‘My Wrongs 8245-8249 & 117’ by Chris Morris

Chris Morris’s radio series Blue Jam had a life-changing effect on my writing and my understanding of comedy. At some point I was working in an office building, high up on the twenty-seventh floor, with the blinds closed at all times. This was because of sound fears that people might have been spying on us from the hotels across the street. Sadly, the day-to-day routine of the job took away the romance of spying and bribes and classified documents.

One winter day a co-worker handed me the entire radio series of Blue Jam. The twisted humour was a perfect soundtrack for that job. But the most impressive part of Blue Jam was that the jokes weren’t chasing laughs. These were jokes that upended the listener emotionally. From our fears of being bad parents, of trying to cope with terrible doctors, of losing our child, and in the case of ‘My Wrongs’ of coping with depression. Morris captures depression with the many close-ups of Paddy Considine and Rothko the Doberman Pinscher and frenetic editing. In ‘My Wrongs’ we’re trapped in a sustained moment of disintegration without that moment ever being cheated by a false laugh.

Warp Films, November, 2002; available to watch online here

‘The Swimmer’ by John Cheever

Neddy Merrill decides one lazy fine Sunday to swim back to his home through all the swimming pools in the county. A funny idea. Almost a gimmick. But as Neddy gets home, summer has passed, the leaves have fallen, and Neddy’s confidence and youthfulness are gone and the gimmick has worn away. In darkness, he reaches his completely empty and abandoned house. That’s always what I remember first about ‘The Swimmer’. The darkness. As I’m reading it again, I get the sense of what is happening to Neddy, but I know I’ll lose the story’s meaning again. I can’t explain why. The story of Neddy Merrill’s emotional and financial downfall makes sense but the story slips away for me every time.

First published in The New Yorker, 1964, and available to subscribers to read here. Collected in The Brigadier and the Golf Widow, Harper & Row, 1964, and The Stories of John Cheever, Alfred A. Knopf, 1978; now Collected Stories, Vintage Classics, 2010

‘Lizzie & Sarah’ by Julia Davis and Jessica Hynes

‘Lizzie & Sarah’ was a pilot, made for BBC 2 that never got commissioned for a series. I’m watching it now with the sound off because I’m on a train and howling just at Davis & Hynes’ facial expressions. Their facial expressions read as if the two of them are acting in a normal sitcom pulling normal sitcom faces. But ‘Lizzie & Sarah’ is not a normal sitcom. This is a tough, bleak, show about domestic abuse. Every time I watch it I’m in awe of Davis & Hynes ability to pull the show off. The half hour that is available doesn’t show us something that could have been — the half hour stands as a perfect story on its own.

BBC 2, 2010

‘Motherlogue’ by Ann Quin

If Ann Quin were a man would her writing have fallen into obscurity in the UK? Impossible. Her books would never have been out of print. Her comedy hailed. Her death would not be the first thing mentioned in articles about her but her writing would have lead. ‘Motherlogue’ is a brief example of how funny Quin is. This could easily have been a Nichols & May sketch. The story is a monologue from a hypercritical, and nosey, mother figure. A character type that is overused but with Quin all her jokes hit, and there’s a loneliness in ‘Motherlogue’ that elevates the story beyond mere parody.

First published in Transatlantic Review 32, 1969. Reprinted in The Unmapped Country & Other Stories, And Other Stories, 2018

‘Citizen’s Arrest’ by Charles Willeford

My oversized opinion of Willeford is that he’s one of the most important American writers of the second half of the twentieth century. Because he was a genre writer who wrote dark, critical, comedies about the male psyche, and because his male protagonists were almost always misogynistic, arrogant, assholes, Willeford was never going to attract the popular readership. But Willeford had the vibe of where America was at the end of WWII and where it was heading in the twenty-first century. For such a long-time reader of Willeford I’ll never forgive myself for not seeing where the US was headed five years ago – being run by a shady Willeford type, a kind of used car salesman in a bad suit and terrible hair.

