Songs of a Dead Dreamer

Later, when I was out walking, I stopped dead on the street. Ahead of me, standing beneath a lamp hanging from an old wall, was the outline of a figure of my general size and proportions. He was looking the other way but very stiffly and very tense, as if waiting anxiously for the precise moment when he would suddenly twist about-face. If that should happen, I knew what I would see: my eyes, my nose, my mouth, and behind those features a being strange beyond all description. I retraced my steps back home and immediately went to bed.
Very odd. I found the first half to be boring and pretentious, filled with annoying purple prose that spoke really about nothing. It was only after I reached a story somewhere after the middle portion titled “The Masquerade of a Dead Sword” that I began to change my mind on the collection, and I found myself enjoying most of the stories that came afterwards. The abruptness of it almost feels like Ligotti had a revelation about his writing suddenly and altered it in unnoticeable but severely impactful ways. I don't know. I was about to give up on the collection until that story, and I'm happy I didn't now. I still find his reliance on puppet and doll imagery to be sort of corny, even though I can't lie and say I'm not afraid of them myself. I want to read more of his works though, as I know these were some of his earliest and probably not the best start! “The Journal of Dr. Drapeau,” quoted above, ended up being another one of my favorites.