Ligotti / Aickman

I have recently re-read in a systematic fashion all fiction by Aickman
& Ligotti.

They differ supeficially between locale, times they lived, and showing
different degrees of surrealism and absurdity and scatology. However,
I find their styles (deeply textured concerns with death) very similar.

Their main difference, I feel, is that Aickman's stories generally
embrace human 'impurity' while Ligotti's are reluctantly impure and try
to attain purity through eschatology.

 Their respective styles are florid in most places, but differently so. I'd say Ligotti is the
Henry James of dark fiction style whilst Aickman the James Joyce.

 I see the Aickman Archetype in all writers literary and genre. He sort of mocks them clownishly as well as *being* them.
Ligotti's 'miserabilist' clown is a poker-faced concern for modern Health and Safety in the context of impending Death.