Thomas Ligotti, Songs of a Dead Dreamer (Subterranean Press, 2010)
It is not an exaggeration to call Thomas Ligotti's Songs of a Dead Dreamer one of the most important collections within the horror genre in recent memory. Originally published in a limited edition by Silver Scarab Press in 1985, it was reissued in 1989 by Carroll and Graf to a swell of critical acclaim. And while material from the book has appeared in other Ligotti collections in the interim -- The Shadow at the Bottom of the World and the various incarnations of The Nightmare Factory -- it wasn't until this year that the original beast was resurrected. The new edition, courtesy of Subterranean Press, can best be described as "remastered," a definitive take on the collection.
And let me say, it's about time.
The first story in the collection, "The Frolic," is disturbing enough, the narrative of a psychiatrist at a hospital for the criminally insane whose most disturbing patient is a purveyor of visions of cosmic horror on a Lovecraftian scale. It's also an introduction, an accessible route into Ligotti's later works. The presence of the psychiatrist and his wife provide anchors for the reader, accessible and sympathetic protagonists who stand in this world but peer out over the edge into the madness of the author's true imaginings. They are gatekeepers, and starting with the second story in the collection, "Les Fleurs," they are left behind.
Because Ligotti's real business is with the cosmic, the mind-blowing and the terrifying. His protagonists are not noble monster hunters or innocent everyday folks caught in the middle of dark forces. Instead, they are loners and scholars, pedants and cultists, wanderers of dark city streets and seekers after mystery. They speak from a place of authority that is dwarfed by the immensity of the mysteries they find, and if they -- or those whom they come across -- are lost in the abyss, we are not expected to feel sympathy.
So then it is not a surprise when the thoroughly macabre children's book author of "Alice's Last Adventure" is taken by her own creation -- if her creation it truly is. The seeker after strangeness who inhabits "Vastarien" finds far more than he bargained for, in every sense of the term, between the covers of a nameless book that makes its way into his hands. And the poor fellow enraptured by "The Music of the Moon" is drawn into his fate late at night, and alone, his attempt at showing concern for his fellow man rebuffed in favor of the greater mysteries.
Ligotti's language matches his subject matter. Readers are best served to attack the collection with a dictionary within easy reach; the relentless polysyllabic onslaught of the writing simultaneously serving to reinforce the strangeness of the material (and the narrators) and to provide euphony. It's no surprise that Ligotti has collaborated with musicians on works like In A Foreign Town, In A Foreign Land; his writing works at least as well read aloud as it does on the page.
This is cosmic horror in the truest sense of the word, unconcerned with monsters or family curses or any of the trappings of the more parochial expressions of the genre. Instead, it harkens back to the works of Lovecraft and Aickman in its breadth of scope and conception. Readers looking for vampires and werewolves will be sadly disappointed; those looking for something other, literally and figuratively, will undoubtedly find this collection to be one of their most treasured reads.
