Welcome! This week we have a first here on coffeewithfrizzyj.com: a nonfiction book! Grab a mug and come check it out!
The Conspiracy against the Human Race is a work of nonfiction by Thomas Ligotti. Long hailed as a contemporary master of "Weird Fiction," this is Ligotti's first work of nonfiction. Ligotti also wrote My Work is Not Yet Done.
I love reading Ligotti. That being said, I did not love this book. Excluding the section entitled Notes, this book was 222 pages in length. I found the first 173 pages to be a drab, redundant discourse on life and its meaninglessness, delivered like a research paper. Ligotti cited many philosophers and authors. The matter itself was fascinating, but long-winded. The last 50 pages were the important part, I have decided.
In the last section of the book, a chapter entitled Autopsy on a Puppet, Ligotti delved into examples of supernatural fiction and why they worked. This, as a writer recently obsessed with horror fiction, was invaluable to me. The chapter came to an end with a poetic literary death-effigy of a car crash (death by vehicular misadventure, Ligotti is fond of saying) and what it must feel like to die in this manner. This bit was fried gold.
I struggled through this book. I would recommend the last bit to writers of fiction, and the first bit to any optimists that need to be taken down a notch, along with philosophy students.
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