Weird #45: “The Other Side of the Mountain” by Michel Bernanos (1967)
A sea voyage, a desert island story, and a Dantesque, existential allegory all rolled into one surreal masterpiece.
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Weird #43: “Same Time, Same Place” by Mervyn Peake (1963)
The perfect date keeps her biggest secret until just before marriage
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Weird #42: “The Howling Man” by Charles Beaumont (1959)
A chilling tale in which monks gaslight the protagonist about the existence of a suffering man
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Weird #41: “A Woman Seldom Found” by William Sansom (1959)
Man meets woman–but this tryst’s got a twist
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Weird #40: “Axolotl” by Julio Cortázar (1956)
“In no animal had I ever found such a profound connection to myself.”
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Weird #39: “Mister Taylor” by Augusto Monterroso (1954)
In which the sale of shrunken heads drives a South American country into chaos
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Weird #38: “‘It’s a ‘Good’ Life’” by Jerome Bixby (1953)
In which a creepy child sits on a flickering TV set and everyone pretends it’s fine
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Weird #37: “The Complete Gentleman” by Amos Tutuola (1952)
Amos Tutuola’s “The Complete Gentleman” borrows from the tradition of Yoruba folktales to tell the story of a “beautiful” man who borrows his ‘complete’ body—feet, neck, skin, and all—from their owners. Surreal like the best folktales, it made me think of some of Italo Calvino’s more grotesque Italian fairy tales, though “The Complete Gentleman” approaches the weird from a different…
Keep readingWeird #36: “The Hungry House” by Robert Bloch (1951)
Probably the best haunted house story about the alienating effect of mirrors that you will ever read.
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About Me
I’m Matthew Rettino, a speculative fiction writer from Montreal, Canada. In my Archaeologies of Weird Fiction project, I am reviewing all 110 stories contained in Ann and Jeff VanderMeer’s massive anthology The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories.
Visit the Medium.com publication. (The back posts will be added soon.)
Matthew Rettino 