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Songs Of A Dead Dreamer (1986)

por Thomas Ligotti

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349773,491 (3.92)14
Songs of a Dreamer was Thomas Ligotti's first collection of supernatural horror stories. When originally published in 1985 by Harry Morris's Silver Scarab Press, the book was hardly noticed. In 1989, an expanded version appeared that garnered accolades from several quarters. Writing in the Washington Post, the celebrated science fiction and fantasy author Michael Swanwick extolled: "Put this volume on the shelf right between H. P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe. Where it belongs."The revisions in the present volume of Songs of a Dead Dreamer have been calculated to make its stories into enhanced incarnations of the originals. This edition is and will remain definitive.For those already familiar with the stories in Songs of a Dead Dreamer, an invitation is extended to return to them in their ultimate state. For those new to the collection, it is submitted to engage them with some of the most extraordinary tales of their kind. In either case, this publication of Songs of a Dead Dreamer offers evidence for why Ligotti has been judged to be among the most important authors in the history of supernatural horror.… (mais)
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This was a hard book to review. I felt the first section of the book missed the mark for me. Several stories in the second were interesting, and one stood out, but it was the third section- with it's wonderful use of language and great sense of philosophical and meaning-imbued passages that really resonated with me. This was his first collection, but I'll definitely be reading more. I feel it's worth reading, and they'll be something for everyone, but it's a little hit and miss as it stands. Nevertheless, worth reading.

3.25 stars. ( )
  DanielSTJ | May 10, 2020 |

“To my mind, a well-developed sense of humor is the surest indication of a person's humanity, no matter how black and bitter that humor may be.”
― Thomas Ligotti

This is the first published collection by contemporary American horror fiction writer Thomas Ligotti (born in 1953). To provide a sense of the richness of the author’s style and plot development, here are my comments on one of my favorite tales from the collection. As convoluted and multifaceted as an intricate Chinese box puzzle, Dream of a Manikin features a psychoanalyst writing a letter to his psychoanalyst wife regarding one of his patients, a young lady by the name of Amy Locher, the same name as one of the dolls his wife had when she was a little girl. Also, the narrator lets his wife know that Amy told him directly that she, his wife, recommended him as a therapist.

The narrator conveys the details of their session: Amy, a loan processor for a bank, tells him about her recurrent dream: how she works in a fashionable dress shop, has a complete biography as a dress shop employee and how she feels herself a slave to dressing and undressing the shop’s manikins, manikins that become the focal point of her animus.

Sidebar: "Animus" is a term used in the psychotherapy developed by Carl Jung, animus representing the masculine inner personality of a woman. By this specific term and others cited in Ligotti’s tale, it becomes clear both the narrator and his wife are Jungian analysts.

Amy tells the narrator/therapist how she is overwhelmed by anxiety when dressing the manikins and when she, as dress shop employee, returns to her apartment in the evening and has a dream where she retains her identity as manikin dresser and dreams her bedroom is transformed into a archaically furnished hall the size of a small theater. However, one of the walls of the theater is missing; instead, there is a star-filled blackness. In the supercharged silence, peering in the direction of this starry blackness, she senses an unseen demonic presence. Icy coldness envelops her and she grasps how she cannot look behind her - and something is definitely behind her!

However, no sooner does she become aware of this fact than she realizes she is, in fact, dreaming. With this heightened awareness, she now thinks of herself in the third person. And not only does she have this realization but the words "she is dreaming" becomes more pronounced and insistent, almost as if these three words were a legend written at the bottom of her dream, three words she hears repeated as if on an old phonograph record.

Then, all of a sudden, Amy’s weird dreams becomes weirder: As if a flock of birds settling on a statue, all those repeated phrases "she is dreaming" settle on a phantom statue, a statue she can’t see but she can certainly feel standing directly behind her. At this point, she wants to scream but she can’t since the statue’s firm right hand covers her mouth. Then, the statue’s left arm stretches out and its left hand dangles some filthy rags, making the rags dance before her eyes. The statue speak, telling her “It’s time to get dressed, little dolling.”

