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The Complete Butcher's Tales
In the fantastic tradition of Borges, Bruno Schulz, Angela Carter, and H. P. Lovecraft, here are nearly sixty unforgettable stories that ignore the confines of space and time to offer, among other times and places: a cabinet of curiosities in contemporary Cairo, an alchemical ceiling in 18th-century Naples, the hallucinatory inner worlds of psychotics, anthropomorphic planets, and an Old West ruled by necromancy.This expanded, revised edition collects the complete short stories of one of the most immaginative writers of our time.
172 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
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About the author
Rikki Ducornet
63 books240 followersRikki Ducornet (born Erika DeGre, April 19, 1943 in Canton, New York) is an American postmodernist, writer, poet, and artist.
Ducornet's father was a professor of sociology, and her mother hosted community-interest programs on radio and television. Ducornet grew up on the campus of Bard College in New York, earning a B.A. in Fine Arts from the same institution in 1964. While at Bard she met Robert Coover and Robert Kelly, two authors who shared Ducornet's fascination with metamorphosis and provided early models of how fiction might express this interest. In 1972 she moved to the Loire Valley in France with her then husband, Guy Ducornet. In 1988 she won a Bunting Institute fellowship at Radcliffe. In 1989 she moved back to North America after accepting a teaching position in the English Department at The University of Denver. In 2007, she replaced retired Dr. Ernest Gaines as Writer in Residence at the The University of Louisiana. In 2008, The American Academy of Arts and Letters conferred upon her one of the eight annual Academy Awards presented to writers.
Ducornet's father was a professor of sociology, and her mother hosted community-interest programs on radio and television. Ducornet grew up on the campus of Bard College in New York, earning a B.A. in Fine Arts from the same institution in 1964. While at Bard she met Robert Coover and Robert Kelly, two authors who shared Ducornet's fascination with metamorphosis and provided early models of how fiction might express this interest. In 1972 she moved to the Loire Valley in France with her then husband, Guy Ducornet. In 1988 she won a Bunting Institute fellowship at Radcliffe. In 1989 she moved back to North America after accepting a teaching position in the English Department at The University of Denver. In 2007, she replaced retired Dr. Ernest Gaines as Writer in Residence at the The University of Louisiana. In 2008, The American Academy of Arts and Letters conferred upon her one of the eight annual Academy Awards presented to writers.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
March 9, 2012
I recently hosted a Dalkey Archive Appreciation book meet, sharing the wonder of this glorious little press with fellow Glaswegians. I read this in preparation for said event, but packed my bag with a dozen bedazzling specimens, among them Mulligan Stew, The Book of Jokes, Log of the S.S. Mrs Unguentine, A Nest of Ninnies, The Mirror in the Well, Pierrot Mon Ami, Night, Best European Fiction 2011, and some others. I suggest every one of you, my GR review followers, does the same in your provinces and townships, spreading the word about this incredible—that’s DALKEY ARCHIVE, what do you mean you’ve never heard of it?—publisher. This collection of enchanting fables, micro-fictions, surreal and erotic oddities doesn’t quite work as a whole—taken in small snuffs, perhaps, it would perhaps be a more satisfying concoction. Read sixty-three Dalkey books now!
December 16, 2018
A collection with 55 stories is bound to be uneven, doubly so for me, as I’m partial to novels, and the heftier the better. I’ve never been fully satiated by any story collection, except for Ficciones by Borges, who could condense a novel, a universe, into a singularity 25 pages or so in (Planck) length. Although I read many worthy collections this year (DFW’s Oblivion, Barth’s Lost in the Funhouse, Carter’s The Bloody Chamber, and McElroy’s Night Soul), Ficciones still stands (Bab)alone as a cosmic monolith.
In The Complete Butcher’s Tales, Ducornet’s short stories are short-short, otherwise known as ‘flash fiction,’ a term I don’t care for all that much. But they do not employ Borgesian condensation. Rather, they tend to alternate between the meso- and microscopic, only occasionally flirting with the macroscopic, which caused some stories to feel as though they were amputated from a larger whole.
The styles range from whimsical sci-fi and necromantic western to almost slice of life. Despite the variety and unevenness, there can be found thematic and lexical overlaps. Many of these stories explore corporeality vis-à-vis mutilations, whether self-, cerebral, homicidal, spontaneous, or all of the above, all existing as linguistic dream-symptoms of hypochondria.
Conversely/concurrently, there is an encapsulation of childhood’s hyperboles: faux innocence and precocious malevolence versus the primordial mystery and wonder that can be spurred by or latched onto something as simple as a shiny coin or as exotic as a two-headed cobra suspended in formaldehyde, or marquetry that depicts how “a mature albino ape, its heart pierced by an arrow, falls from a tropical tree. As he falls he attempts to catch the blood ropes spouting from his breast. In truth his wound is fathomless, a mortal fracture in the body of the world.”
The third thematic thread that Ducornet’s corpus is no stranger to is Eros, wresting him/herself from the arms of Morpheus or the penumbra of Thanatos. One example is a literal coming of age: “Not many days before her ninth birthday, scrubbing herself in the bath with a natural sea-sponge that looked like the ear of an elephant, she discovered a part of herself tucked away like a pearl button or the tender, firm bud of a rose. Gently caressed with the sponge or, better still, her own middle finger, it gave her intense pleasure. The spasms were so violent that for one crazy moment she thought that she had been hurtled out to sea, her salty bath bewitched, whipped to a froth by the cyclone that circumvoluted her spine.”
One can’t fail to mention that Ducornet treats blank pages like the foreheads of mythical golems, inscribing them with words of infinite life using a sentient and alchemical language. Her often spellbinding prose makes the stories almost a crime for their brevity. All the more reason to prefer the novel form. My first Ducornet was the coral-encrusted and seaweed-wreathed Fountains of Neptune, which was an astounding treasure of aqua-nautical stories-within-stories. Most of all, I look forward to reading the rest of that elemental tetralogy.
And true to the dust jacket marketing, there are some fairy tales a lá Angela Carter, there is a meta-/pseudo-sequel to Borge’s “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” and there is a bit of Lovecraftian craft.
However, I don’t think this collection should be simply read through, but rather left on the shelf to be picked up at one’s leisure in order to savor a tale or two or three.
In The Complete Butcher’s Tales, Ducornet’s short stories are short-short, otherwise known as ‘flash fiction,’ a term I don’t care for all that much. But they do not employ Borgesian condensation. Rather, they tend to alternate between the meso- and microscopic, only occasionally flirting with the macroscopic, which caused some stories to feel as though they were amputated from a larger whole.
The styles range from whimsical sci-fi and necromantic western to almost slice of life. Despite the variety and unevenness, there can be found thematic and lexical overlaps. Many of these stories explore corporeality vis-à-vis mutilations, whether self-, cerebral, homicidal, spontaneous, or all of the above, all existing as linguistic dream-symptoms of hypochondria.
Conversely/concurrently, there is an encapsulation of childhood’s hyperboles: faux innocence and precocious malevolence versus the primordial mystery and wonder that can be spurred by or latched onto something as simple as a shiny coin or as exotic as a two-headed cobra suspended in formaldehyde, or marquetry that depicts how “a mature albino ape, its heart pierced by an arrow, falls from a tropical tree. As he falls he attempts to catch the blood ropes spouting from his breast. In truth his wound is fathomless, a mortal fracture in the body of the world.”
The third thematic thread that Ducornet’s corpus is no stranger to is Eros, wresting him/herself from the arms of Morpheus or the penumbra of Thanatos. One example is a literal coming of age: “Not many days before her ninth birthday, scrubbing herself in the bath with a natural sea-sponge that looked like the ear of an elephant, she discovered a part of herself tucked away like a pearl button or the tender, firm bud of a rose. Gently caressed with the sponge or, better still, her own middle finger, it gave her intense pleasure. The spasms were so violent that for one crazy moment she thought that she had been hurtled out to sea, her salty bath bewitched, whipped to a froth by the cyclone that circumvoluted her spine.”
