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1gwendetenebre
"Vastarien" by Thomas Ligotti
Discussion begins on March 21, 2018.
First published in Crypt of Cthulhu #48 (1987).
ONLINE VERSIONS
No legal online versions found to date.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?266561
SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS
Songs of a Dead Dreamer
The Nightmare Factory
American Supernatural Tales
Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe
MISCELLANY
http://www.ligotti.net/
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/loving-the-alien-thomas-ligotti-and-the-psyc...
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-horror-of-the-unreal
http://weirdfictionreview.com/2015/10/interview-thomas-ligotti-and-the-realm-of-...
http://tinyurl.com/ya2ael2s
Discussion begins on March 21, 2018.
First published in Crypt of Cthulhu #48 (1987).
ONLINE VERSIONS
No legal online versions found to date.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?266561
SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS
Songs of a Dead Dreamer
The Nightmare Factory
American Supernatural Tales
Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe
MISCELLANY
http://www.ligotti.net/
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/loving-the-alien-thomas-ligotti-and-the-psyc...
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-horror-of-the-unreal
http://weirdfictionreview.com/2015/10/interview-thomas-ligotti-and-the-realm-of-...
http://tinyurl.com/ya2ael2s
2paradoxosalpha
I was going to read it out of the Penguin Songs/Grimscribe, but I think I might actually have that issue of Crypt of Cthulhu!
3pgmcc
This was the first Ligotti story I ever read and it hooked on his work. That would have been in 2006.
5elenchus
I will check my local library again, crossed fingers it works out better than the Ramsey Campbell last week.
>3 pgmcc:
That's a strong testimonial, and I already like Ligotti from the few stories I've read.
>3 pgmcc:
That's a strong testimonial, and I already like Ligotti from the few stories I've read.
6paradoxosalpha
The Penguin Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe should now be in well-curated public libraries and is in any case cheap and worth owning!
7AndreasJ
>6 paradoxosalpha:
I won't insist my local library is necessarily well-curated, but in any case the space they have for foreign-language genre fiction is, I think understandably, rather limited. The only thing by Ligotti at all within the regional library network seems to be a translation of The Shadow at the Bottom of the World - which should contain "Vastarien" - but getting at it would require a trip of several hours.
The realistic option would be buying an electronic version, but the hobby budget for March being exceeded already that won't be popular with my fiancée.
I won't insist my local library is necessarily well-curated, but in any case the space they have for foreign-language genre fiction is, I think understandably, rather limited. The only thing by Ligotti at all within the regional library network seems to be a translation of The Shadow at the Bottom of the World - which should contain "Vastarien" - but getting at it would require a trip of several hours.
The realistic option would be buying an electronic version, but the hobby budget for March being exceeded already that won't be popular with my fiancée.
8elenchus
I have a similar dilemma: personal "fun" budget won't cover it, thought I've looked at that Penguin edition for some time now. I leave the outcome to serendipity, if I run across an affordable copy I pick it up, it's not necessarily a question of a deliberate decision to purchase or not purchase. This approach to decision-making helps solve the dilemma of never having enough funds or space to acquire everything, and my relative priorities ebb and swell in any case. The past months have focused on music rather than books, as it happens.
My local library is quite well curated, the problem is more about whether it's on the shelf or not. Undoubtedly I can acquire one by interlibrary loan, but a similar Serendipity Factor decides in these cases, too. I choose not to plan ahead, and in cases when it's not on the shelf, I try to catch up on something else. If no Ligotti, this week I will forge ahead in my current Dashiell Hammett short story collection. Regardless, I will follow the discussion here.
My local library is quite well curated, the problem is more about whether it's on the shelf or not. Undoubtedly I can acquire one by interlibrary loan, but a similar Serendipity Factor decides in these cases, too. I choose not to plan ahead, and in cases when it's not on the shelf, I try to catch up on something else. If no Ligotti, this week I will forge ahead in my current Dashiell Hammett short story collection. Regardless, I will follow the discussion here.
9paradoxosalpha
>7 AndreasJ:
Sorry, I was replying to elenchus, whom I know to be in the US. No offense to your local library intended!
>8 elenchus: the problem is more about whether it's on the shelf or not
My current public library has a pretty lightweight collection, so I've gotten really habitual about putting in formal reservations for the few materials they do have that I want.
Sorry, I was replying to elenchus, whom I know to be in the US. No offense to your local library intended!
>8 elenchus: the problem is more about whether it's on the shelf or not
My current public library has a pretty lightweight collection, so I've gotten really habitual about putting in formal reservations for the few materials they do have that I want.
10pgmcc
>7 AndreasJ: & >9 paradoxosalpha:
I made a faux pas years ago when I suggested someone check their local public library for a particular book and it turned out he lives in a country with no public libraries. We have become good friends and I tell this story here because of a doubly coincidence: one, the library issue, and two, his being the person who introduced me to Ligotti by recommending I read Vastarien.
Coincidence?
