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CONTENTS
Heartburn (1951) by Hortense Calisher
The Jar (1944) by Ray Bradbury
Torch Song (1947) by John Cheever
Decadence (1946) by Romain Gary
Pillar of Salt (1948) by Shirley Jackson
Final Performance (1960) by Robert Bloch
The White Quail (1935) by John Steinbeck
The Aftertaste (1958) by Peter Ustinov
23 Pat O'Brien Movies (1960) by Bruce Jay Friedman
Heartburn (1951) by Hortense Calisher
The Jar (1944) by Ray Bradbury
Torch Song (1947) by John Cheever
Decadence (1946) by Romain Gary
Pillar of Salt (1948) by Shirley Jackson
Final Performance (1960) by Robert Bloch
The White Quail (1935) by John Steinbeck
The Aftertaste (1958) by Peter Ustinov
23 Pat O'Brien Movies (1960) by Bruce Jay Friedman
144 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1965
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 13, 2020
Having just recently polished off Stories of Suspense (and having been left in a contemplative frame of mind re: the "suspense" story) I figured I would pull another from the shelf - and so here we are with SUDDENLY: GREAT STORIES OF SUSPENSE AND THE UNEXPECTED. Perhaps not as focused as the previous anthology, but still it should be said - there were no clunkers in this collection either, and at least two outstanding tales.
In "The Final Performance" by Robert Bloch, a writer on his way to Hollywood has his car break down in the middle of nowhere and, waylaid overnight, takes a room at a closed motel behind a roadside diner. The diner's owner is an alcoholic has-been of the vaudevillian stage who jealously keeps his pretty young ward under his thumb, although she herself expresses a strong desire to escape her dead-end life in the sticks. This is somewhat typical Bloch, seemingly part of his middle period TALES FROM THE CRYPT-type conte cruels that I'm not a big fan of - a gritty little crime story with a nasty fillip at the end (an ending that couldn't even be suggested on TV, thus making this less likely for adaptation on something like ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS). Good suspense, but...eh, I couldn't see reading it again.
Bruce Jay Friedman's "23 Pat O'Brien Movies" features a distraught young man on a ledge, ready to jump to his death, and the policeman who intends to talk him down. But the cynical young man has seen all the films of this scenario before and blatantly calls every negotiating psychological trick before it's used by the cop, employing some reverse psychology of his own...which leaves him in an odd existential quandary by the end. This is pretty good - one can't argue that the familiar scenario is certainly gripping and while the dialogue of the young man could be a little tighter and not as repetitious (and that the story offered a little more background atmospheric detail and didn't seem to be in such a rush), it's still an effective little piece, with a solid ending.
Of the solidly good stories, "The Jar" by Ray Bradbury has been adapted a few times (I seem to remember a version on the new Alfred Hitchcock Presents TV show from the 80s, in which the country bumpkin setting is switched with a modern art one) and it's a pretty solid, creepy story, although Bradbury's tendency to overwrite becomes a bit cartoonish when (at least, I feel) he's writing characters of a "type" that he's not directly familiar with. Still, the inchoate mass in the jar is strangely evocative (a blank screen onto which everyone projects their ideas) and it's a nice reversal of Bradbury's own "The Watchful Poker Chip", in that here one man desires to make himself the center of attention from people who don't really care about him. Meanwhile, a man who works at a boy's school comes to a doctor with a rather odd complaint - that some kind of small animal is living in his chest, in Hortense Calisher's "Heartburn", a squirmy bit of non-explicit body horror. There are multiple ways to read this story's central conceit (as the thing moves from one student to another and only resides in those who claim not to believe in it). Quiet, but unnerving. If it's a metaphor, one can speculate on that....
"Decadence" by Romain Gary has a contingent of Organized Crime figures traveling to Italy to reconnect with a compatriot who once ran the project of taking over the Hoboken dock unions with an iron & bloody hand (through use of violence, and the "cement overcoat") until he was jailed and deported years ago. But on arriving (to tell him his deportation has been reversed thanks to some influence) they find that he has enthusiastically taken up Modern Art Sculpture now... This is an odd little story - very effective as it contrasts the shifty, corrupt "morality" of American grass-level Capitalists with the high intentions of Modern Art. I liked it. John Steinbeck's "The White Quail" gives us a well-off husband and wife (he involved with bank loans, she an introvert and very controlling of her garden and grounds, wanting everything exactly just so). She's particularly pleased when her garden pool attracts a covey of quail, including a striking white one, which she strongly identifies with (as representing her secret soul)... but what to do about the stray cat that is stalking it...? This is quite a strong piece of short lit fiction, giving us generalized (but psychologically specific) types and setting them in a near-symbolic world. Only just now do I remember that there was an early discussion over the morality of the husband's business (which the wife forgave him for), making me wonder if this was intended as an "Eden" allegory. Good and challenging.
Four Axis commanding officers wait in a mountain cabin for the Russians who are sure to capture them (as the War has failed), debating actions like surrender, fleeing, or suicide - each related in turn to their conceptions of masculinity, patriotism and cultural backgrounds in "The Aftertaste" by Peter Ustinov (yes, *THAT* Peter Ustinov.... who knew?). This was quite an atypical read for me, but the attention to the actual thoughts and beliefs which informed the men's decisions was fascinating, as "the bad guys" are often portrayed as buffoons or raging madmen and rarely as actual people who were born in and grew up through their country's respective cultures. A good read.
