These are not really stories but instead it's the author's chapters on his life. And it's to inspire you to try it too. He is roughly my age so many of his memories are mine. Black and white TV, vacations, class reunions, yearbooks, the Beatles, groovy, etc. If you have even given any thought to writing a quick memoir, this will give you ideas on how to do it.
He wrote twice a day for thirty minutes, just for a month. Rick Bailey has a blog also. (http://rick-bailey.com) He spends time in Michigan and Italy. I enjoyed reliving our past with him.
That does sound interesting. We were discussing just yesterday some of the things we "dreaded" Boomers had and did that the current Gen Z (etc.) has no understanding of, let alone sympathy for.
ReplyDeleteCurrently reading Patrick Ryan's first book, SEND ME, a collection of interconnected stories about this one family over many years of time, from the perspective of different members - Teresa, the mother; her two husbands; and her four children, two with each husband. Frankie, the youngest, appears in his later collection, THE DREAM LIFE OF ASTRONAUTS, though I can't remember if any of the others do. It's mixed, and I definitely prefer the later collection, but it's worth checking out.
I returned the first volume of that Library of America AMERICAN FANTASTIC TALES book edited by Peter Straub, after reading a handful of the stories, and instead got the second volume, covering 1940 onwards. Anthony Boucher's short "Mr. Lepescu" was one story that really stood out.
Like Jeff Meyerson, I'm a big fan of the Library of America volumes. They've produced volumes of science fiction writers, mystery writers, and other contemporary writers. Of course, I own the classics: Henry James, Edith Wharton, Poe, etc. Wonderful LOA volumes!
ReplyDeleteI am sorry, we went out to buy cat food and then a new printer was delivered that needed set up and installing, and I totally forgot it was Short Story Wednesday.
ReplyDeleteThat book by Rick Bailey sounds very interesting. I don't know that I would want to write my memories, but it could be a good exercise.
Sounds like good stories, Jeff. Don't feel obliged to do it every week, Tracy. Yeah, I like the shortness of his entries. It makes it feel manageable. LOA sounds worth doing if you start early on.
ReplyDeleteLOA is good for picking and choosing, as Jeff clearly does, as well. I've bought a number of scattered volumes over the years, perhaps over a dozen at this point. Maybe a few more, as I've taken advantage of at least one of their occasional clearance sales. I now feel compelled to go look at the contents of Straub retro anthology, to see how I'd weigh them (I'd be very surprised to not see a Whole Lot of chestnuts in both, and I'm pretty sure that I've yet to buy either of his volumes).
ReplyDeleteStill feeling a bit under the weather and needing to do physical activities particularly around the house on low energy. Bought some All Hallows candy, just in case, and perhaps Alice will have to take at least some of it into the clinic, where I'm sure it might/will be joining any number of overages, or not. (Part of the trick for the diabetic is to buy candies one doesn't like very much.)
My certainty was misplaced...I bought both the Straub volumes in question, and made a point of not buying his Lovecraft collection. LOA has put the survey anthologies out of print, more the fools they, as both volumes are pretty good (and I did pick these up through their clearance sales), with both volumes being reasonably good representations of English-language horror fiction in the cited eras. Even give Straub likes Stephen King's work more than I do ("Mrs. Todd's Shortcut" being among the few fully effective pieces for me among his works, and Going for the Gross-Out never being a favorite tactic, except when in surer hands, such as Joe Lansdale's.)
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Charles Brockden Brown | Somnambulism: A Fragment
Washington Irving | The Adventure of the German Student
Edgar Allan Poe | Berenice
Nathaniel Hawthorne | Young Goodman Brown
Herman Melville | The Tartarus of Maids
Fitz-James O’Brien | What Was It?
