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Dying
If Martha Stewart needs advice on removing those pesky bloodstains from the carpet, she finally knows whom to call. But she might want to call ahead and bring along a little extra muscle. In Dying, a satire of the pop-culture phenomenon, Living magazine, Michael Arnzen turns Stewart’s cheery perfectionism into something almost as horrible...
20 pages, Chapbook
First published January 1, 2003
About the author
Michael A. Arnzen
80 books280 followersMichael Arnzen has won multiple awards for his fiction and poetry, including four Bram Stoker Awards and the International Horror Guild Award. He teaches horror and suspense writing at Seton Hill University, as faculty in their unique MFA degree program in Writing Popular Fiction.
To catch up with Arnzen or hunt down collectable editions, visit the author's website, GORELETS.COM Or tune in his new podcast: 6:66 w/Michael Arnzen at http://6m66s.com/
To catch up with Arnzen or hunt down collectable editions, visit the author's website, GORELETS.COM Or tune in his new podcast: 6:66 w/Michael Arnzen at http://6m66s.com/
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 13, 2025
The latest exceptionally brief limited horror chapbook I read is a poetry collection of what I have deemed ‘Domestic Cannibalism,’ to be distinguished from ‘Lost Amazonian Tribe Cannibalism’ popularized by Italian exploitation movies like Cannibal Holocaust, or ‘Backwoods/Inbred/Crazed Redneck/troglodyte Cannibalism’: The Hills Have Eyes, Wrong Turn, Bone Tomahawk (one of my absolute favorites).
The most recognizable figure in ‘Domestic Cannibalism,’ as I would define it, would of course be Hannibal Lecter (though we may have to distinguish that further: ‘Sophisticated Cannibalism?’)
Other examples I would include would be Jack Ketchum’s The Box, Raw, Parents, and Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving. It’s pretty self-explanatory, but it is an added element of distress to imagine your neighbor’s pristine suburban kitchen serving up human flesh.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre played on this with its utterly psychotic Norman Rockwell inversion of a family dinner (God, what a masterpiece)!
So I will bring it all home (for dinner) to Dying, a Martha Stewart hospitality parody (pre-Snoop Dogg collaboration and felony conviction), which became obvious when the phrase, ‘it’s a good thing’ was included. I’ve never watched Martha Stewart, but it was instantly recognizable due to its cultural ubiquity—the same reason I know all the Kardashian names—and for its time, this little romp served as a clever stirring, flipping, and searing of all that was wholesome, kitschy, and domestically delicious. And to bring it all full circle, Martha Stewart and Sir Anthony Hopkins once dated, but Stewart has said, or quipped, I don’t know, that she broke it off with him because she couldn’t get over his portrayal of Hannibal Lecter. This is true. Look it up. We are in a simulation.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this excuse of mine to discuss some forms of culinary taboo in media. Bon Appétit!
The most recognizable figure in ‘Domestic Cannibalism,’ as I would define it, would of course be Hannibal Lecter (though we may have to distinguish that further: ‘Sophisticated Cannibalism?’)
Other examples I would include would be Jack Ketchum’s The Box, Raw, Parents, and Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving. It’s pretty self-explanatory, but it is an added element of distress to imagine your neighbor’s pristine suburban kitchen serving up human flesh.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre played on this with its utterly psychotic Norman Rockwell inversion of a family dinner (God, what a masterpiece)!
So I will bring it all home (for dinner) to Dying, a Martha Stewart hospitality parody (pre-Snoop Dogg collaboration and felony conviction), which became obvious when the phrase, ‘it’s a good thing’ was included. I’ve never watched Martha Stewart, but it was instantly recognizable due to its cultural ubiquity—the same reason I know all the Kardashian names—and for its time, this little romp served as a clever stirring, flipping, and searing of all that was wholesome, kitschy, and domestically delicious. And to bring it all full circle, Martha Stewart and Sir Anthony Hopkins once dated, but Stewart has said, or quipped, I don’t know, that she broke it off with him because she couldn’t get over his portrayal of Hannibal Lecter. This is true. Look it up. We are in a simulation.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this excuse of mine to discuss some forms of culinary taboo in media. Bon Appétit!
November 29, 2012
Michael A. Arnzen, Dying (Tachyon Publications, 2003)
Just after I finished Michael Arnzen's Dying, a chapbook-sized spoof of Martha Stewart's Living, I was mildly amused by it. It's solid writing—Arnzen obviously knows his way around a poem—but while you can craft till the cows come home, if you don't have the art, you'll never get anywhere in the poetry biz. And there wasn't anything that really crackled in the words here. They were good, but they were nothing special.
Thirty minutes later, I thought about some phrase or another Arnzen had used in one of these poems and chuckled a bit.
Another hour passed, and something else struck me, and I got an attack of the giggles.
From there, it turned into the infamous giggle loop, and by the end of the night I was in hysterics. I'd finally figured out what Arnzen was doing here, and it's hilarious. At the risk of being a spoiler, what I had missed the first time around was Arnzen's absolutely deadpan lampooning of Martha Stewart's prose style (which she mirrors so effortlessly in her speech, something that never fails to amaze me), which is so spot-on it's almost frightening. And the more I thought about it, the funnier it got. I went from thinking “this is okay, I'd read it again” to “this is a work of minor brilliance,” and I'm still at the latter point. This was, unfortunately, a limited chapbook, put out a decade ago and most likely long out of print now, but if you stumble upon a copy at your local reseller of the finer volumes, grab it like it's a writhing, nubile Medusa who's been in prison for the past five years and hasn't so much as smelled a man and hold on for dear life. It's goooooooooood. ****
Just after I finished Michael Arnzen's Dying, a chapbook-sized spoof of Martha Stewart's Living, I was mildly amused by it. It's solid writing—Arnzen obviously knows his way around a poem—but while you can craft till the cows come home, if you don't have the art, you'll never get anywhere in the poetry biz. And there wasn't anything that really crackled in the words here. They were good, but they were nothing special.
Thirty minutes later, I thought about some phrase or another Arnzen had used in one of these poems and chuckled a bit.
Another hour passed, and something else struck me, and I got an attack of the giggles.
From there, it turned into the infamous giggle loop, and by the end of the night I was in hysterics. I'd finally figured out what Arnzen was doing here, and it's hilarious. At the risk of being a spoiler, what I had missed the first time around was Arnzen's absolutely deadpan lampooning of Martha Stewart's prose style (which she mirrors so effortlessly in her speech, something that never fails to amaze me), which is so spot-on it's almost frightening. And the more I thought about it, the funnier it got. I went from thinking “this is okay, I'd read it again” to “this is a work of minor brilliance,” and I'm still at the latter point. This was, unfortunately, a limited chapbook, put out a decade ago and most likely long out of print now, but if you stumble upon a copy at your local reseller of the finer volumes, grab it like it's a writhing, nubile Medusa who's been in prison for the past five years and hasn't so much as smelled a man and hold on for dear life. It's goooooooooood. ****
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews