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Little Pictures: Fiction for a New Age
Brief stories deal with the origins of eating, touching, sleeping, and marriage and offer a satiric look at the future
81 pages, Paperback
First published December 12, 1987
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 26, 2019
This is the most inspirational book I've ever read. This is the book that changed my life. These little pictures paper my mind and challenge to imagine new pictures of my own. Thank you Mr Ramer for this gift. You don't know me, but I treasure this book - cost me next to nothing but it is priceless.
November 14, 2025
oh wow. i have read many many books. many. but this one…
what a beautiful, intriguing and intimate experience it was to read.
a book on my shelf i will treasure for a long time.
what a beautiful, intriguing and intimate experience it was to read.
a book on my shelf i will treasure for a long time.
December 17, 2009
i wish i wrote this book. it is a very short (81 page) collection of 2-3 paragraph stories. fables, really. creation myths, in the beginning, and then growing from there. one is about a lady who marries a washing machine. another is about a guy who wants to invent a new color. a third is about a photo album presented to our planet by an alien visitor. they are all written without capital letters, which as we know is a sign of great intelligence. this is a wonderful book. here’s one of the early stories. the world is still in the process of being created.
the new beast
even the beasts were not quite done yet. shifting and changing. when something rumbled its way up through the ground. "a new beast, " the elders said. as the people cowered in their caves. while it slowly reared its dark and scaly back, headless. with shiny strange square eyes all over it. with strange dark lids, not above or below, but on either side of each eye. lids that battered and banged in the wind.
the scouts crept close across the plain. as the beast pushed a single mouth up through the dirt, that banged like the eyes, but with a single lip. so they could stare inside. stare into the vast dark empty silence of it. and for weeks they watched it, waiting for it to rear and pounce. but except for its lip and its eyelids, it never moved at all. and one of the scouts, the bravest, crept in through the mouth. and emerged from it later, alive. to say that the beast was dead. like a giant seashell washed up on the sand. like a many-chambered conch. each of its chambers a square. so it sat on the plain in its deadness. creaking and banging in the wind. till one of the elders, one of the youngest, took up baskets and bundles of skins, dragged them out over the plain and into the dead beast. through its toothless side-opening mouth. and then one by one the others followed. dragging their pots and rugs and magic antler collections up from their caves and into the dead creature’s mouth. living in groups in the empty chambers of its corpse. sitting in its eyes, watching the light pour in. staring out across the plain. back to the little dark holes in the cliff walls.
the new beast
even the beasts were not quite done yet. shifting and changing. when something rumbled its way up through the ground. "a new beast, " the elders said. as the people cowered in their caves. while it slowly reared its dark and scaly back, headless. with shiny strange square eyes all over it. with strange dark lids, not above or below, but on either side of each eye. lids that battered and banged in the wind.
the scouts crept close across the plain. as the beast pushed a single mouth up through the dirt, that banged like the eyes, but with a single lip. so they could stare inside. stare into the vast dark empty silence of it. and for weeks they watched it, waiting for it to rear and pounce. but except for its lip and its eyelids, it never moved at all. and one of the scouts, the bravest, crept in through the mouth. and emerged from it later, alive. to say that the beast was dead. like a giant seashell washed up on the sand. like a many-chambered conch. each of its chambers a square. so it sat on the plain in its deadness. creaking and banging in the wind. till one of the elders, one of the youngest, took up baskets and bundles of skins, dragged them out over the plain and into the dead beast. through its toothless side-opening mouth. and then one by one the others followed. dragging their pots and rugs and magic antler collections up from their caves and into the dead creature’s mouth. living in groups in the empty chambers of its corpse. sitting in its eyes, watching the light pour in. staring out across the plain. back to the little dark holes in the cliff walls.
December 24, 2008
Short fiction that is unique. Friends with the author, I read it years ago, it is out of print, but if you run across it it is a gem.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews