A collection of all of James Sallis fiction (BRIGHT SEGMENTS) is coming out in November. I have always greatly admired his writing-and there is much of it to admire. His Lew Griffin detective series is one of my favorites. So too his John Turner trilogy. But his short stories are something even more special to me. He understands perfectly what the reader needs to know and he gives them exactly that. He captures both the horror and beauty of the world. There is never a boring sentence and his characters come alive in so few words.
"Alaska" takes place in a medical unit where a woman Tony (our protagonist) has known is brought in with a bird's beak sunk into her cheek. While a surgeon is brought into do a surgical procedure to remove it, Tony and Susan mete out the sparse details that led to their earlier breakup. Details of the medical unit are interspersed with their love story, along with the removal of the bird's beak, how does he get it so right? Multiple pain fills the page. Not a wasted word. Brilliant.
8 comments:
One of the first pro/full-time writers I contacted via social media (I forget which sort), mentioning to him how "Exigency and Martin Heidegger" made a strong impression on barely-teen me...he seemed surprised anyone remembered it. I'll need to pick up that collection.
I agree with everything you said about Sallis, a great writer. I also loved the DRIVE books and his non-series novels, like OTHERS OF MY KIND.
Currently reading three collections, as usual:
Philip K. Dick, PAYCHECK. The third collection of his early stories I've read, with another in transit to the library.
Gerald Kersh, NEITHER MAN NOR DOG. George recommended this one a couple of weeks ago.
Douglas G. Greene & Robert C.S. Adey, eds., DEATH LOCKED IN: An Anthology of Locked Room Stories (1987). Bob Adey was a close friend and we visited him and his wife in England many times, starting in 1978. He was a locked room mystery expert, possibly the expert. Somehow I missed this one, but it is a good one, and I particularly like that (so far, at least) it does NOT have the same old stories you see in so many other collections. It starts with "The First Locked Room" by Lilian de la Torre, set in 1733 and reading more like a gritty true crime story of the period. Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's "Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess" (1838) is, in some ways, a precursor to his most famous book, UNCLE SILAS. Ngaio Marsh didn't write many short stories, but her "I Can Find My Way Out" (1946), set backstage at a London theater, as many of her novels were, is a fun read. The last story I've read so far was unusual, L. Frank Baum's "The Suicide of Kiaros" (1896), which, of course, is not a suicide. Other authors to come: Fredric Brown, Edward D. Hoch, Cornell Woolrich, John Dickson Carr, Ellery Queen, Clayton Rawson, and Bill Pronzini.
Yes, Mr Sallis contacted me once when I mentioned his writing somewhere. Very kind man.
I love locked room stories so I will look for that.
I agree with all of you on James Sallis's work. Excellent writer.
I am not familiar with James Sallis at all. I will have to look him up.
I have returned and have a post this week: https://casualdebris.blogspot.com/2024/07/casual-shorts-isfdb-top-short-fiction.html
https://socialistjazz.blogspot.com/2018/08/ffb-war-book-edited-by-james-sallis.html for an older review of a James Sallis anthology.
That sounds like a very good story. I have heard much about Sallis and his writing, but I don't think I have read anything, novel or short stories, by him.
If anyone wants to see Sallis's "Exigency & Martin Heidegger", this might be the only place to do so, so far....
https://archive.org/details/Amazing_Stories_v52n01_1978-11/page/n49/mode/2up?view=theater
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