Weird Murmur

L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,  (George M. Hill Co., 1900) Much more than the 1939 MGM film, L. Frank Baum’s 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz invites a nihilistic reading in which belief manufactures reality, and no foundation or grounds support a truth beneath the sham that constitutes experience. The story reveals fraud at every turn: a reality built on an empty, vacuous center, and characters forced to embrace paradox to account for their experience. Dorothy and each of her friends believe that they lack an important personal feature or trait. Because a crow tells the Scarecrow he has no brain, the Scarecrow believes he is unintelligent. Given the tinsmith's construction techniques, the Tin Woodman believes he lacks empathy because he lacks a heart. And, since a lion is supposed to be a fearsome “King of the Beasts,” the Cowardly Lion takes his fear as indicating that he lacks courage. Dorothy wants to go home, and, in the end, she wants power and control ove...

Mark Samuels, "The Impasse" from The White Hands and Other Weird Tales (Tartarus Press: 2003). Thomas Ligotti, "My Case for Retributive Action" in Weird Tales , January 2001. Mark Samuels cites Ligotti as a literary influence, and he often takes a Ligottian theme and twists it into something nightmarishly different. Samuels is particularly good at showing, through his fiction, the emptiness of our epistemic foundations and the ephemeral or vacuous center of things, whether that be reality, the self, the corporation, or any number of other concepts. I argue “The Impasse” is not merely Ligottian corporate horror. “The Impasse” is the narrative form of a kind of nihilistic theory that claims originality, memory, and the self have no center. The story presents as a metafictional copyright case involving Ligotti’s short story “My Case for Retributive Action.”  Ligotti’s story was published in Weird Tales in the Summer of 2001, while Samuels’s story was published in ...

Thomas Ligotti, "The Bungalow House" from Teatro Grottesco (Durtro: 2006). For those with pessimistic or nihilistic worldviews, Ligotti’s work is sometimes cited as a kind of cold solace. His fiction can validate one’s own feelings by offering temporary comfort in knowing one is not alone in thoughts that lead to what the narrator of our story calls a “killing sadness.” Ligotti gives voice to thoughts that can be isolating and terrifying. As such, his work can be empowering for pessimists given its masterful articulation of the dark and meaningless cosmos. The unnamed narrator in “The Bungalow House” comes across a piece of performance art in the form of a recorded audio tape.   Already steeped in what he calls his philosophy of icy bleakness, the narrator finds something validating by engaging with the audio tape. “I wanted to believe that this artist had escaped the dreams and demons of all sentiment in order to explore the foul and crummy delights of a universe where ...

  Arthur Machen, "N" in The Cosy Room and Other Stories (Rich & Cowan, 1936). Sitting over drinks, Arnold, Harliss, and Perrott reminisce about the London neighborhoods, streets, and architecture that have changed for the worse over time. The old, narrow, and crooked streets, the charming jumble of different shapes, styles, and building designs, the enchanted mix of architectural eras, all now flattened to practical, uniform, and straight lines in a modern age that erases the spirit of a place to replace it with the concrete, the functional, and the mundane. Through memory and imagination, these men peel back that modern facade and recall the old days and the old ways. Without moving from their chairs, they mentally walk the streets of London and its suburbs as the city once stood. There is something eidetic about the tour. As the men talk, they can see the old Strand as it once was. In a telling moment, Arnold even gives directions to the now non-existent St. James’s M...

  Mark Samuels, "The White Hands" from  The White Hands and Other Weird Tales (Tartarus Press: 2003). The work of Mark Samuels is compelling. Like other writers with a strong voice, all of his short stories feel connected, each thematically supporting the others. Samuels often riffs on provocative themes and ideas about weird horror fiction itself, and it is to those ideas that I briefly turn, with a focus on “The White Hands,” all the while recognizing that other stories by Samuels support his ideas. Two principles emerge (these are often put in the mouth of Alfred Muswell or other disciples of Lilith Blake, all fictional characters in Samuels’ stories): 1. The Isolation Principle: Isolation, particularly in the face of death, disease, or madness, is the essence of weird horror fiction. As Muswell tells John Harrington, “Mental isolation is the essence of weird fiction. Isolation when confronted with disease, with madness, with horror and with death. These are the re...

