![]() His 1986 debut Songs of a Dead Dreamer immediately set him apart from his contemporaries. To most who are familiar with his work, Ligotti is known as an author of horror fiction. ![]() If one were to compile a list of contemporary American pessimists, the list would be short, though Thomas Ligotti's name would likely be on it. To live in such a culture is to constantly live in the shadow of an obligatory optimism, a novel type of coercion that is pathologised early on in child education in the assessment: ‘Does not like to play with others.’ In a culture that prizes the can-do, self-starter attitude, to be a pessimist is simply to be a complainer if you're not part of the solution, then you're part of the problem. In a culture that thrives on entrepreneurialism, pharmacology and self-help, ‘pessimism’ is simply a fancy name for a bad mood. The idea of an American pessimism is an oxymoron. ![]() In Thomas Ligotti’s recent work of non-fiction, Eugene Thacker discovers a ‘concept horror’ innate to philosophy – the self-recognition of knowledge’s inevitable defeat ![]()
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