Terror and the uncanny from the 1940s to now
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Terror and the uncanny from the 1940s to now
（The library of America, 197 . American fantastic tales）
Library of America, c2009
- Other Title
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1940s to now
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Note
Includes bibliographical references
Contents of Works
- Evening primrose / John Collier
- Smoke ghost / Fritz Leiber
- The mysteries of the Joy Rio / Tennessee Williams
- The refugee / Jane Rice
- Mr. Lupescu / Anthony Boucher
- Miriam / Truman Capote
- Midnight / Jack Snow
- Torch song / John Cheever
- The daemon lover / Shirley Jackson
- The circular valley / Paul Bowles
- I'm scared / Jack Finney
- The Vane sisters / Vladimir Nabokov
- The April witch / Ray Bradbury
- Black country / Charles Beaumont
- Trace / Jerome Bixby
- Where the woodbine twineth / Davis Grubb
- Nightmare / Donald Wandrei
- I have no mouth, and I must scream / Harlan Ellison
- Prey / Richard Matheson
- The events at Poroth Farm / T.E.D. Klein
- Hanka / Isaac Bashevis Singer
- Linnaeus forgets / Fred Chappell
- Novelty / John Crowley
- Mr. Fiddlehead / Jonathan Carroll
- Family / Joyce Carol Oates
- The last feast of Harlequin / Thomas Ligotti
- A short guide to the city / Peter Straub
- The general who is dead / Jeff VanderMeer
- That feeling, you can only say what it is in French / Stephen King
- Sea Oak / George Saunders
- The long hall on the top floor / Caitlín Kiernan
- Nocturne / Thomas Tessier
- The God of Dark Laughter / Michael Chabon
- Pop art / Joe Hill
- Pansu / Poppy Z. Brite
- Dangerous laughter / Steven Millhauser
- The chambered fruit / M. Rickert
- The wavering knife / Brian Evenson
- Stone animals / Kelly Link
- Pat Moore / Tim Powers
- The little stranger / Gene Wolfe
- Dial tone / Benjamin Percy
Description and Table of Contents
Description
The second volume of Peter Straub's pathbreaking anthology American Fantastic Tales picks up the story in 1940 and provides persuasive evidence that the decades since then have seen an extraordinary flowering. While continuing to explore the classic themes of horror and fantasy, successive generations of writers- including Shirley Jackson, Ray Bradbury, Charles Beaumont, Stephen King, Steven Millhauser, and Thomas Ligotti-have opened up the field to new subjects, new styles, and daringly fresh expansions of the genre's emotional and philosophical underpinnings. For many of these writers, the fantastic is simply the best available tool for describing the dislocations and newly hatched terrors of the modern era, from the nightmarish post- apocalyptic savagery of Harlan Ellison's "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" to proliferating identities set deliriously adrift in Tim Powers' "Pat Moore." "At its core," writes editor Peter Straub, "the fantastic is a way of seeing." In place of gothic trappings, the post-war masters of the fantastic often substitute an air of apparent normality. The surfaces of American life-department store displays in John Collier's "Evening Primrose," tar-paper roofs seen from an el train in Fritz Leiber's "Smoke Ghost," the balcony of a dilapidated movie theater in Tennessee Williams' "The Mysteries of the Joy Rio"-become invested with haunting presences. The sphere of family life is transformed, in Davis Grubb's "Where the Woodbine Twineth" or Richard Matheson's "Prey," into an arena of eerie menace. Dramas of madness, malevolent temptation, and vampiristic appropriation play themselves out against the backdrop of modern urban life in John Cheever's "Torch Song" and Shirley Jackson's unforgettable "The Daemon Lover." Nearly half the stories collected in this volume were published in the last two decades, including work by Michael Chabon, M. Rickert, Brian Evenson, Kelly Link, and Benjamin Percy: writers for whom traditional genre boundaries have ceased to exist, and who have brought the fantastic into the mainstream of contemporary writing. The 42 stories in this second volume of "American Fantastic Tales" provide an irresistible journey into the phantasmagoric underside of the American imagination. "An encompassing and essential voyage to the dark side of the moon of American literature." -Jonathan Lethem
by "Nielsen BookData"