‘Citizen’s Arrest’ is a perfect example of what Willeford excels at. A guy sees a thief steal a lighter at a department store and tries, and fails, to do have the thief arrested. There’s a great description of the lighter. A conversation with the thief who explains his routine. And a perfect last line of the story as the blame is turned on the narrator when a police officer asks, “Now, sir, what is your name?”

What Willeford excels at is that he has never cheated the last line of any of his books or stories. His last lines are a masterclass in endings. They may not leave you feeling good about the situation you just read but their truth never makes you feel ripped off. They are both a summation, a revelation, and an often bitter truth that the reader wasn’t expecting.

First published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, 1966. Reprinted in The Second Half of the Double Feature, Wit’s End Books, 2003

‘Black Nylon’ by Daniel Clowes

Originally published in the back half of Clowes’ comic, Eightball, the structure of ‘Black Nylon’ has always been an obsession of mine. Clowes wrote and drew the short comic as an inconclusive puzzle. Or maybe he didn’t? I’ve never been able to put all the parts together. And I’m not sure I want to because the fragmentation of the story has always left me with a feeling of loss without knowing exactly the meaning of the loss. The nameless superhero? actor? deadbeat dad? dressed as an old-style superhero, wanders through the comic trying to decipher the clues of his life. He meets his ex-ladyfriend. His arch nemesis, Hero Boy. He gets no answers. We get no answers.

First published in Eightball #18, Fantagraphics March 1997. Republished in Caricature, Fantagraphics, 1999

‘Metamorphosis’ by Franz Kafka, translated by Michael Hofmann

Readers might get bored three-quarters of the way through The Trial. Readers might not finish The Castle (I hear some of you thinking even Kafka couldn’t). But there’s no excuse not to read ‘Metamorphosis.’ Surely, you’ve read it? Shame on you if you haven’t. Kafka makes Gregor Samsa more human the more Gregor transforms into a bug. The scene of Gregor with an apple lodged in him! If Kafka had an ounce of arrogant motherfucker in him he could have dropped his pen right then and there.

A few errant Kafka thoughts. I was with a group of writers talking about ‘Metamorphosis’ and all of them agreed that the ending was a complete mystery. What does Grete stretching at the end mean? they kept asking. I wanted to say that the Samsas looked pretty happy to be rid of Gregor but there was such a passion amongst those writers for understanding Kafka solely as an unknowable puzzle I sadly kept my mouth shut. Later, one of the writers said they had a friend who spent ten years reading only Kafka and that after ten years announced, “The meaning of Kafka is that there is no meaning.” I’ve worried about that writer’s friend far more than is necessary.

First published in German, as ‘Die Verwandlung’, in Die Weißen Blätter, 1915. Widely translated in English. The translation I read is from Metamorphosis & Other Stories, Penguin Classics, 2015

‘My Life Is a Joke’ by Sheila Heti

When I started reading ‘My Life Is a Joke’ for the first time I wasn’t sure that the story could live up to the title. But then there’s this ramblingly funny perfect paragraph about an ex-boyfriend desperate to have his memory remain alive after he is gone. The paragraph ends with him, his wife, his son and his son’s wife, and his grandchildren all dead, and the narrator’s matter-of-fact observation that after this “the life of my first boyfriend will be through.” The narrator turns out to be already dead herself. There’s an incredible description of being buried. And the story ends with a “Why did the chicken cross the road?” joke. I’ve been struggling to explain why the story works so well. I can’t. All that I can safely say is that from the title right to the last line of the story no joke feels unearned. And really, the audacity to us a chicken road joke that doesn’t end up undermining the entire story. I mean goddamn.

First published in The New Yorker May 4, 2015 and available to subscribers to read here

‘Merde’ by Leos Carax

One of my failings as a person, beyond my poor foreplay technique, my addiction to winegums, and my inability to digest wheat, is my lack of faith in the film anthology. I’ve never been convinced that a series of short films by different filmmakers that are then thrown together can ever truly work. This meant I watched TOKYO! with my arms crossed and a judgemental stare. At least I tried to maintain this stance. Then Leos Carax’s ‘Merde,’ the second part of the film, hit the screen. This short film has an absolutely deranged rampaging performance by Denis Levant as a green-suited wild man, maybe a Godzilla stand-in, storming through the streets, sewers, and screens of Tokyo. Like all of the recommendations I’ve made, ‘Merde’ sustains its special energy until the last scene. If you, like me, are a film anthology disbeliever, start with ‘Merde.’ If you have issues with foreplay please seek professional advice.

