Venger Satanis Interviews Ligotti!!!?

Not something I would typically comment on here but for it's somewhat surreal nature: word has recently reached Ghooric Zone central of a rather curious event, namely Darrick Dishaw - aka ‘Venger Satanis’ aka 'I AM the way' and head honcho of the Lovecraftian magical group the Cult of Cthulhu - posting his interview with Thomas Ligotti here. Regular readers may already be familiar with Mr. Satanis from his various escapades on yog-sothoth.com and from his occasional run-ins with Dan Harms (details of which Dan has posted on his own blog).

The fact that this involves Ghooric Zone’s most favoured of all juxtapositions - the occult and weird fiction - is interesting enough. The fact that this involves the even stranger juxtaposition of Lovecraftian cult-of-one Darrick Dishaw and enfant terrible of the weird Thomas Ligotti might lead one to expect the kind of deranged metaphyicial catastrophe found only within the pages of Ligotti’s own tales. Especially when Darrick asks Ligotti if he is currently dating.

I've been waiting expectantly for someone to begin integrating Ligotti's work into an occultural framework, so was extremely gratified to note that Darrick appears to have elevated Ligotti to the position of 'prophet' of the Cult of Cthulhu. The fact that Ligotti has elsewhere indicated that he sees much the post-60s occult and New Age scene as a variety of spiritual hucksterism is an irony, it seems, lost on Venger Satanis.

That said, I can’t find it in my heart to entirely condemn Darrick despite his youthful fumblings and schoolgirlish exhuberance for Ligotti (‘the earth’s greatest living writer ’). Indeed, as one of the contributors on Thomas Ligotti on-line notes, Darrick does display an refreshing openness about his own shortcomings as an interviewer whilst Ligotti’s responses to Darrick’s sometimes unusual questions are full of sinister wit. In particular Ligotti’s comments about the ‘cornfield’ are also revealing insofar as they indicate a probable influence on his novella ‘My work is not yet done’ - one of the few genre tales (along with Danielewski’s House of Leaves ) that has left me feeling genuinely disturbed.

Go Darrick!