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They Had Goat Heads
D. Harlan Wilson returns with another mindbending collection of short fiction. Masked in absurdity, these stories reveal the horrifying and hilarious faces of everyday life. Wilson tells of egg raids, hog rippers, monk spitters, fathers who take their children to pet stores to buy them whales, sociopaths who threaten to clothesline eternity, and the simple act of the story itself becoming a means of repetitive, endless torture. Put on your goat head, hop in your hovercraft, and take a ride with a juggernaut of modern imaginative fiction.
THEY HAD GOAT HEADS received a nomination for the Wonderland Book Award in the Best Collection category and was a finalist for the Starcherone Innovative Fiction Prize.
THEY HAD GOAT HEADS received a nomination for the Wonderland Book Award in the Best Collection category and was a finalist for the Starcherone Innovative Fiction Prize.
125 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 27, 2010
12 people are currently reading
976 people want to read
About the author
D. Harlan Wilson
71 books346 followersD. Harlan Wilson is an American novelist, critic, editor, playwright, and college professor. His body of work bridges the aesthetics of literary and film theory with various genres of speculative fiction. Recent books include
Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination: A Critical Companion
(2022),
Minority Report
(2022),
Jackanape and the Fingermen
(2021),
Outré
(2020),
The Psychotic Dr. Schreber
(2019),
Natural Complexions
(2018), and
J.G. Ballard
(2017).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 44 reviews
March 8, 2018
An irritable string of words tested my IQ, then swam uphill like salmon. "Sleep. Cousciousness. Hunger. Anxiety. The cycle of life," they muttered before disappearing underground. A bag of half-baked pretzels twisted themselves into rods and threw salt at their maker. They proceeded hungrily into the oven. A polar bear knelt in the desert and whispered "dromedary" repeatedly until a humpless camel anointed him with sand. The stories in this book rolled me up into its icy digital core, where I hibernated with dreams of electric blankets. I will revisit this spring with gloves and an Old Hickory Ice Pick. Life goes on.
March 2, 2014
Mouthwash for the mind.
Not so much bizarro as avante-garde.
This type of writing looks like fun. I don't have a doctorate in English, but I'm still going to give it a try for kicks:
The salami slaps against the weather-stippled vinyl siding scraps heaped upon the camel's porch; a petunia weeps after a sullen suicide attempt is foiled by gentle summer rain.
Just as a woodwind musician may warm up for a performance by playing scales, this book might be a great warm up read for writers before sitting down to write, a free-association stream of consciousness flowing of post-doc vocablary with tasteful placement of distasteful things.
I like it. Toenail cheescake absconds screaming into the precipice of night with recycled codfish trim-tram-trum.
Not so much bizarro as avante-garde.
This type of writing looks like fun. I don't have a doctorate in English, but I'm still going to give it a try for kicks:
The salami slaps against the weather-stippled vinyl siding scraps heaped upon the camel's porch; a petunia weeps after a sullen suicide attempt is foiled by gentle summer rain.
Just as a woodwind musician may warm up for a performance by playing scales, this book might be a great warm up read for writers before sitting down to write, a free-association stream of consciousness flowing of post-doc vocablary with tasteful placement of distasteful things.
I like it. Toenail cheescake absconds screaming into the precipice of night with recycled codfish trim-tram-trum.
June 2, 2011
This collection of absurd, surreal, irreal, bizarro flash and short fiction is dedicated to the memory of Stanley Ashenbach, who is still alive.
I met D. Harlan Wilson recently at a convention. She was a very kind old woman who lent me a hand in removing a coral snake from my glove compartment. I did not return the hand yet, however. I sent it to this person as a warning to never touch styrofoam bearing my name again.
If you love strange, dreamlike, "irrealist" fiction that bends your mind and your arm behind your back, this is so up your alley. Please seek help for this condition.
Consuela the Goat Head thanks you for your time.
I met D. Harlan Wilson recently at a convention. She was a very kind old woman who lent me a hand in removing a coral snake from my glove compartment. I did not return the hand yet, however. I sent it to this person as a warning to never touch styrofoam bearing my name again.
If you love strange, dreamlike, "irrealist" fiction that bends your mind and your arm behind your back, this is so up your alley. Please seek help for this condition.
Consuela the Goat Head thanks you for your time.
March 1, 2011
A word of advice for anyone interested in reading this book - I do not recommend reading it straight through, from beginning to end, in one sitting. I do not recommend reading more than 1 long or 1 or 2 short pieces together. I started reading straight through and found myself becoming a little lost and even disliking some of what I was reading. So I stepped away and read a little each day, including rereading the bits I had started to dislike, and the entire book felt better, or I felt better about the book. Either way, I recommend enjoying this in small snatches.
I could list my favorite parts, and I still might, but what I really want to say is that I thought it telling of my preferances that the longer a piece in this book, the more I liked it, overall. Needless to say but I will say it anyways, I was not happy with 6 Word Scifi. But other people might be. Just keep an open mind when reading.
I also enjoyed the free association pieces, or at least that's how I thought of them when I was reading. Beneath A Pink Sun was the first that caught my eye, the first piece to hold my interest.
My reactions varied throughout. For example Fathers and Sons was excellent and disturbing, Quality of Life was a drug trip?, a positive quality in my opinion, The Arrest nearly gave me an instant headache but ended well, The Storyteller was highly relatable, I loved The Whale... as well as Chimpanzee, but other pieces I did not connect with at all. Like I said, a variety of reactions.
