From: DJ Vollkasko (DJ_Vollkasko_at_gmx.net)
Date: Mon Dec 29 2003 - 01:28:27 PST
Yesterday. Was. Rough.
I received about a dozen dear guests at the Vollkasko estates, whom I had
invited to the Manor to help slay a side of delicious Norwegian Gravad
Salmon (think Scandinavian Sushi). All I can reconstruct to-day is that
somebody must have drunk 5 bottles of champagne, half a bootle of Gin -
along with the appropriate Tonic -, all the mineral water in the house, all
the soda pop and cola supplies left from the holidays, a serious amount of
Czech Budvar (the real Budweiser) and Staropramen beers, about three
bootles of white and two bootles of red wine, eaten all the crisps in the
house, a bowl of cookies, a sea of potato salad, a mountain of salmon, and
had a generally jolly time, even though I tried my best and played some
very eclectic cuts from my vast selection of audio material persecuted all
over the World by UN arms inspectors.
But DANG - there's still some salmon left over!
A cruel fate? You bet! Still, my Sense of Duty prevails, and so I present
to you today, on this fifth day of Christmas the Newton edition of
Lord Dunsany's Fifty-One Tales.
It may have been his first book, written when he yet hadn't inherited his
title and was still Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett. Originally published
in 1915, 51 Tales contain very short anecdotes and nice short stories that
sway between the fantastic and allegoric with a dark twist to the tales. If
you like his Book of Wonder
(http://www.unna.org/unna/books/Fiction_Poetry/SciFi_Fantasy/), you, love
this, too. It's more, uh, *applied* to our sphere of experience than Book
of Wonder with it's fantasy-setting, but not less wonder-ful.
What I love about 51 Tales is the shortness, crispness, precision and
beauty of the writing - much of these things could be fleshed out easily
with more texture and detail and blown up to 500 page novels that leave
nothing to the imagination (a bad trait in most modern auteurs, their books
are just too long and get lost in unnecessary details that only clutter the
plot; maybe they do this so we can't easily see how weak most plots are
these days...). Dunsany takes ideas that other writers would exploit for
20-volume-serieses, and wrests from them something nearly a mere haiku of a
tale. No slack, no fat, pure imagination and creativity. Plus it still
leaves you room to think about the characters and yourself.
.sit and .zip uploaded at UNNA and available from me.
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