One can’t fail to mention that Ducornet treats blank pages like the foreheads of mythical golems, inscribing them with words of infinite life using a sentient and alchemical language. Her often spellbinding prose makes the stories almost a crime for their brevity. All the more reason to prefer the novel form. My first Ducornet was the coral-encrusted and seaweed-wreathed Fountains of Neptune, which was an astounding treasure of aqua-nautical stories-within-stories. Most of all, I look forward to reading the rest of that elemental tetralogy.
And true to the dust jacket marketing, there are some fairy tales a lá Angela Carter, there is a meta-/pseudo-sequel to Borge’s “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” and there is a bit of Lovecraftian craft.
However, I don’t think this collection should be simply read through, but rather left on the shelf to be picked up at one’s leisure in order to savor a tale or two or three.
October 29, 2021
I would advocate reading these slowly. When I read these I always felt that something was slipped in when I wasn't looking, giving the story more depth and meaning than I initially suspected. It's true that not all of them have a "point." Some are mere sketches, a few are less than half a page, but many of them have a spark of imagination and bits of surreal prose more lucid and visionary than I've read in some time. There's always a slightly sinister feel, occasionally a sting in the tail or just a hint that things aren't quite right. There's also a wry, odd humor that mixes well with the weirdness.
The influences on these are said to be the likes of Borges, Bruno Schulz, Angela Carter, and Lovecraft, I can't agree with the latter, but certainly stories like "Haddock's Eyes" are very Borgesian. The Schulz influence is apparent in even more stories like "The Outer Spaces," a heartbreaking story told from the point of view of a child, in a home where all is certainly not well.
A more contemporary comparison might be the fiction of Kelly Link or Elizabeth Hand -- not as influences obviously, as these authors were writing long after this was published. Most of these stories were published in the late-70s, but they feel contemporary, like a story I might expect to read in a collection published by Tartarus Press.
"Bazar" is one of the longer stories, a shocking, transgressive tale, almost a conte cruel. "Spanish Oranges" is another grotesque tale of madness.
I also like "Luggage" wherein a widower transfuses his grief into a shopping spree. Two of my favorites were "Foxes" and "The Smallest Muttonbird Island," both full of stunning imagery and an interesting sense of place.
The influences on these are said to be the likes of Borges, Bruno Schulz, Angela Carter, and Lovecraft, I can't agree with the latter, but certainly stories like "Haddock's Eyes" are very Borgesian. The Schulz influence is apparent in even more stories like "The Outer Spaces," a heartbreaking story told from the point of view of a child, in a home where all is certainly not well.
A more contemporary comparison might be the fiction of Kelly Link or Elizabeth Hand -- not as influences obviously, as these authors were writing long after this was published. Most of these stories were published in the late-70s, but they feel contemporary, like a story I might expect to read in a collection published by Tartarus Press.
"Bazar" is one of the longer stories, a shocking, transgressive tale, almost a conte cruel. "Spanish Oranges" is another grotesque tale of madness.
I also like "Luggage" wherein a widower transfuses his grief into a shopping spree. Two of my favorites were "Foxes" and "The Smallest Muttonbird Island," both full of stunning imagery and an interesting sense of place.
September 1, 2022
Rikki Ducornet truly loves language - you really can feel the absolute joy of an imagination running free in a lot of these tales. By turns awe-inspiring, sexy, haunting, and scatological.
September 24, 2009
Creeping killer twins, talking growths. The line "A frightened dog, a pious dog--that most dangerous of dogs." Parasites and flesh poppets. This is the greatest book I've read this year.
October 15, 2012
This was a random book pick-up in the public library that turned into a HUGE CRUSH, but I guess everybody gets a HUGE CRUSH on her. So I read this a couple of years ago, but haven't posted a review because I couldn't write the rhapsody these stories deserve.
TOTALLY FUCKING LOVE. I drew out the reading of them because I didn't want them to be over. I immediately wanted to buy copies for all of my friends who appreciate dark decadence.
Rikki knows and uses a lot of meaty, beautiful words; seems like multilingual people and those who've really lived in different places can do this seemingly contradictory thing of using language in very precise ways while floating freely over the borders between reality and magic.
Gilded, gory, gleefully naughty . . . if I could hire someone to script what I would dream at night, it would be Rikki Ducornet. Yeah, both have her script them AND dream her.
