar with. The Shadow at the Bottom of the World - Good story, but not among the best. Very dour (aren't they all), expresses a dark side of autumn from a different perspective. The overall message reminded me a bit of Bradbury's autumn-obsessed "Something Wicked..." with his commentary on "autumn people." Here we see autumn trying to invade people's bodies. A town is seized by an autumn that won't end. After the harvest a scarecrow seems to have grown an otherworldly body, but that's only the start of their problems.
I have to say I found this book painful. I'm going to go off on a tangent here, and explain how that's not something I like to say. I usually try to give authors the benefit of the doubt, especially in their own, niche, domains. After all, I'm certainly no author. Also, one should always try to account for matters of personal taste when attempting to be objective. For instance, I don't really like pure ghost stories, where there isn't anything at least a little tangible to actually fear. That may have influenced my opinion here.That out of the way, I don't think I'm being unfair in giving this 2 stars. I decided to read these stories based on a comparison to Lovecraft, which, given, is probably unfair. Ligotti seems to like everything substantially more abstract and intangible than Lovecraft. Maybe that's just the progression of the genre, but I didn't like it. I was left wondering, at nearly every turn, whether any average person would be afraid in the circumstances of the protagonists. Or even somewhat worried, for that matter. The whole thing reads like case studies into paranoia, which maybe could work, but wasn't the intent here.Even when things do enter the tentative grasp of reality, he often leaves enough wiggle room for you to imagine that nothing is actually, physically happening. This may not even be the biggest problem, though. Another reviewer already made this point, but I must reiterate. The reader is so inundated (bludgeoned, really) with 'creepiness' right from the get go, that it's annoying. Everything is so abnormal right out the gate, it's impossible to build on. Worse, since it's the protagonist/narrator who is setting this scene, it becomes impossible to empathize either.
What do You think about Grimscribe: His Lives And Works (1994)?
These twelve short stories illustrate the thematic debt Ligotti owes H.P. Lovecraft, but how dramatically different his style and literary technique can be from Lovecraft as well. Ligotti lacks Lovecraft's victorian flare, and is far too anti-human to have Lovecraft's chauvinism. The term "apocalyptic" applies to Liggoti's work, but not in its cataclysmic elements, but its devastating unveiling. The diary-like use of first-person narrative and the philosophical weight can make this an acquired taste. The only three stories that work like traditional horror fiction are "The Cocoons," "The Night School," and "The Glamour." However, the entire collections and informs and feeds on the dread. Seriously worth the ready.
—C. Derick Varn
These have to be the least scary horror stories I have ever read. Way too much repetition and writing that reduces the impact of the horror than prolongs it.Most of the stories have the same formula. A first person protagonist who always sounds exactly the same, encounters either a person or an object who threatens damnation. Literally, they sound exactly the same even if they are a child-both the Library of Byzantium and Miss Plarr concern child protagonists in first person style who sound like morbid university professors.This morbid style, and the fine writing had the opposite effect on me. They manage to distance the sense of horror from the situations by too much focus on the protagonists telling us how things are blasted and hellish. The best horror comes from the corruption of the normal, but each protagonist is abnormal from the start, and the narration reinforces this. Oddly then, it's hard to get the full punch out of each scene. All the pessimistic rambling inoculates you.There are many good situations in the book, like The Cocoons, and the Night School, but they need less adorned writing so that the horror of the event shines through. Like in the Glamour:The purple lamp did indeed mark a way into the theater, casting its arterial light upon a door that reiterated the word "ENTRANCE." Stepping inside, I entered a tight hallway where the walls glowed a deep pink, very similar in tint to that little beacon in the alley but more reminiscent of a richly blooded brain than a beating heart.It's impossible to feel dread at this, because he's hitting you over the head with prose that suggests that you should feel afraid. Normal people do not think of things like this-they wouldn't describe light as arterial, nor think of a sign as something like a brain or heart. He doesn't even need to bother with this either, because the main horror is from cobwebs. It's also symptomatic of over-adorned prose, and a lot of his dialogue reads like this. The effect is to mute the fear, and he also uses other devices which do as well, like a story inside of a story, or not having a bad end when he should.Lovecraft and others also fell prey to this, but Lovecraft spent less time inside their character's heads and more describing weird situations. His characters were normal as well, and not always morbid seekers after truth. Ligotti simply tries to force-feed you the horror and philosophy, and winds up losing any chance to scare me because his fine writing always makes me aware of it. If he had an editor that forced him to cut half of the words out, I think his tales would be terrifying, because he'd be forced to remove all this and let the situation chill us.So only two stars. There's fine and creative writing in this, but I read this at 3 AM in the morning and didn't get a single chill from it, or any sense of dread.
—D.M. Dutcher
This collection is really my first full exposure to Ligotti. I certainly have read a story or two, but never a full collection. I think, to this point, I have never read a modern horror author that does what Ligotti does with his stories (particularly in the use of his prose style). The only modern author that leaves me feeling a bit tainted like Ligotti, is Laird Barron. Barron's stories just stick with you, often because of the monstrous things he does to his characters. Ligotti on the other hand, while, his characters often meet dark nihilistic fates, is able to evoke such incredibly bleak settings and atmospheres in his stories, with many of his settings focusing on an urban decay, much like in "The Cocoons". And it is not just the settings and atmosphere that infects the mind but it is the words and phrases that Ligotti wields that penetrate the consciousness so deeply. Furthermore, Ligotti is masterful in utilizing these decayed urban settings to draw upon the outer darkness and cosmic forces that pull his characters into the abyss, and further draw the reader into that same void. These stories are harrowing, not in a cheap thrills kind of way, but in the way they ask the reader to immerse himself in the existential horror and stare into the darkness, looking for answers. Frankly, each time I enter into Ligotti's worlds, I'm not so sure I want to even ask the question. All of these stories worked for me, but there were a few that really stood out:"Last Feast of Harlequin": This may be one of his most famous, but it is so good, particularly in drawing upon the pursuit of a forbidden knowledge or hidden cult. The setting is of course bleak and the protagonist is harrowed by his own depression. "The Cocoons": This one has really stuck with me. I just recently finished up Richard Gavin's DARKLY SPLENDID REALM, and his short story "Bitter Taste of Dread Moths", had such a Ligottian feel. I realized that "The Cocoon" may have been an inspiration for "Dread Moths". Anyways, this one focuses on the cynical experimentation of a patient by his trusted doctor, with the intent of bringing creatures from the outer darkness into our reality. "The Night School": So what happens when students seek out practitioners of the darkly cosmic. What happens when you find what you are looking for? I loved the ending on this one... heavy on the existential philosophy (as is is many of Ligotti's stories).I can't recommend this collection enough. Ligotti is not for the faint of heart nor for those looking for cheap splatter punk thrills. If you are looking for existential philosophy infused in your horror, you won't find a more disturbed instructor than Ligotti.
—Benjamin Uminsky