There are two excellent stories here: John Cheever, in "Torch Song", weaves a fascinating tale of a certain type of guy during a certain stretch of life (and a certain span of history) and the parallels between his average-young-man-about-town's (somewhat dissolute) lifestyle and that of his female friend, a woman who seems to seems to constantly be in relationships with controlling, abusive, under-handed older men. The climax is quite powerful, and on whole it reminded me of Willa Cather's story "Consequences". "Pillar of Salt" by Shirley Jackson concerns a husband and wife from rural New England (transplants from NYC) who return to the big city for a much longed-for two week vacation, only for the wife to be overwhelmed by the pace, tone, identity and reality of the city. A fascinating story that I really identified with as it combined two topics near to me - an almost Futurist (as in the art movement) description of the city as a whirling dynamo grinding everything and everyone around it into powder, and a personal take on what we would now call an anxiety attack. Simply incredible!
And on we go....
In "The Final Performance" by Robert Bloch, a writer on his way to Hollywood has his car break down in the middle of nowhere and, waylaid overnight, takes a room at a closed motel behind a roadside diner. The diner's owner is an alcoholic has-been of the vaudevillian stage who jealously keeps his pretty young ward under his thumb, although she herself expresses a strong desire to escape her dead-end life in the sticks. This is somewhat typical Bloch, seemingly part of his middle period TALES FROM THE CRYPT-type conte cruels that I'm not a big fan of - a gritty little crime story with a nasty fillip at the end (an ending that couldn't even be suggested on TV, thus making this less likely for adaptation on something like ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS). Good suspense, but...eh, I couldn't see reading it again.
Bruce Jay Friedman's "23 Pat O'Brien Movies" features a distraught young man on a ledge, ready to jump to his death, and the policeman who intends to talk him down. But the cynical young man has seen all the films of this scenario before and blatantly calls every negotiating psychological trick before it's used by the cop, employing some reverse psychology of his own...which leaves him in an odd existential quandary by the end. This is pretty good - one can't argue that the familiar scenario is certainly gripping and while the dialogue of the young man could be a little tighter and not as repetitious (and that the story offered a little more background atmospheric detail and didn't seem to be in such a rush), it's still an effective little piece, with a solid ending.
Of the solidly good stories, "The Jar" by Ray Bradbury has been adapted a few times (I seem to remember a version on the new Alfred Hitchcock Presents TV show from the 80s, in which the country bumpkin setting is switched with a modern art one) and it's a pretty solid, creepy story, although Bradbury's tendency to overwrite becomes a bit cartoonish when (at least, I feel) he's writing characters of a "type" that he's not directly familiar with. Still, the inchoate mass in the jar is strangely evocative (a blank screen onto which everyone projects their ideas) and it's a nice reversal of Bradbury's own "The Watchful Poker Chip", in that here one man desires to make himself the center of attention from people who don't really care about him. Meanwhile, a man who works at a boy's school comes to a doctor with a rather odd complaint - that some kind of small animal is living in his chest, in Hortense Calisher's "Heartburn", a squirmy bit of non-explicit body horror. There are multiple ways to read this story's central conceit (as the thing moves from one student to another and only resides in those who claim not to believe in it). Quiet, but unnerving. If it's a metaphor, one can speculate on that....
"Decadence" by Romain Gary has a contingent of Organized Crime figures traveling to Italy to reconnect with a compatriot who once ran the project of taking over the Hoboken dock unions with an iron & bloody hand (through use of violence, and the "cement overcoat") until he was jailed and deported years ago. But on arriving (to tell him his deportation has been reversed thanks to some influence) they find that he has enthusiastically taken up Modern Art Sculpture now... This is an odd little story - very effective as it contrasts the shifty, corrupt "morality" of American grass-level Capitalists with the high intentions of Modern Art. I liked it. John Steinbeck's "The White Quail" gives us a well-off husband and wife (he involved with bank loans, she an introvert and very controlling of her garden and grounds, wanting everything exactly just so). She's particularly pleased when her garden pool attracts a covey of quail, including a striking white one, which she strongly identifies with (as representing her secret soul)... but what to do about the stray cat that is stalking it...? This is quite a strong piece of short lit fiction, giving us generalized (but psychologically specific) types and setting them in a near-symbolic world. Only just now do I remember that there was an early discussion over the morality of the husband's business (which the wife forgave him for), making me wonder if this was intended as an "Eden" allegory. Good and challenging.
Four Axis commanding officers wait in a mountain cabin for the Russians who are sure to capture them (as the War has failed), debating actions like surrender, fleeing, or suicide - each related in turn to their conceptions of masculinity, patriotism and cultural backgrounds in "The Aftertaste" by Peter Ustinov (yes, *THAT* Peter Ustinov.... who knew?). This was quite an atypical read for me, but the attention to the actual thoughts and beliefs which informed the men's decisions was fascinating, as "the bad guys" are often portrayed as buffoons or raging madmen and rarely as actual people who were born in and grew up through their country's respective cultures. A good read.
There are two excellent stories here: John Cheever, in "Torch Song", weaves a fascinating tale of a certain type of guy during a certain stretch of life (and a certain span of history) and the parallels between his average-young-man-about-town's (somewhat dissolute) lifestyle and that of his female friend, a woman who seems to seems to constantly be in relationships with controlling, abusive, under-handed older men. The climax is quite powerful, and on whole it reminded me of Willa Cather's story "Consequences". "Pillar of Salt" by Shirley Jackson concerns a husband and wife from rural New England (transplants from NYC) who return to the big city for a much longed-for two week vacation, only for the wife to be overwhelmed by the pace, tone, identity and reality of the city. A fascinating story that I really identified with as it combined two topics near to me - an almost Futurist (as in the art movement) description of the city as a whirling dynamo grinding everything and everyone around it into powder, and a personal take on what we would now call an anxiety attack. Simply incredible!
And on we go....
July 4, 2009
Mostly older stories and except for "the Jar" by Ray Bradbury, none of them did much more me. There are stories by John cheever, Shirley Jackson, Peter Ustinov, and John Steinbeck. The Steinbeck entry is intersting.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews