Just as bleak and revolted at the experience of being as Ligotti's darkest in The Clown Puppet or The Bungalow House, while adding a startling humor that doesn't take anything away from the ominous, vengeful tone.

I think the anti-capitalist satire has a lot to do with how the horror and humor can coexist. In The Red Tower, Ligotti already explored the ideal Factory as a site of horror, but the outsider perspective (and shorter form) made it only as political as any other story in which we are disturbed by a decaying factory. In MWiNYD, our main character actually works for the Company, letting us feel the weight of that meaningless labor, paving a perfect in-road to both fear and comedy.

I am curious about the dearth of products in this one... for a writer obsessed with tchotchkes, detritus, hollowed-out collections of trash (Dr. Voke and Mr. Veech, The Town Manager, etc.), we don't get to much of what the company actually makes. It enhances the feeling of pointlessness and alienation, I guess.

Two things that hit hard for me and probably will for anyone with an office job:

• Having your apathy and refusal to be ambitious met with resistance, suspicion, pity; treated as subversive, even

• The paranoia, the workplace turning into a panopticon

Makes me want to re-watch Severance and The Lobster.