(d) Short story as infinite and unending dream:
I remember reading an interview once in which Jeffrey Ford raved about the unique perfection of ‘William Wilson’, but by that point there was very little that could make me love either that one Poe story or any of Jeffrey Ford’s stories more than I already did. How no one has yet chosen a Jeffrey Ford story for A Personal Anthology, I have absolutely no idea.
‘Something by the Sea’ is a gorgeously convoluted hymn to Oneiros that starts very simply, with an elderly man leading his niece and her dog to a perfect spot under a willow tree for a bit of family storytelling. There are fireflies and lanterns and sweet treats. And a hookah. And the dog is called Mathematics, and speaks. Or maybe we’re into the dream by now, it’s (delightfully) unclear; as is whose dream it might be. There are pirates and goddesses and wars in strangely-named-yet-entirely -believable lands, and questions like “When you eat a brain, what does it taste like?” (and answers like “Bittersweet”), and most of it happens on or under or over the sea, and all of it is Uncle Archer’s story for Maggie, and the hard, awful truth in the cracks of it is to do with Maggie’s mother’s madness. It is beautiful and sad and immense and endless, and completely insane and entirely dream-logical, and Jeffrey Ford is a magician, and you should read him.
First published in The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant, Golden Gryphon Press, 2002, then in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October-November, 2002
A Personal Anthology 