Another reason I'm nervous to post all of this fangirliness is sometimes I see her around town and my palms start sweating and I hope she doesn't see me swooning and think I'm a crazed lovesick fan. I'm not an autograph collector or somebody who thinks celebrities or generally-awesome-people are different from other kinds of people, so I think she's the only person I've responded to like she's a gorgeous powerful supershero. The only people I can imagine feeling that way about are maybe Bill Clinton or kd lang or Elvis.
TOTALLY FUCKING LOVE. I drew out the reading of them because I didn't want them to be over. I immediately wanted to buy copies for all of my friends who appreciate dark decadence.
Rikki knows and uses a lot of meaty, beautiful words; seems like multilingual people and those who've really lived in different places can do this seemingly contradictory thing of using language in very precise ways while floating freely over the borders between reality and magic.
Gilded, gory, gleefully naughty . . . if I could hire someone to script what I would dream at night, it would be Rikki Ducornet. Yeah, both have her script them AND dream her.
Another reason I'm nervous to post all of this fangirliness is sometimes I see her around town and my palms start sweating and I hope she doesn't see me swooning and think I'm a crazed lovesick fan. I'm not an autograph collector or somebody who thinks celebrities or generally-awesome-people are different from other kinds of people, so I think she's the only person I've responded to like she's a gorgeous powerful supershero. The only people I can imagine feeling that way about are maybe Bill Clinton or kd lang or Elvis.
January 10, 2010
I am reading this, dipping in and out, but I had a slew of library books to get through. However I'm thinking these are not really my type of tales, although I appreciate that of their kind, they are good. I'll finish over Christmas.
..I tried and kind of admired the invention and the weirdness of it, but all in all decided it wasn't for me. If you like the following you'll like, if not avoid:
The morning before I was scheduled to leave, two strangers in uniform came to my room as I slept. They sewed me to the mattress and painfully erased my face. When they finished they cut me free and sent me home on the bus.
..I tried and kind of admired the invention and the weirdness of it, but all in all decided it wasn't for me. If you like the following you'll like, if not avoid:
The morning before I was scheduled to leave, two strangers in uniform came to my room as I slept. They sewed me to the mattress and painfully erased my face. When they finished they cut me free and sent me home on the bus.
June 29, 2024
“Nearly sixty unforgettable stories” says the blurb, but I managed to forget every one before I’d even reached the end.
Possibly they would be better read separately and individually, as they were published, rather than in clumps, though I am not convinced this would improve their impact, which is fairly minimal. Flicking through the pages, I recall finding them more grotesque than surreal, often written in the style of odd folk tales, and frequently featuring characters with rather silly names.
I was hoping for something more interesting.
Possibly they would be better read separately and individually, as they were published, rather than in clumps, though I am not convinced this would improve their impact, which is fairly minimal. Flicking through the pages, I recall finding them more grotesque than surreal, often written in the style of odd folk tales, and frequently featuring characters with rather silly names.
I was hoping for something more interesting.
Currently reading
November 24, 2013I'm currently reading the opening stories, but am incredibly impressed and excited--the stories so far are short, rich in detail, and full of poetic technique. If you enjoyed Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels or anything by Italo Calvino, you'll find this a fascinating and engaging read.
July 16, 2010
I didn't love all of them, but wow is this great. Made me hungry.
November 21, 2011
Rikki Ducornet. Holy crap.
July 9, 2017
You know that feeling, you're climbing stairs in the dark and you're certain there's one more step, but there isn't? That's a little like these stories.
Delightfully unexpected and ridiculously good. At times, beyond brilliant, so much so, you barely feel the blade. It is sharp after all, and your throat, so bare. And here is a clean white enamel pan to gather the tap-tap-tapping blood and a folded napkin to give you false hope. The vinegar? Never more you worry your pretty mouth about vinegar.
The less I, or anyone here says, the better.
If you dare venture from your path familiar, there is wildness, and there are teeth, but there is wind-whipped beauty, a cresting lake of frothed meringue, never you mind what shadow waits deep beneath. Come on, you know you want to, dip a toe, just one naked little toe...
Gorgeous writing.