Bret Harte | The Legend of Monte del Diablo
Harriet Prescott Spofford | The Moonstone Mass
W. C. Morrow | His Unconquerable Enemy
Sarah Orne Jewett | In Dark New England Days
Charlotte Perkins Gilman | The Yellow Wall Paper
Stephen Crane | The Black Dog
Kate Chopin | Ma’ame Pélagie
John Kendrick Bangs | Thurlow’s Christmas Story
Robert W. Chambers | The Repairer of Reputations
Ralph Adams Cram | The Dead Valley
Madeline Yale Wynne | The Little Room
Gertrude Atherton | The Striding Place
Emma Francis Dawson | An Itinerant House
Mary Wilkins Freeman | Luella Miller
Frank Norris | Grettir at Thorhall-stead
Lafcadio Hearn | Yuki-Onna
F. Marion Crawford | For the Blood Is the Life
Ambrose Bierce | The Moonlit Road
Edward Lucas White | Lukundoo
Olivia Howard Dunbar | The Shell of Sense
Henry James | The Jolly Corner
Alice Brown | Golden Baby
Edith Wharton | Afterward
Willa Cather | Consequences
Ellen Glasgow | The Shadowy Third
Julian Hawthorne | Absolute Evil
Francis Stevens | Unseen—Unfeared
F. Scott Fitzgerald | The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Seabury Quinn | The Curse of Everard Maundy
Stephen Vincent Benét | The King of the Cats
David H. Keller | The Jelly-Fish
Conrad Aiken | Mr. Arcularis
Robert E. Howard | The Black Stone
Henry S. Whitehead | Passing of a God
August Derleth | The Panelled Room
H. P. Lovecraft | The Thing on the Doorstep
Clark Ashton Smith | Genius Loci
Robert Bloch | The Cloak
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John Collier | Evening Primrose
Fritz Leiber | Smoke Ghost
Tennessee Williams | The Mysteries of the Joy Rio
Jane Rice | The Refugee
Anthony Boucher | Mr. Lupescu
Truman Capote | Miriam
Jack Snow | Midnight
John Cheever | Torch Song
Shirley Jackson | The Daemon Lover
Paul Bowles | The Circular Valley
Jack Finney | I’m Scared
Vladimir Nabokov | The Vane Sisters
Ray Bradbury | The April Witch
Charles Beaumont | Black Country
Jerome Bixby | Trace
Davis Grubb | Where the Woodbine Twineth
Donald Wandrei | Nightmare
Harlan Ellison | I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream
Richard Matheson | Prey
T.E.D. Klein | The Events at Poroth Farm
Isaac Bashevis Singer | Hanka
Fred Chappell | Linnaeus Forgets
John Crowley | Novelty
Jonathan Carroll | Mr Fiddlehead
Joyce Carol Oates | Family
Thomas Ligotti | The Last Feast of Harlequin
Peter Straub | A Short Guide to the City
Jeff VanderMeer | The General Who Is Dead
Stephen King | That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French
George Saunders | Sea Oak
Caitlín Kiernan | The Long Hall on the Top Floor
Thomas Tessier | Nocturne
Michael Chabon | The God of Dark Laughter
Joe Hill | Pop Art
Poppy Z. Brite | Pansu
Steven Millhauser | Dangerous Laughter
M. Rickert | The Chambered Fruit
Brian Evenson | The Wavering Knife
Kelly Link | Stone Animals
Tim Powers | Pat Moore
Gene Wolfe | The Little Stranger
Benjamin Percy | Dial Tone
I have read remarkably few of these.
ReplyDeleteA few aren't worth reading, but most are at least reasonably rewarding to brilliant...and a few aren't the stories I'd choose (the Bloch, the Jackson, the Ellison among others, but all reasonable choices), and some are most apt, such as Jerome Bixby's vignette "Trace", one of his best works and one of the best very short stories in at least borderline horror.
Deletehttps://www.loa.org/books/308-american-fantastic-tales-terror-and-the-uncanny-from-poe-to-the-pulps/ which has a link to the sequel's page.
DeleteToday I found out that Glen has copies of both of the LOA American Fantastic Tales collections. He bought them in 2012, they are still in lovely condition, but has not read them yet. I will try some stories from both of them, although I am sure that for me Vol. 2 will be more to my taste.
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