I must also say that some of these pieces (that's what I've decided to call them. Pieces.) reminded me too much of my dreams. If I were journaling my dreams, either me or this book would be guilty of plagiarising due to all of the similarities. I am not particularly fond of this quality but thankfully only a handful of the pieces really gave me that feeling. One likes to think their dreams are solely unique and though I know it is not true, I prefer my fake feeling.
I am afraid this has become a spastic review. Books like this tend to generate such feelings from me. My final thoughts? I did not love this book. I am still unsure as to how much I liked it. I could dissect every sentence but I did not feel strongly enough about any of the pieces to do so. What I am is happy to have read this. It is refeshing and different and brave. I love bravery in writing. I have the utmost respect for the quality and will read more of it every chance I get.
I could list my favorite parts, and I still might, but what I really want to say is that I thought it telling of my preferances that the longer a piece in this book, the more I liked it, overall. Needless to say but I will say it anyways, I was not happy with 6 Word Scifi. But other people might be. Just keep an open mind when reading.
I also enjoyed the free association pieces, or at least that's how I thought of them when I was reading. Beneath A Pink Sun was the first that caught my eye, the first piece to hold my interest.
My reactions varied throughout. For example Fathers and Sons was excellent and disturbing, Quality of Life was a drug trip?, a positive quality in my opinion, The Arrest nearly gave me an instant headache but ended well, The Storyteller was highly relatable, I loved The Whale... as well as Chimpanzee, but other pieces I did not connect with at all. Like I said, a variety of reactions.
I must also say that some of these pieces (that's what I've decided to call them. Pieces.) reminded me too much of my dreams. If I were journaling my dreams, either me or this book would be guilty of plagiarising due to all of the similarities. I am not particularly fond of this quality but thankfully only a handful of the pieces really gave me that feeling. One likes to think their dreams are solely unique and though I know it is not true, I prefer my fake feeling.
I am afraid this has become a spastic review. Books like this tend to generate such feelings from me. My final thoughts? I did not love this book. I am still unsure as to how much I liked it. I could dissect every sentence but I did not feel strongly enough about any of the pieces to do so. What I am is happy to have read this. It is refeshing and different and brave. I love bravery in writing. I have the utmost respect for the quality and will read more of it every chance I get.
January 7, 2014
Quite frankly, this was an intimidating collection. How do you refute a Professor of English who boasts that his greatest rivalry is Plot itself?
Most people point to Peckinpah, Kafka Effekt or Stranger On the Loose as their starting point with Wilson. I randomly selected this one as my introduction to his wing of the Bizarro genre. There is only one unifying theme among the pieces, and that is chaos. In this collection, we get a comic strip illustration that involves a monster truck and the Bela Lugosi's Phantom of the Opera face. There's a social commentary on the encroachment of the police state using the 'Who's On First?' gag as its launching pad. The ongoing union/scab debate is played out through polar bears and penguins. He even gives us a glimpse of his own writing process in 'The Storyteller' (at least, that's the impression I got) as a cavalcade of voices talk over each other, superimposing themselves on the meaning of the story being written so that it becomes frighteningly impossible to follow even as a metafiction.
Do not read this book hoping to understand D. Harlan Wilson. Read it so that you will be no closer to understanding. He has made sure we will never understand. We are but students. If you've never read Wilson before, glad you finally decided to join the rest of the class!
From 'The Arrest' in this collection:
“The three of you are under arrest,” said the fifth man. A sixth man punched out the fifth man. “I’m arresting you.” He looked askance at the other men. “I’m arresting all of you, too.” The second and third men attacked a seventh man with tomahawks before he could open his mouth and put anybody under arrest. The seventh man shrieked during the murder. Blood exited his wounds in japanimated spurts as he accused the first and sixth men of allowing him to be murdered by the second and third men. Weird mucous leaked from the fifth man’s orifices. With his last breath, the seventh man whispered, “I should have arrested you all.”
Wilson, D. Harlan (2010-09-27). They Had Goat Heads (p. 23). Atlatl Press. Kindle Edition.
Most people point to Peckinpah, Kafka Effekt or Stranger On the Loose as their starting point with Wilson. I randomly selected this one as my introduction to his wing of the Bizarro genre. There is only one unifying theme among the pieces, and that is chaos. In this collection, we get a comic strip illustration that involves a monster truck and the Bela Lugosi's Phantom of the Opera face. There's a social commentary on the encroachment of the police state using the 'Who's On First?' gag as its launching pad. The ongoing union/scab debate is played out through polar bears and penguins. He even gives us a glimpse of his own writing process in 'The Storyteller' (at least, that's the impression I got) as a cavalcade of voices talk over each other, superimposing themselves on the meaning of the story being written so that it becomes frighteningly impossible to follow even as a metafiction.
Do not read this book hoping to understand D. Harlan Wilson. Read it so that you will be no closer to understanding. He has made sure we will never understand. We are but students. If you've never read Wilson before, glad you finally decided to join the rest of the class!
