“This is the perfect companion piece to Matt Cardin’s fiction omnibus To Rouse Leviathan.”
—Jon Padgett, author of The Secret of Ventriloquism
“For my money, Matt Cardin is the most interesting voice in horror criticism of our time.”
—Nathan Ballingrud, author of North American Lake Monsters and Wounds
For more than two decades, Matt Cardin has been one of the most profound and provocative critics and scholars working in the field of horror fiction, and this volume contains his collected essays on a wide array of topics within the genre.
Cardin has made a specialty in treating the multifaceted work of Thomas Ligotti, and in six substantial papers he discusses such subjects as H. P. Lovecraft’s influence on Ligotti’s work and thought, the nature of horror in such celebrated tales as “Nethescurial” and “The Bungalow House,” and other phases of the work of this master of the weird. And in a wide array of interviews, Cardin provides insight into his own vision and outlook, which have served as the basis of his weird tales.
But Cardin is best known as a critic who has brought a formidable knowledge of philosophy and religion to the analysis of horror fiction. Angels and demons; religion and vampires; the nature of cosmic horror—these and other topics are treated by Cardin in the context of horror fiction and film ranging from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to George Romero’s “Living Dead” films. In these and other papers, Matt Cardin displays his effortless mastery of the many complex issues evoked by the very nature of the weird tale.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Ligotti Papers
Thomas Ligotti’s Career of Nightmares
The Masters’ Eyes, Shining with Secrets: The Influence of H. P. Lovecraft on Thomas Ligotti
The Transition from Literary Horror to Existential Nightmare in Thomas Ligotti’s “Nethescurial”
Liminal Terror and Collective Identity in Thomas Ligotti’s “The Shadow at the Bottom of the World”
Icy Bleakness and Killing Sadness: The Desolating Impact of Thomas Ligotti’s “The Bungalow House”
A Formless Shade of Divinity: Chasing Down the Demiurge in Thomas Ligotti’s “The Red Tower,” I Have a Special Plan for This World, and This Degenerate Little Town
Introductions
Spookhouses, Catharsis, and Dark Consolations (Introduction to Horror Literature through History)
Foreword to Beneath the Surface by Simon Strantzas
Introduction to The Secret of Ventriloquism by Jon Padgett
Of Masks and Mystagogues: Introduction to Born to Fear: Interviews with Thomas Ligotti
Introduction to Portraits of Ruin by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.
Gods and Monsters
A Brief History of the Angel and the Demon
Loathsome Objects: George Romero’s Living Dead Films as Contemplative Tools
Religion and Vampires
Those Sorrows Which Are Sent to Wean Us from the Earth: The Failed Quest for Enlightenment in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
Gods and Monsters, Worms and Fire: A Horrific Reading of Isaiah
The Spaces Between
Fantasy, Horror, and Infinite Longing
In Search of Higher Intelligence: The Daemonic Muse(s) of Aleister Crowley, Timothy Leary, and Robert Anton Wilson
Scratches on the Universe’s Utmost Rim
Initiation by Nightmare: Cosmic Horror and Chapel Perilous
Interviews
Interview with Matt Cardin, by Stuart Young
Interview with Matt Cardin: Dark Awakenings and Cosmic Horror, by Lovecraft News Network
Matt Cardin Unleashes His Teeming Brain, by T. E. Grau
Matt Cardin: Life and Mind of a Teeming Brain, by Rafael Tages
Shadows in the Corner of His Transcendental Eye: A Conversation with Matt Cardin, by Jon Padgett
Publication History
Acknowledgments
This product was added to our catalog on Tuesday 12 April, 2022.
