Book #32 of 2020: Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe by Thomas Ligotti

An entertaining collection of horror stories by a modern master--well, actually 2 collections combined. The first half are straight-edged horror with the veneer of mid-twentieth century realism. Many of the stories in the 2nd half of the volume share a Lovecraftian tinge: an ancient evil or some mysterious force intrudes into dreams, or is awakened by someone carelessly plodding around old antique shops or leafing through an incomprehensible grimoire, or a city academic visits a rural area and finds out the locals have ignorantly stumbled upon ancient rites and reinvited some previously expelled or entrapped cosmic entity. In lesser hands, these tropes and plots could be stale, but Ligotti infuses them with a Borgesian sublimity, blending in a hint of Kafka now and again. And there is also a demonic scarecrow.

The Frolic, which opens the collection, is a true banger and absolutely merciless. You know what is going to happen early on and yet the ending is not spoiled because Ligotti masterfully yanks your tension strings to satiety. The Last Feast of Harlequin is an updated "The Lottery" spun through Lovecraft and back again via Umberto Eco. There are a few tales which rely heavily on Poe, where a rather unreliable narrator brings us along as he sets about trapping his next victim a la "The Cask of Amontillado." There's a nice fantasy story set in Renaissance Venice to boot, and an excellent little vampire story.

If you like slasher stuff, or monster tales, or overt supernatural stuff with clear-cut hauntings--these stories are likely not for you. They are typically more elegant and subtle than visceral and shocking. But if you are a student of the genre and like to think while being creeped out, if you value mood and tone as much or perhaps more than plot and character, and if you like a writer who can churn out exceptional sentences--give these tales a try!

The Wash, Rinse, and Repeat Cycle of Violence

David Cole, at NYR Daily:

But in this instance, it is the “war” on crime itself that is most to blame. More than any other nation in the world, we turn to the state-sanctioned compulsion of the criminal justice system to “solve” social problems, including mental illness, drug addiction, poverty, homelessness, and lack of opportunity. Our “first responders” are too often the police, bearing handcuffs and guns rather than public assistance or life support. We arrest and incarcerate our fellow citizens at the highest per capita rate in the world. And those targeted are disproportionately black and Hispanic men living in poverty-stricken inner-city neighborhoods. We can’t seem to find the resources to invest in those neighborhoods to support adequate schools, job training programs, after-care for children let out of school before their parents come home, or economic development. But we are more than willing to pay enormous sums for more police to patrol the neighborhoods and prisons to house inmates taken from these communities. Our prisons in turn are ruled by violence and the threat thereof, from both guards and fellow inmates.

Cole goes on to conclude: "As Americans we have been far too complacent in the face of state-sanctioned violence. As long as the guns are pointed at others, we turn our heads and look away. But until we begin to demand alternatives to state violence, the killing will not cease."

It's a point that others have made before. Michael Moore in Bowling for Columbine connected the manufacture of nuclear missiles in Columbine and Clinton's bombings of Kosovo and Sudan to the mindset of people who shoot up schools or malls. Noam Chomsky has been saying for years that the best way for the US to end terrorism is to stop participating in it against others.

So read Cole's piece and meditate on it, then go read:

I thought I knew a lot about the history of our drug prohibition. But here are more valuable pieces to the puzzle beyond the Reefer Madness, chemical-company funded and racist Chamber of Commerce shenanigans which resulted in marijuana criminalization in the US. And the book is entertaining as hell on top of being contrarian and smart.