Lantern Jaws

by Cameron Pierce

PRAISE FOR CAMERON PIERCE

“Pierce is one of the weirdest, most imaginative writers around. Toxie-approved!”
—LLOYD KAUFMAN, director of The Toxic Avenger

“Before he goes gently into that weird night by spontaneously combusting, Pierce seems hellbent on writing his fill of Bizarro lit. His tales include many standard tropes, like pickles and pancakes falling in love, or ass-shaped goblins who abduct children for slavor labor and eating, or flying Biblical sharks. It’s a scene.”
—CRACKED.COM

“In an era when very little remains shocking, Pierce might have actually managed to create a genuinely disturbing work of fiction, the literary equivalent of Schindler’s List rewritten by the Marquis De Sade and filmed as a Tim Burton animated feature.”
—THE GUARDIAN on Ass Goblins of Auschwitz

“A really good blend of funny, sad, and weird.”
—SAM PINK on The Destroyed Room

“The Destroyed Room is a dreamlike masterpiece akin to Lynch’s Eraserhead and just as full of terror, wonder and suffering. It might be the best thing Pierce has written.”
—GARRETT COOK on The Destroyed Room

“Like William S. Burroughs on crack!”
—THOMAS F. MONTELEONE, New York Times bestselling author

“Weird, wicked, wonderful.”
—New York Times bestselling author PIERS ANTHONY on The Pickled Apocalypse of Pancake Island

“Black humor has never been darker than this; this is the absolute pitch black of humor [...] Surrealism wields great power in these many stories.”
—BEACH SLOTH on Die You Doughnut Bastards

“These mostly first-person (and occasionally second-person) narratives (dis)locate their characters in worlds too strange to be fiction. Check it out.”
—NICK MAMATAS on Lost in Cat Brain Land

“The love child of Thomas Ligotti and Alejandro Jodorowsky.”
—NICOLE CUSHING on Shark Hunting in Paradise Garden

“If you were to take everything horror writers typically shy away from and mush it into one streamlined novel, you might get something like splatterpunk adventure tale Gargoyle Girls of Spider Island.”
—RUE MORGUE on Gargoyle Girls of Spider Island

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Bizarro Fiction

86 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 27, 2014

About the author

Cameron Pierce is the author of eleven books, including the Wonderland Book Award-winning collection Lost in Cat Brain Land. His work has appeared in The Barcelona Review, Gray's Sporting Journal, Hobart, The Big Click, and Vol. I Brooklyn, and has been reviewed and featured on Comedy Central and The Guardian. He was also the author of the column Fishing and Beer, where he interviewed acclaimed angler Bill Dance and John Lurie of Fishing with John. Pierce is the head editor of Lazy Fascist Press and has edited three anthologies, including The Best Bizarro Fiction of the Decade. He lives with his wife in Astoria, Oregon.

Reviews

[Peter Tieryas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cameron Pierce is a modern existentialist injected with elements of the Kafkaesque, bolstered by the strange tribulations of romance and desire. In his collection, Lantern Jaws, we’re treated to tiny elephants who wander a city, a woman who gives birth almost immediately after sex, and a couple whose lives are threaded and bound by physical blue strings. Reading the eponymous story Lantern Jaws felt like a quasar imploded in my head and birthed a new universe. Literally, as the heroine, Vanessa hides something akin to a civilization within her masked mouth. It’s a stirring allegory for the intricacies of not just family history, but the cultural idiosyncrasies that often mar the best of relationships.

The rest of the review is up at my blog:

http://tieryas.wordpress.com/2014/02/...

[Kyle Muntz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I remembered loving Lantern Jaws when I read it a few years ago as part of another collection, but I just went back tonight and it's still the most incredible thing.

[Trista · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first story was incredible! But the rest of this book didn't quite hold up to that.

[David Caldwell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bizarre stuff

Let me start by saying that these stories are not your typical short stories. People will either love them and say they are wildly imaginative and full of emotion or they will hate them and say they are weird and make no sense. Naturally, I don't fall into either group and go down the middle.

These five stories range from the slightly weird, about the level of most fantasies, to way out bizarre, like they would confuse an octopus who suddenly finds himself piloting a jumbo jet. There is nothing wrong with that. But when they start relatively normal and suddenly swerve into the strange, it can be like driving your car and suddenly turning into a brick wall at speed. Especially, if the story just ends at that point. The second story was like that. It almost felt like the writer got the story going and then decided he would rather make popcorn so he just wrote a weird paragraph and stopped.

Another story was so short that it felt like the author said this would make a good story but couldn't decide where to go with it and just left it at the concept stage.

The last two stories were definitely the strangest. They start strange and then set at to prove that you have not seen strange yet.

That leaves the first story which reminded me of Lovecraft naturally. Read it and you will know why.

I guess the real test will be your level of enjoyment of the bizarre. Me, I am okay with weirdness but I want it to be logically consistent weirdness. It needs to follow its own rules at least. And I need to be able to grasp those rules. So, maybe I just didn't fully get these tales. Still, they weren't bad. So, if you enjoy left field, these stories might be perfect for you.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some of the stories in this collection were already familiar to me, but they were beloved old friends and I was thrilled to see them again at the same time that I got to meet some new favorites. Strange, wondrous, and filled with a variety of emotions. You can't go wrong with this collection.

[Ame · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Destroyed Room" really screwed me up in the head. It has tiny elephants and the origin of everything.
I dig Pierce's brain. He does weird things.