but I really want to read more of her stuff.
Check out The Magic Toyshop. It's so enjoyable, and I think a natural fit if you enjoyed The Bloody chamber.
I'd actually recommend getting into some of her non-fiction before you took a stab at Dr. Hoffman or New Eve. It helps to understand what she's wrestling with when she's using such unconventional structures.
You don't have to write a thesis on her book The Sadeian Woman, but it helps if you've glanced through it.
But definitely check out her other short stories too, like Fireworks. Some of the stories there are a bit half formed, but the three stories set in Japan and The Executioner's Daughter are amazing. Not like anybody else, and not like the rest of her work quite.
Hec, I'll check to see if the library has The Magic Toyshop. After packing up all my books I'm not buying anymore right now.
Most people are familiar with the movie A Company of Wolves
based on her short stories in The Bloody Chamber, but there's also a little seen movie version of The Magic Toyshop that's worth finding.
I love Lafferty too. But I never thought of him as obscure. Does he really have a more limited audience than your average genre writer/
The only reason I have heard of him is because of Neil Gaiman's short story, "Sunbird," which he said was his attempt to write a Lafferty story. I have never heard of him anywhere else ever.
Well then I've been remiss. Imagine that Salvador Dali, rather than being a Spanish surrealist painter had been an American sitting around a campfire telling tall tales. Those are the stories Lafferty wrote.
Oh no, that's so sad. What a loss. Makes me wish I'd picked up a copy of his last book,
Bumble-Ardy,
at the bookstore yesterday. I think we only have
Where the Wild Things Are
and
In the Night Kitchen
(M's and my childhood copies, respectively), but we'll definitely be stocking Rose's library with the rest of his books over the next few years.
And David, I really enjoyed your piece on Angela Carter, one of my favorite writers. I read almost all her novels in college and in the following years, and they formed a huge part of my worldview. (I even started with
The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman,
which I almost certainly did not understand the half of, but it opened up my mind all the same.) And I totally do the same thing in used bookstores, looking to see what they have by her and hoping to find rare or bizarre editions. Love her.
I feel mixed about Maurice Sendak -- it's such a loss to all the rest of us, but he had a good long 83-year run, and in all the interviews he'd given over the last decade he sounded increasingly tired and lonely, and the death of his partner never stopped being an ache and a hole in his life. I selfishly want him still around forever and ever (and I hope that if I ever get to visit Dream's library it has a whole annex devoted to everything he never had time to write and draw here), but for his own sake I can't begrudge him letting go once he was well and truly ready.