Amy can only move her eyes; she looks away from the dancing rags and sees for the first time her room is filled with people dressed as dolls, their bodies collapsed and their mouths wide open. The people do not look as if they are still alive, not at all - some of them instantly become actual dolls while others occupy a stage between humanness and doll-ness.

With horror, Amy realizes he very own mouth is open wide and will not close. Also, at this very moment, she realizes she can turn around and look at the menacing statue behind her. And she does: in the dream Amy wakes up to her very real loan processor self in her very own bed. In a state of bloodcurdling shock and as an attempt to completely and totally break the spell of her nightmare, Amy turns around to look at the chalk white bedroom wall behind her. To her wide-awake astonishment, she sees the face of a female manikin, a face that very smoothly, very slowly, recedes back into the bedroom wall. Amy screams so loudly several of her apartment neighbors become alarmed.

The narrator notes how Amy’s dream has much in common with his wife’s own exploration of the occult and Jungian depth analysis. For example, he tells her how she is continually classifying extrasensory pockets of hidden realities as “little zones” or “cosmic static.” Then, acknowledging how such occult studies are truly bizarre, he warns his wife she is taking the discipline and science of psychology too far.

Returning to his patient, the narrator relates Amy’s reaction to her recurrent dream, how the dream is so powerful she begins to question her very own identity: Is she a loan processor or is she really an employee of a dress shop? Or, some other identity? Amy’s newly acquired sense of “unreality” is causing her serious emotional instability. The narrator then links Amy’s emotional instability and sense of multiple selves with his wife’s theories on this subject, especially her theory of a "bigger Self," that is, a cosmic transpersonal masochistic jumbo self that enjoys tormenting all its little splinter selves.

The narrator tells his wife he finds her theories and such ancient notions of life as nothing but a dream both boring and absurd, notions reminding him of that famous Chinese story of a man who has a dream where he is a butterfly and then wakes, prompting him to question if he is a man who dreamed he was a butterfly or if he is a butterfly who is now dreaming he is a man. Totally ridiculous, even silly.

After listening to her recurrent dream, their therapy session continues and Amy practically demands that he, the therapist, put her under hypnosis. The narrator acquiesces to her plea and what he discovers and relays to his wife is not pretty. Turns out, by his patient’s testimony under hypnosis, he uncovers something extremely unsettling: Amy relays how there is a hidden, unseen presence in the background of her recurrent dream, a deep, undercover agent: the domineering boss of the clothing store, a boss who is played, as if within a theatrical play, by a certain lady psychoanalyst. And Amy gives the name of that lady psychoanalyst – his wife’s name!

Now the narrator has substantial evidence that points to how perhaps Amy and his wife are in a conspiracy against him. Or, then again, perhaps his wife as psychotherapist is using Amy as an unknowing subject for her own psychological experiments with post-hypnotic states or questionable forays within the realm of dream therapy. The session ends and our narrator/psychiatrist prescribes a tranquilizer and then sets a time for Amy’s next session. However, the following week, when Amy fails to show up for her scheduled appointment, the narrator conducts his own secret investigation of Amy’s background, and to this end, drives to the address she provided as her home address.

Turns out, the address is not residential but commercial, specifically, the address is of a fashionable dress shop, a dress shop that has in the window, to the narrator’s horror, a manikin with the same exact plaid dress Amy wore to her one and only session with him. And the eyes, oh, those manikin eyes, have an eerily familiar gleam. Alarmed beyond belief, thinking more conclusive evidence must be gathered, the narrator disguises his voice on a phone call to the store. Horror of horrors - the narrator discovers this fashion shop is exactly the very one where his wife purchases her cloths!

At this point the narrator feels a vague sense of paranoia coming on. In subsequent nights, he begins experiencing a series of horrible nightmares, a repetition of seeing the hallways of his own house lined with either people dressed up as dolls or dolls dressed up as people, all with that eerily familiar fixed gaze. Still in his dream, he returns their gaze and wonders if his own eyes are equally fixed. One of the doll-people beckons to him: “Become as we are, sweetie, Die into us.” He wakes with a start and begins to scream.

