The convoluted nightmare begins, then gets worse, then the story ends. The demonic figures of these memories are never exorcised, and come to slowly haunt the narrator’s own timeline. “Gas Station Carnivals” is one such tale, in which the protagonist navigates his friend through a disturbing nostalgia for a non-existent type of Americana. Oftentimes the story itself is unveiled second- or third-hand over coffee or cocktails. The protagonists are often nameless, drifting through a world that is at best uncaring, at worst evil. There’s little conventional plot in these tales. Perhaps it’s because I’m a mere office drone myself, but I particularly enjoyed the stories “My Case for Retributive Action” and “Our Temporary Manager,” in which the machinations of office work take on a particularly monstrous quality while, in the periphery, a pharmaceutical company completes its hostile takeover of the planet. We infiltrate the inner circles of this landscape: the coffee shop intellectuals, the failed artists, the desperate office drones contending with a vast and indifferent bureaucracy. Places where people swap nightmares and attempt to ward off the incomprehensible nightmares that lurk outside. The universe of Teatro Grottesco seems comprised entirely of art galleries, bars, diners, offices and inns connected by a network of shadowy alleys and grimy streets. Blurry snapshots of a bleak universe.Īnd bleak it is. They are reminiscent of fever dreams, of misremembered experiences from childhood. The word “nightmarish” comes to mind, but that word is so overused in horror circles that it fails to convey the precise absurd, unsettling quality of his work.

Ligotti’s stories are difficult to describe.

Teatro grottesco