Fantastic Metropolis

Neddal Ayad: Had you not suffered the panic attacks, do you think you would have continued to use street drugs?

Thomas Ligotti: That’s almost a certainty. After the initial onset of my panic-anxiety disorder, there was a period of several years in which I recovered sufficiently to be able to drink alcohol, and during my early college years I got blasted almost every night, and many days, while working two jobs and putting myself through school. Then I crashed into a four-year depression and a roaring return of my anxiety-panic disorder. This was possibly as much due to the stress of work and school as it was from alcohol. Since then I’ve lived the chemical life only in the form of prescription tranquilizers and antidepressants. These allow me to function as a taxpaying citizen but not much more.

Neddal Ayad: If so, do you think it would have altered your career path?

Thomas Ligotti: I’ve never had a career path. After I stopped taking drugs and drinking, I turned to literature as my escape. I gained enough skills from this pursuit to land a job at a publishing company where I worked for twenty-three years, but I never sought an editorial career. It came along quite by chance.

Neddal Ayad: You mentioned earlier that a bad drug-related experience was a forecast of your anxiety-panic disorder. Do you think your drug use precipitated the onset of your panic/anxiety disorder and depression?

Thomas Ligotti: That’s possible. Then again, there’s a definite history in my family of these conditions.

Neddal Ayad: What’s your take on artists (in the general sense) who play up mild cases of depression and use it as an excuse for acting out?

Thomas Ligotti: It does seem that every writer who has ever been the least bit wacky in the head has written an essay, sometimes even a bestselling book, about their experience. This is just what writers do, and these days there’s a demand for this genre. Scott Fitzgerald wrote “The Crack-Up”, and Tolstoy wrote A Confession. These probably wouldn’t go over very well in today’s market because they’re not exotically cute in the manner of the book on which the movie Girl, Interrupted was based. The author of that book started a campaign against benzodiazepines—tranquilizers—that continues to this day. Without tranquilizers, I would exist in unending nightmare, as would millions of other people who have panic-anxiety disorder, a condition that is often comorbid with depression.

Neddal Ayad: Can you write during a depressive episode?

Thomas Ligotti: I could in the seventies. I can’t now. It beats me how I did it back then. I was both dysphoric and anhedonic. I do remember that I really wanted to write about what it was like to be in that state. But most of it is just a blank.

The first story I wrote that I thought was good enough not to throw away, “The Last Feast of Harlequin,” was inspired by my depression of 1975-78.

Neddal Ayad: Were you surprised by the reaction to My Work Is Not Yet Done?

Thomas Ligotti: I was gratified that I won two awards for the book and that the first edition sold out as quickly as it did. But the book really wasn’t widely reviewed because it was published by a small press, so I’m really not aware of what the reaction to MWINYD has been in terms of readers’ opinions. For all I know, everyone who read the book hated it. Certainly a number of people, including the guy who interviewed me for Publishers Weekly, saw it as my attempt to appeal to a larger audience. How much larger—a thousand people as opposed to a couple hundred? Geez, if I really wanted to cash in on that book, I would have made it three times as long and not had the protagonist kill himself at the end. I would also have left out the esoteric philosophical aspects of the story, which to my mind were what justified its writing in the first place. Furthermore, it was on Thomas Ligotti Online, where anyone could read it for free, for six months before it came out in book form.

Neddal Ayad: Did you get any response from your coworkers or employers?

Thomas Ligotti: I had published “The Nightmare Network” years before “MWINYD,” and, so I’m told, this story made some of my coworkers, as well as my boss, a bit nervous. Unfortunately, by the time My Work… was published I had quit my job and so I wasn’t around to appreciate any reaction to it. I understand that people at my old work place were reading it as a roman à clef and trying to figure out who in the company the characters were based on. In fact, none of them were based on my coworkers, although the narrator was based on me.

Neddal Ayad: Are there any plans for a trade paperback version?

Thomas Ligotti: Not at the moment.

Neddal Ayad: You’ve professed an admiration for Raymond Chandler. Are you attracted to any other crime writing?

Thomas Ligotti: No. I liked Chandler because his prose style kept me from falling asleep. There aren’t many writers about whom I can say that. I couldn’t care less about detective or noir fiction.

Neddal Ayad: What’s the status of the Crampton and Last Feast of Harlequin screenplays?

Thomas Ligotti: They were officially released to potential buyers over the past year or so by the agency representing Brandon Trenz and me. There was some interest. Brandon even made a trip to LA to talk to some people. This is pretty standard, so I’m not holding my breath or anything. Recently our agent sent out a number of copies of My Work Is Not Yet Done. Again, no breath holding. I’m not being pessimistic, but everyone has a sense of how Hollywood works. It’s not like publishing. If you write a good story or poem, someone is sure to publish it because it doesn’t cost that much to do so and it’s easier to judge how a story or poem is going to be received by an audience than it is a screenplay, which is really just a sketch of an idea for a movie.