The tale continues, the strangeness and eeriness is ratcheted up again and again. Was Amy a manikin all along? Is he a real human psychotherapist or only a sophisticated human-looking doll manipulated by a higher sadistic intelligence? And this is but one of eighteen penned by Thomas Ligotti in this fine collection. If you are a fan of Poe, Lovecraft and tales of horror, this book is for you.

( )
  Glenn_Russell | Nov 13, 2018 |

This is the first published collection by contemporary American horror fiction writer Thomas Ligotti (born in 1953). To provide a sense of the richness of the author’s style and plot development, here are my comments on one of my favorites. As convoluted and multifaceted as an intricate Chinese box puzzle, “Dream of a Manikin” features a psychoanalyst writing a letter to his psychoanalyst wife regarding one of his patients, a young lady by the name of Amy Locher, the same name as one of the dolls his wife had when she was a little girl. Also, the narrator lets his wife know that Amy told him directly that she, his wife, recommended him as a therapist.

The narrator conveys the details of their session: Amy, a loan processor for a bank, tells him about her recurrent dream: how she works in a fashionable dress shop, has a complete biography as a dress shop employee and how she feels herself a slave to dressing and undressing the shop’s manikins, manikins that become the focal point of her animus. My note: ‘Animus’ is a term used in the psychotherapy developed by Carl Jung, animus representing the masculine inner personality of a woman. By this specific term and others cited in Ligotti’s tale, it becomes clear both the narrator and his wife are Jungian analysts.

Amy tells the narrator/therapist how she is overwhelmed by anxiety when dressing the manikins and when she, as dress shop employee, returns to her apartment in the evening and has a dream where she retains her identity as manikin dresser and dreams her bedroom is transformed into a archaically furnished hall the size of a small theater. However, one of the walls of the theater is missing; instead, there is a star-filled blackness. In the supercharged silence, peering in the direction of this starry blackness, she senses an unseen demonic presence. Icy coldness envelops her and she grasps how she cannot look behind her - and something is definitely behind her!

However, no sooner does she become aware of this fact than she realizes she is, in fact, dreaming. With this heightened awareness, she now thinks of herself in the third person. And not only does she have this realization but the words ‘She is dreaming’ becomes more pronounced and insistent, almost as if these three words were a legend written at the bottom of her dream, three words she hears repeated as if on an old phonograph record.

Then, all of a sudden, Amy’s weird dreams becomes weirder: As if a flock of birds settling on a statue, all those repeated phrases ‘She is dreaming’ settle on a phantom statue, a statue she can’t see but she can certainly feel standing directly behind her. At this point, she wants to scream but she can’t since the statue’s firm right hand covers her mouth. Then, the statue’s left arm stretches out and its left hand dangles some filthy rags, making the rags dance before her eyes. The statue speak, telling her “It’s time to get dressed, little dolling.”

Amy can only move her eyes; she looks away from the dancing rags and sees for the first time her room is filled with people dressed as dolls, their bodies collapsed and their mouths wide open. The people do not look as if they are still alive, not at all - some of them instantly become actual dolls while others occupy a stage between humanness and doll-ness. With horror, Amy realizes he very own mouth is open wide and will not close. Also, at this very moment, she realizes she can turn around and look at the menacing statue behind her. At this point in the dream Amy wakes up to her very real loan processor self in her very own bed. In a state of bloodcurdling shock and as an attempt to completely and totally break the spell of her nightmare, Amy turns around to look at the chalk white bedroom wall behind her. To her wide-awake astonishment, she sees the face of a female manikin, a face that very smoothly, very slowly, recedes back into the bedroom wall. Amy screams so loudly several of her apartment neighbors become alarmed.

The narrator notes how Amy’s dream has much in common with his wife’s own exploration of the occult and Jungian depth analysis. For example, he tells her how she is continually classifying extrasensory pockets of hidden realities as “little zones” or “cosmic static.” Then, acknowledging how such occult studies are truly bizarre, he warns his wife she is taking the discipline and science of psychology too far.

