The perfect date keeps her biggest secret until just before marriage
Category: The Archaeology of Weird Fiction Project
Reviews and meditations about stories collected in The Weird, Ann and Jeff VanderMeer’s seminal anthology of weird fiction.
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
Weird #41: “A Woman Seldom Found” by William Sansom (1959)
Man meets woman--but this tryst's got a twist
Weird #40: “Axolotl” by Julio Cortázar (1956)
“In no animal had I ever found such a profound connection to myself.”
Weird #39: “Mister Taylor” by Augusto Monterroso (1954)
In which the sale of shrunken heads drives a South American country into chaos
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
Weird #37: “The Complete Gentleman” by Amos Tutuola (1952)
Photo by Kaysha on Unsplash 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, …
Continue reading Weird #37: “The Complete Gentleman” by Amos Tutuola (1952)
Weird #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.
Weird #35: “The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles” by Margaret St. Clair (1951)
Moral of story: know your client.
Weird #34: “The Summer People” by Shirley Jackson (1950)
Things go wrong when an older couple decides to stay at the cottage past Labor Day.
Matthew Rettino 