Lullaby/My Work is Not Yet Done

I think I've been mentally comparing the works of Thomas Ligotti and Chuck Palahniuk since the first time I read Haunted.* Both are cult authors with reputations as nihilists, and both write with distinctive styles and thematic concerns. 2002 turned out to be an interesting publication year for both. (Pardon the familiarity of using first names; but both have rather long surnames.) Chuck published his first foray into horror with the novel Lullaby; Thom published his longest work, a novella by the name of My Work is Not Yet Done in a collection of the same name. (I won't get into the other two, much shorter stories included in that book.)

The similarities extend beyond publication date. Both feature disaffected narrators who find themselves acquiring supernatural powers of a questionable nature, but more importantly both are intensely dark, funny and philosophical works. There's even overlapping themes, such as concerns over mortality, criticisms of modern capitalism, and some apocalyptic musings.

The main contrast is the characteristic style. Chuck's minimalism is descended from Hemingway by way of Amy Hempel and Raymond Carver. It emphasizes the use of verbs over adjectives, and he prefers short sentences that mirror the way people speak. Thom's style, on the other hand, reflects the baroque and surreal influences of authors such as H.P. Lovecraft (adjectivitis!) and Bruno Schulz. I imagine most people will find Chuck's style a little more accessible. MWINYD is actually among the lower end of the baroque for Thom, but overall I find his style more effective, especially at evoking the requisite atmosphere of a horror story, than Chuck's.

Lullaby is easily Chuck's best work, but as a work of horror fiction it has some flaws. As I've already stated, his minimalism is less effective at creating atmosphere than Thom's subtle surrealism. Horror fiction revolves around the emotion of fear and its various permutations, and Lullaby is not particularly scary. My other criticism of Lullaby as a work of horror is Chuck's handling of the supernatural element. Supernatural elements can be tricky to handle effectively in fiction, especially horror. When handled skillfully, they serve to effectively bind the story together, giving substance to submerged or displaced issues. (i.e., the way Cthulhu embodies Lovecraft's pessimism or Dracula lurks in the shadows of Victorian sexuality) When handled poorly, they come off as plot contrivances with little rhyme or reason. Lullaby falls somewhere in between. I liked its haunted houses and visions of sonic plague, but I thought the culling song hadn't really been though through properly and its grimoire was a little silly. MWINYD's supernatural elements, however, seemed a much more natural fit for the narrator/author's philosophy and his concern with the meaninglessness of existence.

Both books, in fact, struggle with the question of the meaningless of existence, which is approached from a perspective of profound skepticism bordering on nihilism. Though both authors are considered nihilists, there is actually a fair amount of difference with Chuck's sunny nihilism an interesting counterpoint to Thom's bleak nihilism. As Tyler Durden says in an earlier Chuck book: "It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything." I suspect the Frank Dominio, the protagonist of MWINYD, learns we're never free completely free to do anything and losing everything is its own reward. As with writing styles, I think Chuck's work is probably the more accessible. Behind the bleakness and the dark humor lurks a heart in search of redemption as sincere as that of a Dr. Phil fan. Thom's philosophy is bleaker, like a shadow version of Zen, where we are only free when we lose all illusions, but to do that you must accept freedom itself as an illusion.** (Again, personal preference here leans towards Thom's more absolute darkness.) Ironically, these different outlooks reflect to an extent their literary influences; contrast Hemingway's humanism with Lovecraft's cosmicism.

* Haunted's prologue invokes the conceptual slipperiness between human beings and their simulacra (puppets, mannikins, etc.); while this concept was certainly not invented by Ligotti, he has evoked it more uniquely and effectively than any author since Bruno Schulz.

** Or to contrast two interesting quotes, one from Haunted, one from "The Nightmare Network" (the third story in MWINYD):
Chuck: "Each of us striving to be the camera behind the camera behind the camera"
Thom: "Long view of the universe. There is no one behind the camera."