Returning to his patient, the narrator relates Amy’s reaction to her recurrent dream, how the dream is so powerful she begins to question her very own identity: Is she a loan processor or is she really an employee of a dress shop? Or, some other identity? Amy’s newly acquired sense of “unreality” is causing her serious emotional instability. The narrator then links Amy’s emotional instability and sense of multiple selves with his wife’s theories on this subject, especially her theory of a ‘Bigger Self,’ that is, a cosmic transpersonal masochistic jumbo self that enjoys tormenting all its little splinter selves.

The narrator tells his wife he finds her theories and such ancient notions of life as nothing but a dream both boring and absurd, notions reminding him of that famous Chinese story of a man who has a dream where he is a butterfly and then wakes, prompting him to question if he is a man who dreamed he was a butterfly or if he is a butterfly who is now dreaming he is a man. Totally ridiculous, even silly.

After listening to her recurrent dream, their therapy session continues and Amy practically demands that he, the therapist, put her under hypnosis. The narrator acquiesces to her plea and what he discovers and relays to his wife is not pretty. Turns out, by his patient’s testimony under hypnosis, he uncovers something extremely unsettling: Amy relays how there is a hidden, unseen presence in the background of her recurrent dream, a deep, undercover agent: the domineering boss of the clothing store, a boss who is played, as if within a theatrical play, by a certain lady psychoanalyst. And Amy gives the name of that lady psychoanalyst – his wife’s name! Now the narrator has substantial evidence that points to how perhaps Amy and his wife are in a conspiracy against him. Or, then again, perhaps his wife as psychotherapist is using Amy as an unknowing subject for her own psychological experiments with post-hypnotic states or questionable forays within the realm of dream therapy.

The session ends and our narrator/psychiatrist prescribes a tranquilizer and then sets a time for Amy’s next session. However, the following week, when Amy fails to show up for her scheduled appointment, the narrator conducts his own secret investigation of Amy’s background, and to this end, drives to the address she provided as her home address. Turns out, the address is not residential but commercial, specifically, the address is of a fashionable dress shop, a dress shop that has in the window, to the narrator’s horror, a manikin with the same exact plaid dress Amy wore to her one and only session with him. And the eyes, oh, those manikin eyes, have an eerily familiar gleam. Alarmed beyond belief, thinking more conclusive evidence must be gathered, the narrator disguises his voice on a phone call to the store. Horror of horrors - the narrator discovers this fashion shop is exactly the very one where his wife purchases her cloths!

At this point the narrator feels a vague sense of paranoia coming on. In subsequent nights, he begins experiencing a series of horrible nightmares, a repetition of seeing the hallways of his own house lined with either people dressed up as dolls or dolls dressed up as people, all with that eerily familiar fixed gaze. Still in his dream, he returns their gaze and wonders if his own eyes are equally fixed. One of the doll-people beckons to him: “Become as we are, sweetie, Die into us.” He wakes with a start and begins to scream.

The tale continues, the strangeness and eeriness is ratcheted up again and again. Was Amy a manikin all along? Is he a real human psychotherapist or only a sophisticated human-looking doll manipulated by a higher sadistic intelligence? And this is but one of eighteen penned by Thomas Ligotti in this fine collection. If you are a fan of Poe, Lovecraft and tales of horror, this book is for you. ( )
  GlennRussell | Feb 16, 2017 |
This guy is pretty hyped as being pants-wettingly scary, but the majority of the stories I read in here barely manage to come across as mildly off-putting. I'll try a few other collections before I make up my mind, but this is not a good start. ( )
  stewartfritz | Apr 4, 2013 |
Thomas Ligotti has an extremely high reputation in many quarters as the great horror writer of the modern age. Years ago a very knowledgeable former co-worker of mine, who had written books on the genre, had informed me how dark and, for want of a better word, horrifying Ligotti's books were.