From 'The Arrest' in this collection:
“The three of you are under arrest,” said the fifth man. A sixth man punched out the fifth man. “I’m arresting you.” He looked askance at the other men. “I’m arresting all of you, too.” The second and third men attacked a seventh man with tomahawks before he could open his mouth and put anybody under arrest. The seventh man shrieked during the murder. Blood exited his wounds in japanimated spurts as he accused the first and sixth men of allowing him to be murdered by the second and third men. Weird mucous leaked from the fifth man’s orifices. With his last breath, the seventh man whispered, “I should have arrested you all.”
Wilson, D. Harlan (2010-09-27). They Had Goat Heads (p. 23). Atlatl Press. Kindle Edition.
September 14, 2013
Very dreamlike story telling. Surreal and hazy at times. Wilson has a very David Lynch way of writing. He falls into a genre of his own dreamscape and tells nightmarish tales through the mind of his own perception.
Not really my cup o tea; lots of the stories reminded me of that exercise where you basically close your eyes open your mind and just write the first things that enter your consciousness and run with it. You can end up with a bunch of nonsensical crap or the basis for something amazing. Wilson's writings are a mixture minus the crap. He is obviously a well educated writer and his writing exercises of pen to paper are much deeper than the average thought spewing dribble about nothing. I think I may be a bit harsh on this collection because of my lack of interest in reading surrealism but it really is a very well written body of work.
It's like with movies that have no real plot or character development, but visually the movie says a lot with subtle undertones of actual meaning. I get it for its creative endeavours and picture painting quality but an entire short story collection told in very cryptic dreamlike narratives is a bit much. I don't like searching for the meaning (if there is any at all) when I'm reading horror or bizarro. I felt like a lot of these stories were just the authors way of being clever and doing a fine job at that it's just not my flavor of storytelling. that being said the book did have some nice gems in it and again just because surrealism isn't really my thing doesn't mean that the man doesn't know how to write. D. Harlan Wilson if anything at best is a very articulate, strong writer, and he can definitely make you think and ponder the world he illustrates.
I really enjoyed most of the one paragraph or paged short stories like MONSTER TRUCK, CAPE CRUSADES, TURNS, AND THE WOMB. Monster Truck and The Womb have an air of sadness to both of them that I appreciate. BALLOONS was a favorite as well.
QUALITY OF LIFE: A longer story in the book; hard to explain but it's a good one.
THE ARREST: This one was quite funny, and I actually followed the order of "arrests" pretty well. I loved this line mainly because of the build up to it, "Forthwith I will put every last black hole in the universe behind bars. I will teach Eternity the very meaning of deference and respect and authority."
WHALE: Cute story of a father daughter trip to a pet store to inquire about acquiring a whale....with a surprise alternate (HAPPY) ending!!!
FATHERS AND SONS: Three words; Fear Your Offspring.
THE SISTER: This is where Wilson concreted my comparison of him to David Lynch. The art work (by Skye Thorstenson) alone is eerie and the story itself again absurd in it's delivery but by this story I had gotten use to the author's pace and voice. I really liked this one
THE STORYTELLER: A monotonous tale of a tale of a tale. This story struck a chord with me because I find myself relistening to the same story that was told once before earlier that day or even weeks later by friends and family. Being too kind to say anything I listen intently as I did the first time hoping they remember that they have already told me this story once and god knows how many times to others. The end of the story reminds me that I too tend to repeat my stories. Not really sure why I like this one or chose to relate to it in this way but that's the beauty of surrealistic writings in my opinion.
THE EGG RAID: A strange story that I can't help but think would be the dream of a child who is a product of a broken home and divorce.
GUNPLAY: Very jumpy and bang bangy...is that really a review??? I'm goin with it!
TO BED, TO BED-GOODNIGHT: Appropriate story to end the collection with.
Not really my cup o tea; lots of the stories reminded me of that exercise where you basically close your eyes open your mind and just write the first things that enter your consciousness and run with it. You can end up with a bunch of nonsensical crap or the basis for something amazing. Wilson's writings are a mixture minus the crap. He is obviously a well educated writer and his writing exercises of pen to paper are much deeper than the average thought spewing dribble about nothing. I think I may be a bit harsh on this collection because of my lack of interest in reading surrealism but it really is a very well written body of work.
It's like with movies that have no real plot or character development, but visually the movie says a lot with subtle undertones of actual meaning. I get it for its creative endeavours and picture painting quality but an entire short story collection told in very cryptic dreamlike narratives is a bit much. I don't like searching for the meaning (if there is any at all) when I'm reading horror or bizarro. I felt like a lot of these stories were just the authors way of being clever and doing a fine job at that it's just not my flavor of storytelling. that being said the book did have some nice gems in it and again just because surrealism isn't really my thing doesn't mean that the man doesn't know how to write. D. Harlan Wilson if anything at best is a very articulate, strong writer, and he can definitely make you think and ponder the world he illustrates.
I really enjoyed most of the one paragraph or paged short stories like MONSTER TRUCK, CAPE CRUSADES, TURNS, AND THE WOMB. Monster Truck and The Womb have an air of sadness to both of them that I appreciate. BALLOONS was a favorite as well.
QUALITY OF LIFE: A longer story in the book; hard to explain but it's a good one.
THE ARREST: This one was quite funny, and I actually followed the order of "arrests" pretty well. I loved this line mainly because of the build up to it, "Forthwith I will put every last black hole in the universe behind bars. I will teach Eternity the very meaning of deference and respect and authority."
WHALE: Cute story of a father daughter trip to a pet store to inquire about acquiring a whale....with a surprise alternate (HAPPY) ending!!!