I think not!
Bwahahaha...
I made a faux pas years ago when I suggested someone check their local public library for a particular book and it turned out he lives in a country with no public libraries. We have become good friends and I tell this story here because of a doubly coincidence: one, the library issue, and two, his being the person who introduced me to Ligotti by recommending I read Vastarien.
Coincidence?
I think not!
Bwahahaha...
11paradoxosalpha
>10 pgmcc:
Eerie indeed.
Eerie indeed.
12RandyStafford
This one seems to be doing a lot of different things.
It plays with some several Lovecraftian notions, mostly to reverse them.
Keirion isn’t seeking occult power or immortality in books.
Keirion likes Vastarien though others would find it foreboding.
We have a hero who ends up in the insane asylum.
I think there might be some ambiguity in the final asylum scene with ”he continued to scream words which everyone in the room had heard before, each outburst developing the theme of his unjust confinement: how the man he had murdered was using him in a horrible way.”
To me, it’s possible that Ligotti is implying that Keirion is not alone in murdering someone he claimed was trying to steal his dreams, that this has happened with other people. However, I’ll admit the plain sense is, when the attendants are said to have heard this before, that they’ve just heard Keirion say it before.
I also think Ligotti is playing around with some ideas of the relationship between reader and text. The crow man says “The book has found its reader”. It sounds like something the author of a particularly abstruse text might say.
And maybe the crow man represents, in devouring the dream of Vastarien, forces that come between a reader of a “cult book” and its author and the text’s world.
And Vastarien is not a world the typical reader would find beautiful, but a reader of weird fiction is the sort who would.
It plays with some several Lovecraftian notions, mostly to reverse them.
Keirion isn’t seeking occult power or immortality in books.
Keirion likes Vastarien though others would find it foreboding.
We have a hero who ends up in the insane asylum.
I think there might be some ambiguity in the final asylum scene with ”he continued to scream words which everyone in the room had heard before, each outburst developing the theme of his unjust confinement: how the man he had murdered was using him in a horrible way.”
To me, it’s possible that Ligotti is implying that Keirion is not alone in murdering someone he claimed was trying to steal his dreams, that this has happened with other people. However, I’ll admit the plain sense is, when the attendants are said to have heard this before, that they’ve just heard Keirion say it before.
I also think Ligotti is playing around with some ideas of the relationship between reader and text. The crow man says “The book has found its reader”. It sounds like something the author of a particularly abstruse text might say.
And maybe the crow man represents, in devouring the dream of Vastarien, forces that come between a reader of a “cult book” and its author and the text’s world.
And Vastarien is not a world the typical reader would find beautiful, but a reader of weird fiction is the sort who would.
13paradoxosalpha
The room where Keirion first awakens in the story is his psychiatric cell, but it's not until the end that it is revealed as such.
"The man he had murdered" was the crow-like stranger. Still, it's not clear to me how Keirion committed the murder: "the act that was necessary to keep possession of what he had desired for so long." Nor can I quite fathom who the stranger is supposed to be, given the mix of awe and familiar regard in which he is held by the bookseller.
The reappearance of the physical book in Keirion's cell seems to be the one clearly supernatural element in the story. I felt like this story was a little more jauniste than "Lovecraftian," with the derangement of its central character and the enigmatic potency of the book.
"The man he had murdered" was the crow-like stranger. Still, it's not clear to me how Keirion committed the murder: "the act that was necessary to keep possession of what he had desired for so long." Nor can I quite fathom who the stranger is supposed to be, given the mix of awe and familiar regard in which he is held by the bookseller.
The reappearance of the physical book in Keirion's cell seems to be the one clearly supernatural element in the story. I felt like this story was a little more jauniste than "Lovecraftian," with the derangement of its central character and the enigmatic potency of the book.
14paradoxosalpha
>12 RandyStafford: And maybe the crow man represents, in devouring the dream of Vastarien, forces that come between a reader of a “cult book” and its author and the text’s world.
Hm. If the corvid stranger is in fact merely a figment projected by Victor on the interference of objective reality in the fantasy he derives from reading, then the "murder" would likewise be a figment, corresponding to his psychotic severance from his actual environment. Victor might then believe himself incarcerated for murder, a murder he professes, of "the man (who) was using him in a horrible way, a way impossible to explain ...." Meanwhile, the actuality is that he has been institutionalized for his mental breakdown.
Hm. If the corvid stranger is in fact merely a figment projected by Victor on the interference of objective reality in the fantasy he derives from reading, then the "murder" would likewise be a figment, corresponding to his psychotic severance from his actual environment. Victor might then believe himself incarcerated for murder, a murder he professes, of "the man (who) was using him in a horrible way, a way impossible to explain ...." Meanwhile, the actuality is that he has been institutionalized for his mental breakdown.
15RandyStafford
>13 paradoxosalpha: I confess that I completely missed that Keirion first wakes up in his psychiatric cell.
