Ligotti repels me because, whether he acknowledges it or not, his is a counsel of despair. He's gotten so wrapped up in his own inability to find an answer to the simple question "why are we here?" that he has totally omitted to consider he may have a responsibility, in regard to his own person, to make an answer to it. Through that omission, he's inadvertently - I think inadvertently - made the purpose of at least his public life to tell everyone else how bad it is he can't come up with one.
Perhaps I'd have felt the same about Lovecraft, in his day.
> he may have a responsibility, in regard to his own person, to make an answer to it
I will concede that existentialism of this sort is really the only honest philosophical alternative to pessimism. Ligotti dismisses it, but I can't remember why right at the moment.