FATHERS AND SONS: Three words; Fear Your Offspring.
THE SISTER: This is where Wilson concreted my comparison of him to David Lynch. The art work (by Skye Thorstenson) alone is eerie and the story itself again absurd in it's delivery but by this story I had gotten use to the author's pace and voice. I really liked this one
THE STORYTELLER: A monotonous tale of a tale of a tale. This story struck a chord with me because I find myself relistening to the same story that was told once before earlier that day or even weeks later by friends and family. Being too kind to say anything I listen intently as I did the first time hoping they remember that they have already told me this story once and god knows how many times to others. The end of the story reminds me that I too tend to repeat my stories. Not really sure why I like this one or chose to relate to it in this way but that's the beauty of surrealistic writings in my opinion.
THE EGG RAID: A strange story that I can't help but think would be the dream of a child who is a product of a broken home and divorce.
GUNPLAY: Very jumpy and bang bangy...is that really a review??? I'm goin with it!
TO BED, TO BED-GOODNIGHT: Appropriate story to end the collection with.
June 23, 2011
D. Harlan Wilson's stories are like the titular mutants of this book. They do not belong. They are offbeat mutants that sometimes carry with them a feeling of just plain wrongness. They are reality deviants and infiltrators and don't seem to be composed of the proper parts. A father and daughter look at a whale in a petstore. The image of a giraffe haunts a man. Language and reality break down. Nonsensical crimes happen in obscure hotel rooms. These parts are wrong. The union of Kafka, Ligotti and lesser known and less than beat perfect Kids in the Hall sketches make something different and on the surface diabolical. It is hard to review collections of short stories, especially by authors as experimental and postmodern as Wilson, but it is easy for me to give it my approval. I approve of this book. I approve of the godawful and funny and disquieting things that happen in it. I approve of D. Harlan Wilson, satirical satyr (inverted, Jersey Devil of flash fiction. The weirdness, funniness and offbeat qualities of this book will haunt makeout points with a hatchet and the cops will throw you in the drunk tank if you say you saw it.
July 5, 2021
Like scientists split the atom these stories are the author splitting ideas and narratives then allowing the contents to messily gloop out in all directions and possibilities. Definitely worth checking out if you're of a less linear mind, though evidently (from reading some scathing reviews on here) this one frustrates the logical types.
June 17, 2013
Book Info: Genre: Bizarro/Short-story anthology
Reading Level: Adult
Recommended for: Fans of bizarro fiction, surreality
My Thoughts: I can't remember exactly how this book came to my notice, but once I saw it, I knew I had to have it. I was very happy to find it on a free promotion on Amazon and put it into my review queue so I could read it sooner. It has still taken me well over a year to read it.
It's very difficult to review short-story anthologies, because there is no plot or character development arc to discuss. Often I'll make a listing of the stories and provide a snippet, but not this time. There is just no way to explain any of these stories other than with a single word: surreal.
There may have been deep meanings to some of these stories if examined with an eye to symbolism, but to me they were mostly weird and surreal. This is not a bad thing. In fact, this is exactly the sort of stuff I used to write during writing sprints and as random idea generation. Some of these seem like maybe they are just dreams the author wrote down. I don't know. But I enjoyed the heck out of reading this book. If you like bizarro fiction and surrealism, definitely check out this book of short stories.
Disclosure: I picked this book up during a free promotion on Amazon. I have never, to my knowledge, had any interaction with this author. All opinions are my own.
Synopsis: D. Harlan Wilson returns with another ferociously mindbending collection of short fiction. Masked in absurdity, these stories reveal the horrifying and hilarious faces of everyday life. Wilson tells of egg raids, hog rippers, monk spitters, fathers who take their children to pet stores to buy them whales, sociopaths who threaten to clothesline eternity, and the simple act of the story itself becoming a means of repetitive, endless torture. Put on your goat head, hop in your hovercraft, and take a ride with a juggernaut of modern imaginative fiction.
Reading Level: Adult
Recommended for: Fans of bizarro fiction, surreality
My Thoughts: I can't remember exactly how this book came to my notice, but once I saw it, I knew I had to have it. I was very happy to find it on a free promotion on Amazon and put it into my review queue so I could read it sooner. It has still taken me well over a year to read it.
It's very difficult to review short-story anthologies, because there is no plot or character development arc to discuss. Often I'll make a listing of the stories and provide a snippet, but not this time. There is just no way to explain any of these stories other than with a single word: surreal.
There may have been deep meanings to some of these stories if examined with an eye to symbolism, but to me they were mostly weird and surreal. This is not a bad thing. In fact, this is exactly the sort of stuff I used to write during writing sprints and as random idea generation. Some of these seem like maybe they are just dreams the author wrote down. I don't know. But I enjoyed the heck out of reading this book. If you like bizarro fiction and surrealism, definitely check out this book of short stories.
Disclosure: I picked this book up during a free promotion on Amazon. I have never, to my knowledge, had any interaction with this author. All opinions are my own.
Synopsis: D. Harlan Wilson returns with another ferociously mindbending collection of short fiction. Masked in absurdity, these stories reveal the horrifying and hilarious faces of everyday life. Wilson tells of egg raids, hog rippers, monk spitters, fathers who take their children to pet stores to buy them whales, sociopaths who threaten to clothesline eternity, and the simple act of the story itself becoming a means of repetitive, endless torture. Put on your goat head, hop in your hovercraft, and take a ride with a juggernaut of modern imaginative fiction.
