This Fish Is Loaded! The Book of Surreal and Bizarre Humour

by Richard Glyn Jones (Editor)

Book by

Genres: Humor, Fiction

Hardcover

Published January 1, 1991

Reviews

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got this for a dollar at a bargain bin some years ago, looked fun. Finally got around to reading it, in spurts (hard to take it all at once). This was somewhat uneven, going from downright word salad to very delightful to outright outre! This samples a number of well known and lesser known (although likely more known in the surrealistic genre). So! Authors as diverse as Salvador Dali, John Lennon, Man Ray and Bob Dylan, as well as Woody Allen, grace these pagess, some tongue-in-cheek and some - well, I'm not sure where the tongue is and the cheek is, but it was fun searching (which is the essence of existential, after all). I'd recommend it, if you keep an open mind and your sense of humor 'cause you ain't a-gonna like all of it (well, I didn't but I would surmise that would be the experience of most people).

[Alger Smythe-Hopkins · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book suffers from a serious definitional problem.

-Humour, by definition, is absurd, surreal, bizarre. This is why Woody Allen's sci-fi goof made the cut along with Man Ray's serious "Phrasal Poem". I suspect that this anthology was born of the same impulse many are: there were one or two works that the editor wanted to republish and so invented a theme to collect upon. In this case the collection is very uneven, borrowing stream of conscientious nonsense from a Dylan LP cover and printing it beside a carefully plotted 4th dimensional rewrite of Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Rudy Rucker, and equating them with works by Breton and Dali. The problem here is that surrealism as an art movement was playful, but deadly serious, Rucker was being very serious (for him), and stream of conscientiousness isn't funny.

Now there are some stories that are fun nonsense, but the editorial judgement in this selection is glib, and seems mostly to equate illogic with unserious. That is a massive error.

There are a few treasures in here though, so two stars.

[Fishface · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was pretty funny, but as you might expect from the nature of the material, also pretty uneven. The editor took his material from a wide variety of authors and time periods, and what qualifies as surreal and bizarre varies a great deal from one decade to another...Definitely worth a look. You'll either love it or hate it.

[Karen Jennings · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good I think. The story about the collectors of the white dog turds is the funniest. I have read this several times. Bob Dylan, John Lennon and a bunch of other famous funny people are the writers. The best ones are those I had never heard of. Kjp