With that in mind, many of what I saw as supernaturally weird elements collapse leaving, as you said, just the one supernatural element of the irremovable book.
Thinking back on my original interpretation and clarifying it, I was thinking that the crow-like man was somehow the author of Vastarien, or, at least, the one who gives Keirion access to that world which, in a sense, he created. That's what authors can do for their readers. But Keirion senses and resents the man's intimate ties to the world and that he exists superior to that world in that he can devour his own creation.
However, that interpretation seems untenable.
With that in mind, many of what I saw as supernaturally weird elements collapse leaving, as you said, just the one supernatural element of the irremovable book.
Thinking back on my original interpretation and clarifying it, I was thinking that the crow-like man was somehow the author of Vastarien, or, at least, the one who gives Keirion access to that world which, in a sense, he created. That's what authors can do for their readers. But Keirion senses and resents the man's intimate ties to the world and that he exists superior to that world in that he can devour his own creation.
However, that interpretation seems untenable.
16housefulofpaper
Finding a forbidden tome in a bookshop seems like a quintessential Lovecraftian trope, but he never uses it in his fiction, does he? It feels like I've seen it used dozens of times in media which may or may not be consciously Lovecraftian - comics from the under- and the overground, stories (this one, Ramsey Campbell's "Cold Print"), a short film I saw late night on British television about 15 years ago, etc. - but as far as I'm aware HPL himself only used it in the opening sonnets of "Fungi from Yuggoth".
It strikes me that this "Vastarien" could be an inversion of the story told in those poems, because in Ligotti's story the world opened up to Keirion by possession of the book is taken away from him (only a partial inversion, because the narrator of the sonnets is repeatedly, it seems, coming up against nemesis in the last line). This is no more, I know, than to restate @RandyStafford: "It plays with some several Lovecraftian notions, mostly to reverse them"
Vastarien the world/city suggested to me the early work of The Brothers Quay - their world of mannequins going through the motions of modern life in a dusty imagined Mitteleuropa.
There was also a personal resonance for me in this story. There's a part of my home town I never explored as a child, leaving a "here there be monsters" blank space in my mental map of the town. Since childhood, I've had occasional dreams where the blank space has been filled in with houses, shops, etc, and I've walked there, waking up momentarily confused as to whether or not this dream-neighbourhood actually exists. The last couple of times I've had this dream - not very long ago - I've found myself trying to get to a bookshop that I know is there...
It strikes me that this "Vastarien" could be an inversion of the story told in those poems, because in Ligotti's story the world opened up to Keirion by possession of the book is taken away from him (only a partial inversion, because the narrator of the sonnets is repeatedly, it seems, coming up against nemesis in the last line). This is no more, I know, than to restate @RandyStafford: "It plays with some several Lovecraftian notions, mostly to reverse them"
Vastarien the world/city suggested to me the early work of The Brothers Quay - their world of mannequins going through the motions of modern life in a dusty imagined Mitteleuropa.
There was also a personal resonance for me in this story. There's a part of my home town I never explored as a child, leaving a "here there be monsters" blank space in my mental map of the town. Since childhood, I've had occasional dreams where the blank space has been filled in with houses, shops, etc, and I've walked there, waking up momentarily confused as to whether or not this dream-neighbourhood actually exists. The last couple of times I've had this dream - not very long ago - I've found myself trying to get to a bookshop that I know is there...
17elenchus
>16 housefulofpaper: trying to get to a bookshop that I know is there...
Just be sure to keep a personal diary, notating every development until ... well, until whatever happens, happens. I'll certainly nominate it for a future DEEP ONES read.
Just be sure to keep a personal diary, notating every development until ... well, until whatever happens, happens. I'll certainly nominate it for a future DEEP ONES read.
19paulmoran
Kierion is an interesting name, it is perhaps pronounced carrion which links to the crow theme. Perhaps Kierion and the crow man are one and the same? The closest standard boys name is Kieron or Kieran which means, from the Irish little dark one or black haired one - which is exactly the description we are given of the crow-man !
20gwendetenebre
>19 paulmoran:
I didn't have access to the Ligotti story, but I enjoyed reading those connections. Looks like we'll be playing the name game again this week with Poe's "Eleanora".
I didn't have access to the Ligotti story, but I enjoyed reading those connections. Looks like we'll be playing the name game again this week with Poe's "Eleanora".
21housefulofpaper
>17 elenchus:
No further developments so far, but the thought did cross my mind...when I get to the bookshop and - I presume I'm looking for a particular volume - when I find that book and open it, what then? Is it my death? That would be so trite an ending for a story, but honestly that was the thought that popped into my head. Real life, or the unconscious, obviously doesn't care about cliché!
No further developments so far, but the thought did cross my mind...when I get to the bookshop and - I presume I'm looking for a particular volume - when I find that book and open it, what then? Is it my death? That would be so trite an ending for a story, but honestly that was the thought that popped into my head. Real life, or the unconscious, obviously doesn't care about cliché!