I read Teatro Grottesco a couple of years ago and wasn't all that impressed. Sure, there were moments when Ligotti built up a slightly creepy atmosphere and his attempt to make horror out of a sort of bureaucratic capitalist system was at least interesting; but I can't claim to have ever been scared whilst reading the collection. Not to mention that I found Ligotti's prose a little too poetic.

In the two years since I've discovered that horror is a very difficult genre to succeed in with the written word (it 's a lot easier with visuals). None the less I've found Robert Aickman to be a very unsettling author at times and I was even left particularly unnerved by the William Gibson short, Hinterlands. Thus, when Subterranean Press reprinted this, Ligotti's first collection, I was interested in giving him another ago, as his old books are so expensive and hard to find these days (and talked of with such high regard).

Unfortunately I was once again disappointed. This is, to my mind, a better collection than Teatro Grottesco. Ligotti's prose is less flowery and while some might think that a shame, as it is less distinctive, I found it a bonus. I thought it simply more clear and to the point. The collection starts well too. The Frolic is slightly predictable but it's written very effectively and genuinely gave me a small shudder at the end. Others, such as Alice's Last Adventure and The Christmas Eves of Aunt Elise, seem rather mundane for the most part but then end with nice twists that make everything previous seem newly worrying. The Lost Art of Twilight is a nice genre bender too.

It's just a shame that the second half of the book falls very flat. Most just weren't as original and a few were just a bit too abstract, I thought. Hence the middle of the road rating for this collection. It's half and half. Still, it's more encouraging than Teatro Grottesco, so I'll keep reading Ligotti to see if I can discover for myself what others have found so unsettling. ( )
  DRFP | Oct 2, 2010 |
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We leave this behind in your capable hands, for in the black-foaming gutters and back alleys of paradise, in the dank windowless gloom of some galactic cellar, in the hollow pearly whorls found in sewerlike seas, in starless cities of insanity, and in their slums . . . my awe-struck little deer and I have gone frolicking.
From the earliest days of man there has endured the conviction that there is an order of existence which is entirely strange to him. It does indeed seem that the strict order of the visible world is only a semblance, one providing certain gross materials which become the basis for subtle improvisations of invisible powers.
But is there really a strange world? Of course. Are there, then, two worlds? Not at all. There is only our own world and it alone is alien to us, intrinsically so by virtue of its lack of mysteries. If only it actually were deranged by invisible powers, if only it were susceptible to real strangeness, perhaps it would seem more like a home to us, and less like an empty room filled with the echoes of this dreadful improvising. To think that we might have found comfort in a world suited to our nature, only to end up in one so resoundingly strange!
The other worlds portrayed in these books inevitably served as annexes of this one; they were imposters of the authentic unreality which was the only realm of redemption, however gruesome it might appear. And it was this terminal landscape that he sought, not those rituals of the 'way' that never arrives, heavens or hells that are mere pretexts for circumnavigating the real and revelling in it. For he dreamed of strange volumes that turned away from all earthly light to become lost in their own nightmares, pages that preached a nocturnal salvation, a liturgy of shadows, catechism of phantoms. His absolute: to dwell among the ruins of reality.
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Songs of a Dreamer was Thomas Ligotti's first collection of supernatural horror stories. When originally published in 1985 by Harry Morris's Silver Scarab Press, the book was hardly noticed. In 1989, an expanded version appeared that garnered accolades from several quarters. Writing in the Washington Post, the celebrated science fiction and fantasy author Michael Swanwick extolled: "Put this volume on the shelf right between H. P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe. Where it belongs."The revisions in the present volume of Songs of a Dead Dreamer have been calculated to make its stories into enhanced incarnations of the originals. This edition is and will remain definitive.For those already familiar with the stories in Songs of a Dead Dreamer, an invitation is extended to return to them in their ultimate state. For those new to the collection, it is submitted to engage them with some of the most extraordinary tales of their kind. In either case, this publication of Songs of a Dead Dreamer offers evidence for why Ligotti has been judged to be among the most important authors in the history of supernatural horror.

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