Books For Bumps

Extract from thread HERE:-

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By des lewis on Sunday, July 22, 2007 - 12:48 am:

WEIRDMONGER BOOK: details:
http://members.fortunecity.com/elizabethbowen/

If you post at least three brief critiques here, you will receive (until further notice) a brand new signed copy of this book by surface mail. Each critique (each comprising at least 100 words) should be of any of the stories on the Weirdmonger Wheel:
http://weirdmonger.mindsay.com/reinvented_wheel.mws



This book has been universally considered a most beautiful-looking book, but its contents are an acquired taste, a taste that has, nevertheless, over the years, been acquired by many readers (judging by reviews and comments made).

There is a maximum of four more Weirdmonger books available on this thread. (5 Sep 07)

EDITED TO MAKE RULES EASIER TO UNDERSTAND: 4 Sep 2007

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By Matthew Johnson on Thursday, November 22, 2007 - 01:24 pm:

The benign, lazily contemplative beginning to "The Strangers of the Knight," a collaboration between Lewises D.F. and Gordon, belies the weirdness of the short story within, a story which delightfully asks more questions than it answers. Seemingly a sort of mystery tale in which our protagonist Tommy receives an offer (contingent upon cash) for clues about his wealthy father's mysterious suicide, the tale also hints at all manner of occult transpiring. The befuddled nature of Tommy himself adds to the mystery; why would he take along his so-called friend, Mr. Jones, to such an important meeting if he doesn't even realize why he and Mr. Jones are supposed to be friends? More mysteriously, why does the route to the pub change on two subsequent evenings? What is the significance of the stranger changing from wheelchair to crutches? It seems possible that the narrator is under the influence of drugs or magic, if not both, which accounts not only for his dreamlike perceptions of the events but also for the sharp abdominal pains experienced by both Tommy and his wife. Is this the result of poison or a drug (Tommy's deceased father was reputed to be involved in the drug trade), or, more intriguingly, a voodoo-like curse (Mr. Jones makes a veiled comment regarding an "invisible enemy," perhaps a spirit, and Tommy recalls his father manipulating boxes with zodiacal symbols on them after the family acquired their fortune)? The fact that the authors never quite answer either question makes for a thought-provoking read. Thanks to the unassuming prose style employed by Lewis and Lewis in this story, this vague sense of the uncanny sneaks up on you; it doesn't shock, rather, it unsettles.

By Matthew Johnson on Thursday, November 22, 2007 - 01:53 pm:

"Blood Bitch," by Wordhunger (a collaborative literary group including but not limited to at least one incarnation of D.F. Lewis), named perhaps for an early Cocteau Twins, is a gorgeously sickening experiment in surrealist imagery. Dig past the stylistic flourishes and lurid imagery, and it might be a story about a failing marriage, lust turned to revulsion, a gritty neon blast of gynophobia, Lovecraft's tentacled vagina terror stripped of its comforting pulp horror disguise. Egg bowls, egg-yolks, raw egg cocktails--all these images slimy and gelatinous, growth and potential and birth images directed toward nausea. And that's before discuss "the rinds of bacon she called her labia majora minora leaked fetid bacon grease over all who swayed into her headlamps of murder." Horror, yes, but horror of the mundane; this is no slasher film or vampire story, but the horror of everyday unhappiness bloated by powerful prose into apocalyptic proportions. Fans of purely plot-driven material would best look elsewhere, but if you enjoy the vividly grotesque prose experiments of people like Michael Gira...

By Matthew Johnson on Thursday, November 22, 2007 - 08:16 pm:

Wow, speaking of revulsion, let's all take a brief moment to be sickened by the words I somehow left out of my previous write-up:

...named perhaps for an early Cocteau Twins SONG...

...And that's before WE discuss...

Anyway, yeah. And to recap my comparison to Michael Gira: Gira's prose is generally about disgust of the SELF, this particular story is about disgust of the OTHER.

By des lewis on Friday, November 23, 2007 - 07:43 am:

Thanks, Matthew. Very interesting! :-)
One more to go to get the book by my reckoning.

(I know a certain MP Johnson has a story in Zencore! but judging from what I have discovered from googling your profile here, you are a different Matthew Johnson from him).
des

By Matthew Johnson on Friday, November 23, 2007 - 03:59 pm:

Nope, not me! My writing is all decidedly nonfiction: grants writing at my day job, and music journalism the rest of the time. OK, on to the third critique:

On its surface, "Carving the Fish" is a brief scene of two characters, ex-lovers, one mired in the real world of geography, the other prone to drifting off in dreamlands, as evidenced by her penchant for leafing through maps of imaginary lands. What makes this more interesting than your typical dinner scene is the underlying sexual power dynamic between the two figures, as evidenced by Bill's whip, representing not only the obvious S&M allusion but also the idea of "the man wots got the whip hand on 'em" (in other words, the man who holds the power over another). Adding further layers of subtext, it appears that Bill's obsessions with the concrete trappings of power, as evidenced not only by the whip but also by "the salt-of-the-earth disciplines of physical geography," were ultimately overwhelmed by the more nebulous psychological powers of Rachel, his ex-lover, who, we might infer, "beat...the fish at its own game" by baiting him with mere physical submission, making her eventual psychological domination all the more of a shock to Bill's system and ultimately ending their relationship. It's a lot of sexual and psychological subtext to cram into a fish dinner, certainly, but it's probably a safe bet that none of us read D.F. Lewis out of an all-abiding love for the obvious in the first place.

By des lewis on Saturday, November 24, 2007 - 01:12 am:

Thanks, Matthew. Inspiring critiques deriving from what seems to be an eclectic choice! The three you chose have only been published electronically, whilst the majority of the stories on 'The Weirdmonger Wheel' have been print-published before (in fact available on this Wheel are well over a thousand DFL stories that were previously print-published in the eighties and nineties!).
But an interesting choice! It felt as if I myself were reading them, alongside you, for the first time (my memory is bad!) and they came up fresh and something to get my teeth into, particularly 'Carving The Fish'! Re 'Strangers of the Knight', Gordon, my father, died last June at the age of 85 after a long illness. There is a book of some of our collaborations entitled 'Only Connect' (1998).
Of course, 'Blood Bitch' was written by several people (in June 2000) and I can only claim a small part in it.
Please write to bfitzworth@yahoo.co.uk with your address and I'll send you the free book in accordance with the first post of this thread.
Thanks again.
des

By des lewis on Saturday, November 24, 2007 - 02:12 am:

PS: I have now decided there are two 'Weirdmonger' books still available under the terms of this thread for two other people.

Other 'free' BOOKS FOR BUMPS threads linked from HERE.