A HAPPY BIRTHDAY WISH TO THE PREMIER ANTI-NATALIST WRITER.

—A Council-of-Concerned-Conservationists Post for the Anti-Birthday of Thomas Ligotti.

From the poetry and lyric column: Detritus: Mal’Poetica including Nomen Est Omen, or Naming Is Destiny

—By Black Cloud

“To be born is to be conscripted into a grotesque performance for which no audition was held.

But sometimes, backstage, someone slips on a banana peel.

And for a moment—God help us—we laugh.”

—Notes from the Void

Today we did the unthinkable.

We wished Thomas Ligotti a happy birthday.

Not to mock. Not to praise. But because it made us smile.

And in that pleasant smirk—brief, wrong, and delicious—we found a reason to endure.

He who has so artfully and faithfully described the existential nullity of being born has, by the sheer absurdity of his birth being celebrated, created a flicker of joy.

The paradox is profound:

In mourning the fact of birth,

we laughed.

And in laughing, life—if only for a breath—became worth it.

🎵 THE LIGOTTI BIRTHDAY DIRGE 🎵

(sung to the tune of “Happy Birthday”)

🎶Unhappy birthday to you,

We regret that you grew,

From the void you emerged,

Now the void peeks back too.

🎶Unhappy birthday to you,

May the void give you rest,

In the way it does best,

Not with silence or comfort,

But a shrug and a jest.

NOMEN EST OMEN:

Doubting Thomas, Patron Saint of Anti-Natalism

Let us not overlook the name. Thomas.

The doubter. The one who demanded to see the wound before believing.

Is it any wonder that our most refined literary pessimist bears this name?

Ligotti is no nihilist. He’s a mystic of meaninglessness.

And so, in Council style, we offer the ALTDEF:

Thomas (n.) – One who doubts the joy of being,

and yet writes so beautifully about despair that we keep reading.

See also: Birthday, bleak; Soteriology, inverted; Gift, poisoned.

Fittingly, the name Thomas means twin—a bearer of duality. And on this day, by smiling—perhaps even laughing—at the birthday of the world’s most eloquent anti-natalist, we’ve revealed the double nature of existence itself. For those who think deeply, a birthday is not merely a celebration, nor merely a lament—it is both. It is the site where sorrow and wonder, dread and affection, coexist. In wishing Thomas Ligotti a happy birthday, we were not mocking him, but lighting a small candle in the shadowed room he so expertly describes. Not to dispel the dark, but to acknowledge that even within it, there can flicker a moment of warmth, a human gesture—however brief—that makes the whole strange affair almost worthwhile.

So yes, we said it:

Happy Birthday, Thomas Ligotti!

You were right.

And yet—we laughed.

Which means, for one improbable second, you were wrong.

And for that reason alone—we’re grateful you were born.

✶ Afterword from the Editor ✶

John St. Evola

On Southern Italian Fatalism and the Half-Smile of Ligotti

Let me close with a note from the mezzogiorno.

Ligotti is—judging by his surname [1], his preoccupations, and his spiritual humidity—Italian—Southern Italian. Possibly even Sicilian, God help him. And if so, the irony of this whole post becomes something deeper than just literary or philosophical—it becomes ancestral.

Because we Southerners know something about laughing at funerals.

We know how to throw a wedding with tears already in the wine.

We know that a baby’s birth is a joy, yes—but it is also the beginning of suffering. And so the old women gather and cry when a child is born, and laugh when a man dies well.

This is not pessimism. It’s rhythm.

It’s a way of being that says:

“We do not deny the void—but we also do not let it have the last word.”

So today, by toasting the birthday of Thomas Ligotti—a man who has looked more deeply into the bleak and said “yes, I see it”—we’re not betraying his worldview. We’re honoring it in the only Southern way possible: with a cracked smile, a lifted glass, and a little music that makes us ache in the chest.

Because we, too, believe life is a burden.

We just carry it like a procession—with style.

Buon compleanno, Tommaso.

Don’t pretend you didn’t like the attention.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Thomas Robert Ligotti was born in Detroit on July 9, 1953, to Gasper C. Ligotti and Dolores (from Latin dolor, meaning pain, grief, or suffering) (née Mazzola)—both of Italian descent. The surname Ligotti is most commonly found in Sicily and Calabria and may derive from a diminutive or plural form of “Ligotto,” possibly rooted in a variant of Eligio (from Latin Eligius, meaning “chosen”) or from Ligio, meaning “bound” or “loyal.” Thus, the name carries echoes of one who is both “bound” and “chosen”—a poetic contradiction befitting Ligotti’s worldview. The maternal surname Mazzola comes from mazza (club or mace) with the diminutive suffix -ola, suggesting “little mace.” Together, the names evoke a figure both selected and struck—a mystic conscript armed with a symbolic cudgel, writing against existence with grim precision.