June 29, 2011
I’m unsure even how to begin this discussion. Thematically, I’m completely screwed. So I think I’m going to concentrate on examples of all the story types present in this book.
First, the six-word story. It is also the first story in the book. “6 Word Scifi”:
Mechanical flâneurs goosestep across the prairie.
Thank god I went through a heavy Baudelaire phase or I would have had no idea what a “flâneur” is. As six word stories go, it’s not bad. I think Hemingway still takes first place in my mind (“For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.”) but this one is pretty evocative, too. This story immediately brought to mind those Nazi hammers from Pink Floyd: The Wall. I just imagined them leisurely marching across the American Heartland. Minimalism is always a winner for people with over-active imaginations and plenty of pop cultural references to fill in the mental blanks. Read my entire discussion here.
First, the six-word story. It is also the first story in the book. “6 Word Scifi”:
Mechanical flâneurs goosestep across the prairie.
Thank god I went through a heavy Baudelaire phase or I would have had no idea what a “flâneur” is. As six word stories go, it’s not bad. I think Hemingway still takes first place in my mind (“For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.”) but this one is pretty evocative, too. This story immediately brought to mind those Nazi hammers from Pink Floyd: The Wall. I just imagined them leisurely marching across the American Heartland. Minimalism is always a winner for people with over-active imaginations and plenty of pop cultural references to fill in the mental blanks. Read my entire discussion here.
October 3, 2012
My first experience with D. Harlan Wilson and I'm totally fried, all numb over how much I enjoyed this, just took it down all morning and immediately hungry for more. I kept thinking, Kenneth Patchen gone mad over the cliff with Robert Coover and into the pit of Bizarro heaven--these are just too much fun, too much insanity and precision to properly digest--vivid like mini-films: Kentucky Fried Movie gone bonkers, gone meaningful. I'm a fan, D. Harlan Wilson.
March 13, 2012
I spoke in another review that I am not a big fan of the short short fiction, but that doesn’t stop me from reading it. This was the first book I had read from D. Harlan Wilson, and it does contain a couple pieces are of the short short variety, but this book was superb. After reading it my first thought was ‘why have I waited so long to check this author out.’ Thirty-nine stories packed into one hundred and forty-six pages, these streams of conscience pieces will take you places you haven’t been before, and some of those places may scare you.
Collections like this are hard to review, the stories jump all across the board and range in many shapes and sizes. A couple really great pieces from this are Whale – with a surprise alternate (happy) ending which has a father taking his daughter to a pet shop for a goldfish but decide to check out the whale room instead. The Arrest, where one man tries to arrest another man, but that man disagrees and tries to arrest the first man. And then things get crazy weird. The story that I liked the most was The Sister, which featured illustrations by Skye Thorstenson. The images added a whole new layer to Wilson’s words that took the story to a whole new level. The collaboration is absolutely brilliant.
This book is one of the best things that I have read this year. It’s still early in the year but They have Goat Heads is going to be very hard to top. This collection is the reason I started reading the Bizarro genre. These stories are absurd, surreal, un-real, and well crafted. In all the Bizarro I have read I had not yet read anything like this before, I will definitely be reading more by Wilson.
Collections like this are hard to review, the stories jump all across the board and range in many shapes and sizes. A couple really great pieces from this are Whale – with a surprise alternate (happy) ending which has a father taking his daughter to a pet shop for a goldfish but decide to check out the whale room instead. The Arrest, where one man tries to arrest another man, but that man disagrees and tries to arrest the first man. And then things get crazy weird. The story that I liked the most was The Sister, which featured illustrations by Skye Thorstenson. The images added a whole new layer to Wilson’s words that took the story to a whole new level. The collaboration is absolutely brilliant.
This book is one of the best things that I have read this year. It’s still early in the year but They have Goat Heads is going to be very hard to top. This collection is the reason I started reading the Bizarro genre. These stories are absurd, surreal, un-real, and well crafted. In all the Bizarro I have read I had not yet read anything like this before, I will definitely be reading more by Wilson.
December 11, 2010
D. Harlan Wilson is certainly in a class by himself. This collection of short fiction, shorter fiction and flash fiction is all over the place but is full of fantastic imagery, disturbing actions, and quick wit. Even at it's weirdness, and it gets really weird, the author's words flow as this is all very natural. Sometimes there is an effortless feel of loose association even though almost all the stories have some kind of plot involved. My favorite stories are "The Arrest", "Whale", "Hovercraft, "Giraffe" and the title tale. This is a book which the only answer is to go with the flow and enjoy.
October 3, 2010
This is a fine collection of stories,vignettes and flash fictions that are in turn funny, absurd and menacing. The gems of this collection are: The Arrest, The Movie That Never Was, The Storyteller, P.O. Box 455, Whale!, Quality of Life, and The Kerosine Lantern Tour. In a class by itself is the illustated story called The Sister , in which atrocity is piled upon atrocity in such adead-pan manner to express the horror and absurdity of the modern world.
November 30, 2011
The novelty wore off really fast. I kept noticing lots of repetition of certain obscure words. A quick short story in a magazine is one thing but a whole bunch of this tripe one after another....
