(Black Ice/FC2 Unit for Contemporary Literature, Campus Box 4241, Illinois State University, Normal IL 61790)
This is quite a packed short fiction collection from Don Webb; 28 stories in 147pp. It's difficult to pick just a few overall favourites, & none of them actually flopped with me, so I'm gonna do a marathon description. The Literary Fruitcake begins the collection with the tale of a fruitcake (& its effect on thieves) given to a succession of "literary geniuses": Queen Victoria gave it to Charles Dickens, whom Bram Stoker then stole it from. After them came Machen, Blackwood, Stein, Hemingway, Joyce, Beckett, W. Burroughs, Ginsberg, Kerouac, & Pynchon. That might actually say something of this book, & tie back into the final story. A Medical History follows a, uh, rather modified heart patient, with an overtly sharing doctor, who winds up more than a little co-dependent. Invocation of the Muse is a short little piece about the agonizing frustrations of writers' block. Sine Wave converts a variety shop owner & a customer into a silverware wielding, coke-snorting, vigilante duo. Late Night At Webster's hashes out the addition of words to dictionaries. In The Magician an events collectors inherits a strange form of personal power, & isn't quite certain he wishes to accept it. Spiral is a bizarre trip, via hallucinogenics far more potent than acid, into protecting the Grecian minotaur -- through quite a few candid yet bizarre experiences. Nine Games You Can Play is exactly that, though in quite a mischievous sense. Relatives is a little too horrifying for being a little too true. Yeah, it seems far-fetched -- stop & think about it for a while though. Rex means King, at least if you can become & remain such post- holocaust. Tom Ezzell is an overly caring all around handy man in Nor Sleet Nor Snow, wherein he goes to any necessary extent to keep people from hearing sad news. This, naturally, is fine as being oblivious is much more comfy. Liber XIII tells of the fall of Thought from Mind upon seeing beauty, said in the measures of mythological parable. In Purgatory a way is found for measuring & burning karma & sin prior to death, which causes much embarrassment for those who don't sin as much (or who sin the most). After Abish is an ascension of words, all beginning with a, which actually form a story. Mark 6:14-29, Matthew 14:1-12 explains the little known truth about Salome's Dance of the Seven Veils for Herod Antipas. A Visit To Aunt Martha's is a hospitality stop in a strange red land (the seemingly alien natures of relatives?). Indecision deals with the passage (or lack) of time without motion, & one ancient mentor's remonitions of his pupil. A Stele For the Fulfillmentof Desire uses The Mummy as a starting point on a quest for multi-lifetime gifts & exchanges. Eric's Story tells itself by telling how it is going to tell itself. The reasonings behind the story, & the mentions of who is & isn't mentioned where, become more important then the actual story. I'll Be Back in a Minute proves that shit happens & you don't always come back. The Fox Hunt was both hilarious & disturbing. Hilarious because it's absurd, disturbing because it's a parody of the way things really are in some peoples' minds. It's the story of a "fox" (yellow Mexican dog) hunt through those unsavoury neighborhoods where you sometimes have to shoot the residents "in self defense". After all, we know who the classy & the lowly are. The Two Lights is more family interaction, & the realization of a heart growing cold as a normal stage of life. In the Dark Ages is about the Satanic summoning of dog catchers (well, ya know, typical evil rituals). Nurse P is interviewed about being a nurse in an old person's home, which actually turns out to be something completely different -- you'll figure out what the initial P stands for at the same time as you figure out where she really is. Horsing Around goes VR sex, interactive (almost)... You get to feel everything to the point of believing you really are controlling the actions of that horny zebra stud as it fornicates with the gentle & beautiful woman! Of course you never feel a real bond, though, just sexual gratification & the experiences of another. Thoughts & birds, & thoughts & birds, could say a lot about Driving North. The final story, Adipose Abecedarium, could, as I said, tie back into the 1st one in a general sense. Both involve writers, eating, & potential. Alfred's ambition is to win the barbecue sausage-eating contest. His struggle to do so is detailed through the perspectives/ respective styles of several people/things: Biblical, Carlos Castenada, Death, Elvis, Finnegan's Wake, Gilbert & Sullivan, Homer, Ignorance, Alfred Jarry, Franz Kafka, HP Lovecraft, Molly Bloom, Narcissus, Uncle Ovid's Exercise Book, Poetry, Quick Step, Research, Suspicion, Twain, Unknown, Verne, William Burroughs, Xenophanic, & Yellow Sign. As you may have noticed, this runs in alphabetical order. About all I can say for the last letter is: it looks baaaad. This is a great collection; hilarious, fascinating, disturbing, very diverse in thematics. Read it! -Jasmine Sailing