Jon Padgett, "Organ Void" in The Secret of Ventriloquism  (Dunhams Manor Press: 2016). "Organ Void" brings together philosophical pessimism, gross body horror, Padgett's notion of borrowed realities, and a symbol that triggers gnosis reminiscent of Robert W. Chambers' Yellow Sign. Padgett’s story packs a heavy punch and is ripe for giving a reader’s subconscious free rein.   The story starts with Rose, driving her VW Bug on an interstate exit while listening to a recording of a self-help guru. She stops to help a presumably homeless person who is carrying a cardboard sign that reads " ORGAN  -VOID ." But the narrative facts are constantly shifting, and what is really going on is far from being that straightforward. Throughout, Rose's reality morphs seamlessly between her being a kind and compassionate commuter, to being a homeless person herself living under a freeway, to being a confused patient in a hospital treated by a Dr. Gord Onavi (an an...

Thomas Ligotti, My Work is Not Yet Done , (Mythos Books: 2002) Interpretations of Ligotti’s so-called “corporate horror” that treat it primarily as a critique of consumerism or the corporate workplace can feel much too narrow in scope. Ligotti’s vision is larger than that, and My Work is Not Yet Done is a prime example of a novella that exceeds the label of “corporate horror.” I recommend readers turn to Moreau Vazh’s excellent analysis of the novella on the blog Taskerland (link below). The Taskerland insights reveal a profound depth to the story that goes unnoticed. Vazh is always a great source for penetrating elucidations of Ligotti's work, and I strongly encourage anyone interested to explore Taskerland. I won't be offering anything like the depth and breadth of criticism that you will find there. Instead, this murmur focuses on one specific idea: there is a tight analogy between "being a corporation" and "being corporeal," and that a category mistak...

  Álvares de Azevedo, Noite na Taverna [ A Night in the Tavern ] (1855). Translated by Maurício Búrigo for Universitas Press (2025). Published posthumously in 1855, Álvares de Azevedo's novella drips with soul-crushing perdition, moral depravity, and the kind of deep-seated pessimism that Ligotti will systematize some 150 years later in The Conspiracy Against the Human Race . The novella is a series of tales swapped among five men in a tavern. The stories they share are filled with vile debauchery and romantic excess; it is a wild little book. I will focus on Bertram's story, an adventure tale of sorts that stands as an illustration of key Ligottian themes including the absurdity of our survival drive, the detestable nature of Hope, and consciousness as a cruel trap that brings with it the awareness of the horror of existence while at the same time compelling our continued participation in it. The raft scene of Bertram's tale finds the storyteller, the captain, and the c...

  Clark Ashton Smith, "The Last Incantation" in  Weird Tales , June 1930. Read the story here at The Internet Archive Readers of genre fiction are used to encountering the dangers of necromancy. Time and time again, protagonists give in to the strong temptation to bring back a long-dead loved one, only to find “they’ve come back wrong.” From Stephen King’s Pet Sematary , and W. W. Jacobs' “The Monkey’s Paw” to John Langan’s The Fisherman , grief brings out some of the most powerful human emotions. The fantasy/horror fiction of Clark Ashton Smith is filled with necromancers, diabolists, and all types that are into raising the dead. Smith’s short story “The Last Incantation” features an aging sorcerer thinking back to a long-lost love of his youth, but Smith flips the script. The change, the off-ness that is sensed, not only comes from the object of the raising. Particularly if the long years of time and experience have passed, the mourner too has changed, and that change c...

  Arthur Machen, The Hill of Dreams , (1907).  Lucien Taylor, the main character of Arthur Machen's novel T he Hill of Dreams , takes himself to have solved the mystery of the alchemists when he hits upon the primacy of the imagination and language over physical reality. The historical, popular focus on the alchemical transformation of lead to gold is myopic and that change is usually understood in a way that largely misses the point. For Lucien, the change is a matter of a shift of mind, imagination, and conceptualization. Finding the base world appallingly cruel and miserable, Lucien changes it. For him, things start with language, with words; words to generate images in the mind. Finding the right words, the right poetry, the right prose--this is the magic. The magic is powerful and all too effective. Lucien ends up transforming himself into something non-human and that comes with a cost. The default interpretive view is that the price Lucien pays is much too high, but it i...