From Randy Johnnson
Forgotten Short Stories: The Whimper of Whipped Dogs – Harlan Ellison
Harlan Ellison is hardly a forgotten writer, but I’m working under the assumption there are people today that haven’t read him. They should go right out and find anything by the man. He’s a writer worth reading. I’ve written about him before HERE.
My selection for the first edition of Patti Abbott’s Forgotten Short Stories is THE WHIMPER OF WHIPPED DOGS, the story of a woman brutally murdered in a courtyard while residents watched, not one responding to her cries for help, not even calling the police. The story concerns the aftermath and the decision the young woman protagonist, one of the watchers, makes at the end of the story.
It was inspired by the true life murder of Kitty Genovese in 1964. A news story two weeks later reported on the non-response of neighbors to the brutalization that went on only a hundred feet from her apartment door. Stabbed twice, the attacker left, only to return ten minutes later to continue the assault.
The report may have been in error, no one knows for sure anymore. Nevertheless, it inspired a powerful story from Mr. Ellison on the general malaise enveloping people living in the city, the constant violence on TV, the mind your own business attitude of to many of us. It won the Edgar for best short story in 1974, one of the many awards(to numerous to list here) his writing has won in a long career.
It’s easily available in numerous editions.
1. Bad Moon Rising, eidted by Tom Disch: first appearance and reasonably priced with a little search
2. Deathbird Stories: good prices
3: Dreams With Sharp Teeth: omnibus containing Deathbird Stories,
Shatterday, and I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream. A nice introduction
to the man’s stories for anyone new to Mr. Ellison’s work
4. The Essential Ellison: A 35 Year Retrospective and the expanded 50 Year Retrospective
1 comment:
I've liked the Tom Perrotta books I've read, but until I read a review of his new book, I wasn't aware that he'd written two books of short stories, including his first published book. So I got his BAD HAIRCUT: Stories From the Seventies, and it is fun so far. Clearly, this is autobiographical in feel, at least, as the main character (Buddy in all the stories) is, like Perrotta, 13 in 1974. I have the second collection coming too, as well as the new novel.
Someone (I think it was the NYT) recommended the Swedish collection of noirish stories, STILL LIFE by Malin Persson Golito. Each story is about a different crime, identified by the criminal code #. I read three but didn't care for them and returned it. For instance, the final story I read was about a teenage girl whose very best friend makes out with the girl's supposed boyfriend in front of her, so she takes a golf club and smashes her father's new Porsche. I didn't care.
Also read three fantasy stories from THE BEST OF MICHAEL SWANWICK and the first from a new John Dickson Carr collection.
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