Delightfully unexpected and ridiculously good. At times, beyond brilliant, so much so, you barely feel the blade. It is sharp after all, and your throat, so bare. And here is a clean white enamel pan to gather the tap-tap-tapping blood and a folded napkin to give you false hope. The vinegar? Never more you worry your pretty mouth about vinegar.
The less I, or anyone here says, the better.
If you dare venture from your path familiar, there is wildness, and there are teeth, but there is wind-whipped beauty, a cresting lake of frothed meringue, never you mind what shadow waits deep beneath. Come on, you know you want to, dip a toe, just one naked little toe...
Gorgeous writing.
February 9, 2023
Sometimes aggressively defying the idea that a short story should have a "point", or (phrased differently) "be cute". When Ducornet adopts a sort of fabulist or fairy tale framework she can particularly emphasize the absence of moral wisdom, ironic little punchlines, and typical twists of fate. The lack of gimmick is so appealing to me.
The best stories in here are achingly sad and weird. And many of them deal with childhood. 'Outer Spaces' blew me away.
Some of the ones that feel like gothic Borges riffs are cute, and well-written, but feel facile to me by comparison. 'The Tale of the Tattooed Woman' rocks though.
The best stories in here are achingly sad and weird. And many of them deal with childhood. 'Outer Spaces' blew me away.
Some of the ones that feel like gothic Borges riffs are cute, and well-written, but feel facile to me by comparison. 'The Tale of the Tattooed Woman' rocks though.
December 25, 2007
I remember once WH Auden saying that Bohemianism taken out of balance leaves a writer with beautiful fragments but nothing presentable. Rikki Ducornet says a shade on the balanced side. This book is a collection of fragments, some are more complete than others, but they are all beautiful in a nightmare kind of way. The worst is sections that don't keep there mechanismism hidden, like parlour tricks you already know. But the best are stories that make Ducornet the successor to Borges. I would tap 10 stories for a chapbook and give it to my friends, if I could.
November 25, 2010
Got on library run. Looks interesting!
It's...errr...uhhh....Different! More surrealism and less fantasy then I expected. but that's not a criticism.
I expected to be reminded of different fantasy authors, and am being more reminded of, quite unexpctedly, patti smith. Some of these are delgihtful surrealistic Prose Poems, and some of these, just make me wonder what I just read. The 3 stars might be unfair, because the best of these are better then that, but I'm kind of averaging them out I guess. I might have to read more of her.
It's...errr...uhhh....Different! More surrealism and less fantasy then I expected. but that's not a criticism.
I expected to be reminded of different fantasy authors, and am being more reminded of, quite unexpctedly, patti smith. Some of these are delgihtful surrealistic Prose Poems, and some of these, just make me wonder what I just read. The 3 stars might be unfair, because the best of these are better then that, but I'm kind of averaging them out I guess. I might have to read more of her.
September 29, 2016
As hard, dazzling, and multifaceted as a gem. These mordant bagatelles come from nowhere and can go anywhere, a marvelous faculty of language liberated from predictability. It is wonderfully, atrociously unmoored. Humor and lunacy, desire and depravity, sin and perfection coil and writhe like maggots in meat. Ah life.
November 17, 2012
Some of these were excellent; most were just weird. The author seems to have a couple of strange (if you ask me) obsessions. I did think the stories were well sequenced, and the super-short format is fun (you feel like you're going so quickly!).
January 29, 2014
These little Calvino-eque tales were, for me, a 3.5.
So rate it 3 or 4? Well. Miss Ducornet just happens to be troubled young lady in Steely Dan's "Rikki Don't Lose That Number." Good enough for half a star, far as i can tell.
So rate it 3 or 4? Well. Miss Ducornet just happens to be troubled young lady in Steely Dan's "Rikki Don't Lose That Number." Good enough for half a star, far as i can tell.
January 14, 2009
Ducornet's short stories are somewhere on the Barthelme side of Aimee Bender (the other side, of course, being Hemingway). Magical realism at its magicalyest.
January 26, 2024
A masterpiece of weird fiction. Truly stunning from beginning to end.
Read
July 1, 2013a collection of rather bizarre fragmentary and darkly amusing stories a few pages long
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews