Happy Birthday, Mr. Ligotti

Today is the 55th birthday of prolific weird writer and philosopher Thomas Ligotti. For a stolid pessimist who wishes he was never born in the first place, this is an especially strange occasion. Particularly when Ligotti's wish is one of the enduring motivators for his career of nightmares. And what a career at that! Today, he leaves the reader with two promising gifts in an unusual inverse-birthday relationship: the second volume of The Nightmare Factory graphic novel coming this fall, and his pessimistic non-fiction work about life and horror further on the horizon entitled The Conspiracy Against the Human Race. Here's to hoping for many more years of weird, mind-bending existential horrors from this contemporary.

Perhaps his own poem, "Happy Birthday," is most appropriate for the occasion. Thomas Ligotti Online's administrator made the same observation, and has re-posted it for our enjoyment:

Even after a person
is gone from this world,
people often tend
to remember birthdays.

They say: today is
the birthday of someone
who would have been
so many years old.

So just in case you're
not around next year:
happy birthday.

"Happy Birthday" by Thomas Ligotti

-Grim Blogger