Thomas Ligotti — American Author born on July 09, 1953,

Thomas Ligotti is a contemporary American horror author and reclusive literary cult figure. His writings have been noted as rooted in several literary genres – most prominently Lovecraftian horror – and have overall been described by critics such as S.T. Joshi as works of "philosophical horror," often written as short stories and novellas and with similarities to gothic fiction. The worldview espoused by Ligotti in both his fiction and non-fiction has been described as profoundly pessimistic and nihilistic.The Washington Post called him "the best kept secret in contemporary horror fiction.".. (wikipedia)

To my mind, a well-developed sense of humor is the surest indication of a person's humanity, no matter how black and bitter that humor may be.
Human life moves only in one direction - toward disease, damage, and death. The best you can hope for is to remain stagnant or, in certain cases, return to a previous condition when things weren't as bad as they've become for you.
I'm completely indifferent to what genre I read provided that I feel sympathy with how a writer perceives being alive in the world.
We live in a permanent state of bad faith, a mutual representation of ourselves to one another for the sake of remaining sane and following our biological imperative to continue as a species.