The quotes in your second footnote are so striking, Carlos. It's almost as if Chuck and Thom are talking to each other. I wonder if there are other authors in the horror genre who use this "behind the camera" metaphor.

You make such an interesting contrast between the two styles. Minimalist prose is often used with great effectiveness in crime novels, where it suggests the blunted emotions of people who have to work day after day with the aftermath of brutal murders. But horror fiction is quite different. I'm not widely read in the horror genre, but the classics of Poe and a few others linger in my imagination, and it seems to me that an atmosphere of impending brutality is evoked. Perhaps horror fiction asks "Can we survive what is about to happen?" whereas crime fiction asks "Can we prevent this from happening again?" The lushly descriptive style common to most horror fiction evokes an atmosphere of dread, while the minimalist style of so much crime fiction suggests the professionalism we hope for in the people charged with protecting us from crime.

That's a good question. The issue of camera/watching/voyuerism is a natural component for horror fiction, since it is a form of entertainment that derives pleasure from terrible events. And even though the people involved are fictional (or at least fictionalized), there's still a lingering question of complicity. Well, complicity may be a bit much, but there's often an ambiguity between identifying with the good or the evil. I think the question gets addressed, sometimes subtly, through other metaphors than cameras.

For example, one of Ligotti's best short stories "Nethescurial" starts off as a letter by a guy who's read this interesting horror story. Then as the story progresses (as the man adds postscripts to the letter), the horror that he was reading about starts to overtake him. The medium of a fiction story that he thought would protect him from the evil described within it turns out to be insufficient to preventing it from intruding onto his world. (This leaves a crumb of doubt in the mind of the reader: will the medium of a fiction story protect him or her from the evil described therein?)

Poe is sort of an interesting figure in your comparison, since he's so influential in both horror and crime fiction. I've mostly read his weird/horror works, though so I don't know if the style of those stories is different than his detective ficiton.

Incidentally, I'm reminded of a story "The Big Fish" by Jack Yeovil, which is a pastiche of Lovecraft and Chandler. (I encountered it in the collection Shadows Over Innsmouth.) In the author notes, Yeovil writes about the difficulty of blending the personality of the Lovecraft hero (who is overwhelmed by his hostile environment) with that of the Chandler hero (who shrugs it off). He also does his own little Authors Compared about some of the similarities between Chandler and Lovecraft.

I will probably have some more thoughts on minimalism and horror when I get around to comparing Diary to Ira Levin. I certainly wouldn't say the two were incompatible, and Lovecraft himself attempted to work in a somewhat less lush style late in his career.

The issue of camera/watching/voyuerism is a natural component for horror fiction, since it is a form of entertainment that derives pleasure from terrible events. And even though the people involved are fictional (or at least fictionalized), there's still a lingering question of complicity.

An interesting insight, Carlos. In a thread about waterboarding in the Pro and Con group, I suggested the film and TV industry may be at least slightly complicit in the current revival of "harsh" interrogation techniques, because their frequent portrayals of the "ticking time bomb" scenario give us the unconscious impression these situations are much more common and clearly defined than they really are.

In one period of my life, I read a lot of Chandler because I had a boyfriend who was a huge fan of his. One line in particular sticks in my memory. The detective was driving through an arid landscape where the hills had been cut away to build the road. He said the hills were "like slabs of red meat." A line that would not have been out of place in a horror story, though Yeovil is completely right about the stark personality differences between the Lovecraft hero and the Chandler hero.

"The Big Fish" actually has one of my favorite lines of pseudo-Chandler dry wit: "Money can buy you love but can't even put down a deposit on good taste."

Awww. But do you think Philip Marlowe had good taste? Maybe so, now that I think of it. I seem to recall the occasional critique of a witness's or deceased person's interior decorating style.

A very interesting exchange. Thank you. I am a fan of neither horror nor crime genre however I found this comparison and your discussion to be captivating.

#6 - The quote was after a description of a mobster's rather gaudy estate. I don't think I'd get Marlowe to decorate my house, but he sure wasn't pretentious.