Perpetual Autumn
I posted a blog entitled FOREVER AUTUMN HERE in September 2012, conveying some of my philosophy of life and literature. And this morning just after 5.30 a.m., the BBC Radio 4 weather forecaster stated that our Winter went missing and it was replaced by what he called “perpetual Autumn” – referring to the serial strong Autumn storms that have been besieging our UK islands for most of the Winter so far and into the foreseeable future.
For me, it seems apt to mention, in this context, Thomas Ligotti’s recent mass audience recognition written by Michael Calia in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), a recognition for Ligotti’s bleak philosophy. Death Anxiety plays a part in this – and probably in some of the Scandinavian fiction bleaknesses they often show on UK TV on Saturday nights – but here the WSJ article concerned something entitled TRUE DETECTIVE of which I have no experience (nor do I have any experience of the Scandinavian TV fictions, for that matter!)
Regarding his Fiction art in particular, Ligotti already had in my view a well-deserved mass audience recognition a few years ago with the Virgin paperback of his fiction entitled TEATRO GROTTESCO, a book that I saw in all manner of public places, at least in the UK.
And I am intrigued by this new recognition for his philosophical standing. Although believing such recognition to be well-deserved by Ligotti in respect of philosophy as well as fiction, I wonder whether — with his perceived tenets of such philosophy within ‘the Contrivance of Horror’ entitled THE CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE HUMAN RACE (CATHR) — the above heightened profile of personal recognition could be seen to be either counter-productive or irrational for his type of bleak anti-natalist philosophy: a dilemma I first raised HERE in 2007 before CATHR was published. (Ligotti replied at that time as shown on that link.)
I remain to this day open-minded about it and would welcome further input from Ligotti and others. If further thoughts of mine should arise on this matter, I shall include them in the comment stream below.
Meanwhile, I suggest that any writers who propound bleakly philosophical anti-natalism and so forth deserve name recognition for their writing where such recognition is deliberately sought rather than ideally or logically subsumed by the nihilistic subject-matter. Financial reward for such writers (as a symbol of such recognition or simply as a human pragmatic need) may also be a deserved consolation to appease their Death Anxiety that often remains otherwise unconsoled by the sublimated or distractive creativity of hard work employed in writing about such matters. Perpetual Autumn indeed, never Winter’s Death. Infinite Fall.
For the record, THIS was my real-time review of CATHR soon after it was first published as a book.
Yes, it’s great to have these public salutes to Weird fiction.
Meanwhile, though, my blog above is about CATHR and its ostensibly non-fiction nihilistic philosophy.
I understand that TRUE DETECTIVE is on-going and its hero still needs to fulfil his pure pessimism or anti-natalist credentials. As do most Weird Fiction writers other than Ligotti, I guess!
It seems to me that the writer of TRUE DETECTIVE, in this second WSJ article, is now retreating from CATHR as a stark anti-natalist philosophy on which his TRUE DETECTIVE hero bases his life, but rather approaching it as just another Weird or Horror fiction influence on him as if from a story by Poe or Lovecraft or by Ligotti himself rather than from a monumental philosophy of anti-natalism etc. like CATHR.
I wonder how many in secular or religious monasteries or authorial ivory towers are ever sufficiently acknowledged? Or whether they can be or should be thus acknowledged – especially when one follows this dictum: it is futile to call life futile, because it is.