Teatro Grottesco by Thomas Ligotti (2006)

 This is the third collection by Ligotti I've sampled, and perhaps there's less to say here. This is a lot later on in his career, with the intervening titles often being currently available only in crazedly expensive limited editions, or insanely rare old paperbacks, making them also crazedly expensive. So who knows how the story unfolded, specifically? Here he has reached a place of virtuosity in terms of deft play between psychology and concept. Many of these are very satisfyingly clever. They occupy themselves with a lot less of what would be called horror tropes, and a lot more with states of mind, particularly among groups. But these are odd, slightly "off" groups, who are loners and eccentrics, with artistic leanings. They are taken to classic Ligotti territory, like almost abandoned towns, old gas stations, backstreet shopfronts which double as rarely-entered galleries, and so on, but there's a push here for the weird to be exemplified in peculiarities of mind and philosophy, and conceptual twists, rather than anything too monstrous. Look forward to the "missing" (bar a huge account balance) entries in the bibliography to be reinstated, so as to trace back. Only a novella and a philosophical non-fiction to go, I think.