A poor quality copy of ‘Merde’ to reel you in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Tp_sEmTngY

From the anthology film TOKYO!, Liberation Entertainment, 2008

‘What To Do With A Million Years’ by Juno Calypso

The artist, Juno Calypso, created a small book to accompany her gallery show, What To Do With A Million Years. Calypso spent time alone in a subterranean luxury bomb shelter and the book is split into four sections, an archive of newspaper clippings of the luxury bomb shelter, pictures of the home, photographs of Calypso embodying the space, and the eerie titled Immortality Archive. When you see the photographs in person you become immersed in the isolation of that bunker space, of erotic space in nuclear bunker space, of a person’s imprint on architecture, and especially the visual language of Las Vegas space which always speaks to elsewhere (and because it’s Las Vegas lacks subtlety). I’ve always read ‘What To Do With A Million Years’ as a short story about one a woman’s subterranean post-nuclear dream house and the artist who went to live there for a while.

Aldgate Press, 2018

Introduction

Of course, it was almost impossible to limit the selection to just a dozen stories. So, my apologies to Anton, Bruno, Camilla, Carmen, Daisy, Edgar, Ernest, Franz, Italo, Julia, Monty, Nikolai, Ottessa, Thomas, Vladimir, and all the other brilliant writers that on any other day I might have included. But today, these are the ones. I’ve indulged my passion for what is often called the ‘weird’. Although isn’t all fiction, to some greater or lesser degree, inherently weird? To occupy a stranger’s imaginative world, perhaps even long years after they wrote down the story, to read their words on the page and to be led through a labyrinth of their creation, is a peculiar thing, is it not?

I am interested in stories that use place – and landscape and nature – almost as a character, certainly as more than mere setting or backdrop. To me, this feels true to life, for our surroundings influence our thoughts and moods, and our beliefs and emotions influence the ways in which we perceive and understand those surroundings. So-called ‘real life’ is integrated with the sites in which it takes place. So, I love the idea that a landscape can function in a story as an extension or projection of the character of the protagonist – an external state reflecting an internal state – as in the shattered landscapes of Eniwetok Island in Ballard’s superb ‘The Terminal Beach’ or the suburban dreamscape of Cheever’s ‘The Swimmer’.

Furthermore, I like hallucinations and the inexplicable. I enjoy narratives that carry me away from the frets and stresses of work and family life and open my mind to new and unknown possibilities. I like metamorphosis and transformation. I don’t look to fiction for answers. I like Robert Smithson’s directive: ‘Establish enigmas, not explanations.’

‘The Willows’ by Algernon Blackwood

I gazed across the waste of wild waters; I watched the whispering willows; I heard the ceaseless beating of the tireless wind; and, one and all, each in its own way, stirred in me this sensation of a strange distress.

This is Blackwood’s most famous story and because of that I felt conflicted about choosing it. But it is famous for a very good reason. Blackwood is a cracking storyteller and ‘The Willows’ is a brilliant piece of writing.

He carefully sets the scene before gradually ratcheting up the unease. The narrator and his friend, known only as the Swede, are making a canoe expedition down the Danube. One night, as they pass through a desolate and uninhabited region, they camp on an island in the middle of the river. Both island and the banks of the river are fringed with willows; in fact, there are only willows and water for as far as they can see.

Blackwood describes the landscape with extraordinary intensity and even seems to give agency to it. The sense that they have arrived in a place in which they are unwelcome grows. The river is flooding, the wind is rising, and several strange incidents unnerve them; the Swede thinks he sees a dead body tumbling in the rapids, and they spot “a man standing upright in a sort of flat-bottomed boat, steering with a long oar, and being carried down the opposite shore at a tremendous pace,” who, seeing them, seems to cross himself. The rushing waters are carving away chunks of the island on which they are camped and the willows appear to be drawing closer. And then things get very strange indeed.

