flemmings: (Default)
flemmings ([personal profile] flemmings) wrote2014-07-25 11:57 pm

The Weird

In search of an elusive author whose works the library system doesn't have- or has only in unborrowable form- I succeeded in getting my hands on a thumpingly huge short story collection called The Weird. Heart fell when I saw that the ToC included M.R. James' Casting the Runes. James isn't weird: he's terrifying. But if that's an exception: if the other stories are indeed weird tales, it occurred to me I could try reading them as 100 Demons episodes. Which I do, generally to dismal failure. Hand's The Boy in the Tree, Gaiman's Feeders and Eaters, Tagore's The Hungry Stones, Chabon's The God of Dark Laughter, Utley's The Country Doctor (and stories I knew from before: Russ' The Little Dirty Girl, Kafka's In the Penal Colony, Akutagawa's The Hell Screen) are, well, SF or horror or what-have-you, but not the simply Odd that Ima does. With the possible exception of Mieville's Details, which is certainly looking like an Ima manga so far.

Alas, I can't remember what writer it is I want to read. Possibly Michael Cisco.

Alas also, the ToC is in chronological order, which makes finding anything very difficult.

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