No thanks
No thanks
April 6, 2020
A bunch of very short nonsensical stories that say absolutely nothing yet ramble on and on. One story was actually a single paragraph that rambled for 3 freaking pages. A sample follows. You be the judge.
Blacksmiths line up in the streets and sharpen meat cleavers with power tools. A steel gray camaro runs them over. Bones crunch. The blacksmiths rise to their knees. An out of control stagecoach runs them over. Pastiche of viscera. They say down for the count as the stagecoach metamorphoses into a giant pumpkin. Remember that old Greco-Egyptian fairy tale of unwarranted oppression and triumphant reward (aka Cinderella). Rhodopsis was born without a hard palate. She had to install a ribbed protheses.
WTF did I just read. What's really, really sad is that there are numerous 4 and 5 star reviews for this crap. Go figure!
Blacksmiths line up in the streets and sharpen meat cleavers with power tools. A steel gray camaro runs them over. Bones crunch. The blacksmiths rise to their knees. An out of control stagecoach runs them over. Pastiche of viscera. They say down for the count as the stagecoach metamorphoses into a giant pumpkin. Remember that old Greco-Egyptian fairy tale of unwarranted oppression and triumphant reward (aka Cinderella). Rhodopsis was born without a hard palate. She had to install a ribbed protheses.
WTF did I just read. What's really, really sad is that there are numerous 4 and 5 star reviews for this crap. Go figure!
March 21, 2011
They Had Goat Heads
by
D. Harlan Wilson
- Review by
G. Wells Taylor
D. Harlan Wilson’s collection They Had Goat Heads (© 2010 Atlatl Press) almost explodes in your hands. The author’s deft and rapid-fire writing style reaches critical mass in seconds and a literary event of cosmic magnitude occurs. Then you realize you were standing too close: you’re not in real time or space anymore.
Years ago I was lucky enough to review Wilson’s collection, The Kafka Effekt (© 2001 Eraserhead Press), and that, my first experience with the irreal, was a trial by fire that barely prepared me for exposure to his latest.
The 39 stories in They Had Goat Heads sprint, machine-gun and warp the reader to places where normal rational thinking would never dare go and you begin to wonder, as things progress whether the collection might actually cause brain damage. One thing is certain, you will come away from the experience knowing you have read a cutting-edge piece of literature: the images are stimulating and resonant, in manifold ways unique and strangely familiar.
But I don’t want to hang They Had Goat Heads with the label ‘literature’ because it seems immune to the staid and predictable conventions often associated with the form. Wilson’s collection flies in the face of such simple categorization.
For those unacquainted with Irrealism an expansive explanation can be found at the Irreal Cafe in G. S. Evans’ essay entitled: “What is irrealism?” More succinctly, essayist Dean Swinford has described Irrealism as a “peculiar mode of postmodern allegory” that has emerged from the chaos of a deconstructed medieval system of symbol and allegory.
In other words, preconceptions need not apply. We limbo under Freud’s cigar: realistic expectations, interactions, fetish and symbols go out the window. These are transformed into something that resembles the intimate and often ambiguous realm of dreams and the unconscious—but it is more a reflection than resemblance.
They Had Goat Heads is breathtaking. The reader is swept from genre to genre as a torrent of provocative images either hurtles past or impacts and bonds at the molecular level. There’s no escaping once it starts. The stories dodge in and out of reality, touching on persistent themes of repetition, media and technology, all of it interwoven with human DNA and its evolutionary design.
By using recurring images of family, destruction, death and recreation, Wilson effortlessly plays with cerebral fun as in “Monster Truck” or shifts to the rather touching absurdity found in “The Whale - with a Surprise Alternate (Happy) Ending!!!” One comes away feeling as though the flexible word-play represents an ever-plastic quality of the universe and somehow gauges the limitless potential of sentience.
Perhaps that’s why a nagging feeling persists. The stories feel so familiar. Why are they impossible to resist? In hindsight, the first hint of this déjà vu came in the second story, “The Movie That Wasn’t There,” in which the narrator is drawn into a movie melodrama that is unfolding around him. Wilson’s collection does a similar thing. There is an inclusive and unavoidable identification that thrums throughout and makes the book impossible to simply read, there is complicity in every line.
They Had Goat Heads bombards the reader with exciting ideas and disturbing imagery plucked screaming from life and nightmares. You’re drawn in because you’ve seen it somewhere before: in your subconscious.
They Had Goat Heads is the equivalent of having dream surgery.
D. Harlan Wilson’s collection They Had Goat Heads (© 2010 Atlatl Press) almost explodes in your hands. The author’s deft and rapid-fire writing style reaches critical mass in seconds and a literary event of cosmic magnitude occurs. Then you realize you were standing too close: you’re not in real time or space anymore.
Years ago I was lucky enough to review Wilson’s collection, The Kafka Effekt (© 2001 Eraserhead Press), and that, my first experience with the irreal, was a trial by fire that barely prepared me for exposure to his latest.
The 39 stories in They Had Goat Heads sprint, machine-gun and warp the reader to places where normal rational thinking would never dare go and you begin to wonder, as things progress whether the collection might actually cause brain damage. One thing is certain, you will come away from the experience knowing you have read a cutting-edge piece of literature: the images are stimulating and resonant, in manifold ways unique and strangely familiar.
But I don’t want to hang They Had Goat Heads with the label ‘literature’ because it seems immune to the staid and predictable conventions often associated with the form. Wilson’s collection flies in the face of such simple categorization.
For those unacquainted with Irrealism an expansive explanation can be found at the Irreal Cafe in G. S. Evans’ essay entitled: “What is irrealism?” More succinctly, essayist Dean Swinford has described Irrealism as a “peculiar mode of postmodern allegory” that has emerged from the chaos of a deconstructed medieval system of symbol and allegory.
In other words, preconceptions need not apply. We limbo under Freud’s cigar: realistic expectations, interactions, fetish and symbols go out the window. These are transformed into something that resembles the intimate and often ambiguous realm of dreams and the unconscious—but it is more a reflection than resemblance.
They Had Goat Heads is breathtaking. The reader is swept from genre to genre as a torrent of provocative images either hurtles past or impacts and bonds at the molecular level. There’s no escaping once it starts. The stories dodge in and out of reality, touching on persistent themes of repetition, media and technology, all of it interwoven with human DNA and its evolutionary design.
By using recurring images of family, destruction, death and recreation, Wilson effortlessly plays with cerebral fun as in “Monster Truck” or shifts to the rather touching absurdity found in “The Whale - with a Surprise Alternate (Happy) Ending!!!” One comes away feeling as though the flexible word-play represents an ever-plastic quality of the universe and somehow gauges the limitless potential of sentience.
Perhaps that’s why a nagging feeling persists. The stories feel so familiar. Why are they impossible to resist? In hindsight, the first hint of this déjà vu came in the second story, “The Movie That Wasn’t There,” in which the narrator is drawn into a movie melodrama that is unfolding around him. Wilson’s collection does a similar thing. There is an inclusive and unavoidable identification that thrums throughout and makes the book impossible to simply read, there is complicity in every line.
They Had Goat Heads bombards the reader with exciting ideas and disturbing imagery plucked screaming from life and nightmares. You’re drawn in because you’ve seen it somewhere before: in your subconscious.
They Had Goat Heads is the equivalent of having dream surgery.
January 19, 2015
I REALLY wanted to like this. I mean, the title alone....
Sadly, this short story collection was just a vapid and absurd bunch of situations that did not attempt to cohere into anything meaningful. Which is probably the point - though I feel sorry for anyone (the author included) who thinks this methodology has merit or that this book is good.
Many of the initial ideas that launched the tales were vaguely intriguing. But even worse than going nowhere, they went everywhere. Zero predictability (in a BAD way), zero attempt at making sense, zero zero.
Additionally, the writing was just plain boring and without one iota of oomph. Perfectly fascinating images were wasted over and over again. The author himself seemed bored by what he was creating. How sad.
I've no doubt that there is an audience for this sort of thing. How I would hate to be trapped in an elevator with a fan of this tome.
Sadly, this short story collection was just a vapid and absurd bunch of situations that did not attempt to cohere into anything meaningful. Which is probably the point - though I feel sorry for anyone (the author included) who thinks this methodology has merit or that this book is good.
Many of the initial ideas that launched the tales were vaguely intriguing. But even worse than going nowhere, they went everywhere. Zero predictability (in a BAD way), zero attempt at making sense, zero zero.
Additionally, the writing was just plain boring and without one iota of oomph. Perfectly fascinating images were wasted over and over again. The author himself seemed bored by what he was creating. How sad.
I've no doubt that there is an audience for this sort of thing. How I would hate to be trapped in an elevator with a fan of this tome.
June 1, 2015
This collection reminded me a little of "Naked Lunch" in its first few pages (minus the Mugwumps and heroin); I can definitely see the J.G. Ballard influence upon the author, as well. I recommend this collection for when you have found yourself in a "too-traditional" reading rut. Even though I've been reading a lot of what's classified as "Weird" lately, the majority of it has been structured/presented rather conservatively: a fully-developed plot, characters, and a conclusion of some sort, nice-and-neat, etc. This was a fun break with that and offered-up some fantastically bizarre imagery to linger upon later. Just be aware that this is not your typical collection of short stories, even by Weird standards; it's worth a read, however, and certainly has an "expansive" effect if one sticks with it.
May 27, 2014
Get Addicted To Bizarro Flash Fiction
Bizarro flash fiction and very short fiction filled with wild imagery. Very addicting and easy to burn through the whole book in a couple of hours or so. Some of the pieces seem like random juxtapositions of insanity. That's cool. My favorites though, oddly enough, are those that stick a little closer to traditional storytelling. "Hog Ripping" is an outright hilarious tale of a man who rips things in half. It's my favorite of the batch. "The Storyteller" seems like a riff on those people who seem to tell the same story over and over again. This piece turns that concept into a nightmare unlike any other.
Bizarro flash fiction and very short fiction filled with wild imagery. Very addicting and easy to burn through the whole book in a couple of hours or so. Some of the pieces seem like random juxtapositions of insanity. That's cool. My favorites though, oddly enough, are those that stick a little closer to traditional storytelling. "Hog Ripping" is an outright hilarious tale of a man who rips things in half. It's my favorite of the batch. "The Storyteller" seems like a riff on those people who seem to tell the same story over and over again. This piece turns that concept into a nightmare unlike any other.
July 26, 2010
Great collection of flash fiction and short stories. Much of the writing is non-traditional (I don't like to say experimental), but for me, the best stuff is odd despite its straightforward nature. My favorites are "The Arrest," in which 7 men try to arrest each other, and "Chimpanzee," which is very odd and disturbing.
The stories, ranging from six words to several pages all seem appropriate in length, and are complete stories, which is often not the case with flash fiction. Perhaps most importantly, they all live up to the intriguing cover art and title.
The stories, ranging from six words to several pages all seem appropriate in length, and are complete stories, which is often not the case with flash fiction. Perhaps most importantly, they all live up to the intriguing cover art and title.
October 25, 2011
These are some intriguing stories. At the very least, they aren't ordinary. Ranging anywhere from absurd to completely surreal, these stories have marvelous images, puzzling leaps, and wild imagination. Some of the stories may be a little further out there than would be my own particular bent, but it was a delight to be able to be befuddled over them for a while. And they do make a kind of sense...which scares me more than anything else about the book.
November 4, 2014
D. Harlan Wilson is a master of avant-garde, writing like an improv band or a troupe of circus performers. They Had Goat Heads is a collection of chaotic, short excerpts that all seem to be pointing toward:
Life doesn't make much sense, and there is an absurdity in trying to comprise events into cognizant stories.
PLOT is the opposite of life.
A woman riding off in a hovercraft or men with goat heads is no more absurd than the idea of family.
Life doesn't make much sense, and there is an absurdity in trying to comprise events into cognizant stories.
PLOT is the opposite of life.
A woman riding off in a hovercraft or men with goat heads is no more absurd than the idea of family.
November 10, 2015
I wasn't sure how to rate this. It will say it was an entertaining ride, but was not like anything I had read before. The style of writing was new to me. Some of these very short stories had me laughing out loud, and some left me with a bit of a question mark. Either way, I am glad that I chose to read it.
July 6, 2015
I thought most of the stories were pointlessly ridiculous and stupid. They didn't have a point and none were coherent. It was like a child had opened a word processor and typed everything that came into their head. It was stupid and it is easy to say I hated it. The best thing I can say about it was that it was short.
March 21, 2013
If you're looking for conventional story structure, look elsewhere. But if you can stomach the surreal, the absurd, and you're fine with reading narratives that only follow the logic of dreams and nightmares, then you'll enjoy this book thoroughly. Every story made me laugh or cringe, or both.
October 7, 2010
A well written piece By D.Harlan Wilson
December 22, 2013
Like reading a David Lynch movie.
My favorite was The Balloon.
My favorite was The Balloon.
September 26, 2016
I'm struggling to find anything to say about this book beyond "It's weird."
As a collection of short fiction (the longest story in here is about fifteen pages, but it's also a comic), it's somewhat lacking. Most of the writing is simply stream of consciousness, while others are opaque surreal pieces. As is often the case with collections like this, there are hits and there are misses.
My two personal favorites in the piece are the aforementioned comic "The Sister" and a late in the book piece called "Gunplay." The former deals with a man who needs to keep sewing his sister back together because people keep taking her and breaking her apart. The latter is about someone in a hotel room who hears gunshots in the hallway and sees someone with a ski mask who is missing their lower jaw. Yeah, they don't make too much sense, but the particular details in each (and illustrations for "The Sister) made them stand out to me.
Even though there are quite a few weaker entries in here, the short nature of everything makes it tough to put down once you started, if only to see what kind of oddity D Harlan Wilson has in store for you next. Worth looking into for those who have a taste for the flat out strange, but don't expect the depth that comes with the best Bizarro writing.
One final thought: The cover is sexy as hell and I'd hang it on my wall in a larger format.
As a collection of short fiction (the longest story in here is about fifteen pages, but it's also a comic), it's somewhat lacking. Most of the writing is simply stream of consciousness, while others are opaque surreal pieces. As is often the case with collections like this, there are hits and there are misses.
My two personal favorites in the piece are the aforementioned comic "The Sister" and a late in the book piece called "Gunplay." The former deals with a man who needs to keep sewing his sister back together because people keep taking her and breaking her apart. The latter is about someone in a hotel room who hears gunshots in the hallway and sees someone with a ski mask who is missing their lower jaw. Yeah, they don't make too much sense, but the particular details in each (and illustrations for "The Sister) made them stand out to me.
Even though there are quite a few weaker entries in here, the short nature of everything makes it tough to put down once you started, if only to see what kind of oddity D Harlan Wilson has in store for you next. Worth looking into for those who have a taste for the flat out strange, but don't expect the depth that comes with the best Bizarro writing.
One final thought: The cover is sexy as hell and I'd hang it on my wall in a larger format.
October 7, 2014
My brains are scrambled. This book scrambled it.
These are dreams, nightmares, delusions. These are the stuff the homeless whisper to themselves while they roam the streets in search of sustenance.
These are the words that unlock that secret side of our brains and make us dream of murder and violence.
If you liked this things as I described them to you, buy this collection. Now.
I got to go polish my horns and trim my goatee now.
Get it? "Goatee"?
These are dreams, nightmares, delusions. These are the stuff the homeless whisper to themselves while they roam the streets in search of sustenance.
These are the words that unlock that secret side of our brains and make us dream of murder and violence.
If you liked this things as I described them to you, buy this collection. Now.
I got to go polish my horns and trim my goatee now.
Get it? "Goatee"?
Displaying 1 - 30 of 44 reviews