“There are things about us, I’m sure, that make for disorder, disintegration, destruction, our destruction,” he said once, while the fire blazed between us. “We’ve strayed out of a safe line somewhere.”

Blackwood was a mystic and an adventurer. He climbed mountains, crossed deserts and did indeed go down the Danube in a canoe himself. He writes from experience and it is deeply felt, and all the more affecting for it. The ‘weird’ elements of the story are brilliantly integrated.

HP Lovecraft considered ‘The Willows’ to be the finest supernatural tale in English literature, perhaps because it articulates so well the feelings of insignificance before otherworldly cosmic powers that is such a trait of Lovecraft’s own fiction.

First published in The Listener and Other Stories, 1907. Collected in Ancient Sorceries and Other Weird Stories, Penguin, 2002. Available online at Project Gutenberg

‘The Dead Man’ by Horacio Quiroga, translated by Margaret Sayers Peden

Like Blackwood, the Uruguayan writer Quiroga uses place as more than setting. His characteristic tales of “love, madness and death” (the title of a 1917 collection) take place in the densely forested province of Misiones in Argentina, or along the banks of the Rio Parana, which forms the border with Paraguay. His key theme is the fraught relationship (or lack of) between man and nature.

On first acquaintance one might take Quiroga for a pessimist or even a nihilist; there is something implacable in his outlook. But the truth is that Quiroga is a realist. He doesn’t sentimentalise nature, even in his children’s tales of talking animals. Life is hard out there in the wilderness, where every insect, reptile and animal will kill you if given half a chance. There is little happiness to be found, it seems, in the jungle. Or rather, once found, it is often quickly snatched away. Man is brutalised by this environment. In ‘The Orange Distillers’ (1923), Dr. Else, deranged by excessive consumption raw orange bitters, mistakes his daughter for a giant rat and kills her. In other stories, Quiroga simply depicts a protagonist who has experienced a terrible piece of luck – a snake bite (‘Drifting’, 1912), an infection (‘The Wilderness’, 1923), or in ‘The Dead Man’, a bizarre accident– and whose death is inevitable. Coming to terms with this fact constitutes the tale.

In ‘The Dead Man’, in prose of great economy and precision, we find a nameless man who has slipped and fallen on his machete. He lies in the grass, knowing that he dying, and listens to the sounds of the landscape; someone passing by on a nearby road, the nervous movement of his horse, his wife and children bringing him lunch. He sees the red roof of his house through the banana trees. He can barely understand what has happened to him. And that is all.

First published in Spanish as ‘El hombre muerto’ in La Nación, June 1920, and then in the collection Los desterrados, 1926. Published in English in The Decapitated Chicken and Other Stories, University of Texas Press, 1976. Available online here

‘The Aleph’ by Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Andrew Hurley

As for many, my first encounter with Borges – in my case with the incredible collection Labyrinths – changed everything. He cracks open the very idea of what a story might be and reading for him for the first time is a dizzying experience of extraordinary possibility. But the truth is that some of Borges’s best stories are not really ‘stories’ as such. There is little narrative; they are instead philosophical exercises, paradoxical vignettes, speculations, puzzles, prose poems. But of course, all those things are ‘stories’ too, or at least they are now that Borges has shown us so.

‘The Aleph’ contains one of Borges’s most dazzling metaphysical inventions. It is a curious tale of lost love and the narrator’s (Borges, himself) uneasy relationship with the poet Carlos Argentino. It is not until the story is almost done that we have the first mention of the Aleph itself; which Borges calls “the ineffable center of my tale.” The passage in which he finally gazes upon it, “a small iridescent sphere of almost unbearable brightness”, and sees everything that has passed, everywhere and in all times, is justly renowned, and is not unlike the experience of encountering Borges’s work for the first time; after, nothing can be the same again.

First published in the Argentine journal Sur in 1945. First published in English in The Aleph and Other Stories, Jonathan Cape, 1971. Currently available in The Aleph, Penguin Modern Classics, 2000 and Collected Fictions, Viking, 1998