The Bungalow House

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 everything had been reduced to three stark principles: first, that there was nowhere for you to go; second, that there was nothing for you to do; and third, that there was no one for you to know.”

Through this, he, at least temporarily, gains a kind of euphoric hopelessness. Notice this narrator sits in a similar position with respect to the creator of the audiotape as a pessimistic reader sits with respect to Ligotti’s fiction. Both hope for comfort through shared bleakness. This setup allows Ligotti to, once again, turn the screw. As mentioned in previous murmurs, Ligotti is particularly good at reaching a desperate conclusion, one that doesn’t seem likely to be outdone in terms of hopelessness, and then, in the next few paragraphs, Ligotti outdoes it. The despair is driven deeper, and the universe turns out to be even more isolating, futile, and terrifying than you thought possible.

“The Bungalow House” is not an exception to this pattern. The story debunks the notion that a philosophically pessimistic reader can gain comfort or relief by holding onto a kind of euphoric hopelessness via Ligotti’s work. “The Bungalow House” makes clear that in a universe of desolation, there is nowhere to go, nothing to do, and no one else to know.

These principles embrace solipsism and the inability to make any genuine contact with another consciousness. As the story unfolds, and once it becomes clear that the voice on the tapes was never another consciousness, all comfort vanishes. The narrator sits in the same position relative to the unknown artist that many of Ligotti’s readers sit relative to Ligotti himself: hoping that the shared articulation of meaninglessness might constitute a form of contact.

There is no one for you to know; therefore, there is no genuine comfort to be gained by thinking that you aren’t alone with your terrifying thoughts.

You are alone. It is worse than we thought.