NoctuaryNoctuary
When an interviewer asked Ligotti the derivation of the word "noctuary," he replied that it was the nocturnal counterpart of "diary," that is, a journal of what occurs on a nightly timetable rather than during the light of day. Echoing the tenebrous tone of the book's name are the section titles into which Noctuary is divided Studies in Shadow, Discourse on Blackness, Notebook of the Night. Shadow, Blackness, Night: these are substance and signification of the themes of Ligotti's works and the signature of gloom in which they are signed.
New to Noctuary are the terse pieces of the volumes' third section. Composed of nineteen dreamy entries, Notebook of the Night is a journal or perhaps only excerpts of a greater work of insidious exploits, delirious freaks, hymns to the void, esoteric rituals, and carnivals of the abyss. As an introduction to this and the other segments of Noctuary is "In the Night, in the Dark: A Note on the Appreciation of Weird Fiction." Perhaps the reader will fight guidance in the words of this meditation on what separates the aberrant from the norm, the diseased from the wholesome, and the night from the day.
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- Burton, MI : Subterranean Press, 2012.
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