Thomas Ligotti is one of the greatest living authors of the Weird Tale. His take on the genre dominated by the right wing conservative HP Lovecraft takes a different approach. Referred to as "Corporate Horror" by some his more recent tales focus on the mind numbing horror of work in a capitalist society. Whilst never explicitly anti-capitalist, or even political, the horror here, whilst drenched in the supernatural, is found in the familiar. The familiar viewed from a slightly odd perspective, true, but familiar all the same.
“When I first took this job at the factory it was not my intention to work there very long, for I once possessed higher hopes for my life, although the exact nature of these hopes remained rather vague in my youthful mind. While the work was not arduous, and my fellow workers congenial enough, I did not imagine myself standing forever at my designated assembly block, fitting together pieces of metal into other pieces of metal, with a few interruptions throughout that day for breaks that were supposed to refresh our minds from the tedium of our work or for meal breaks to allow us to nourish our bodies. Somehow it never occurred to me that the nearby town where I and the others at the factory lived, travelling to and from our jobs along the same fog-strewn road, held no higher opportunities for me or anyone else, which no doubt accounts for the vagueness, the wispy insubstantiality, of my youthful hopes.”
― Thomas Ligotti, Teatro Grottesco
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