Stories Selected From the Unexpected

by Bennett Cerf (Editor, Introduction), Mary Ellen Chase (Contributor), Dorothy L. Sayers (Contributor)

-- Introduction / Bennett Cerf
-- Salesmanship / by Mary Ellen Chase
-- The storm / by McKinght Malmar
-- The thousand dollar bill / by Manuel Komroff
-- Two Thanksgiving Day gentlemen / by O. Henry
-- Exchange of men / by Joseph Cross
-- A horseman in the / by Ambrose Bierce
-- Two bottles of relish / by Lord Dunsany
-- Final break / by Ian S. Thomson
-- Addio / by Thomas Beer
-- Suspicion / by Dorothy L. Sayers
-- Gavin / by John van Druten
-- Mammon and the archer / by O. Henry
-- The interlopers / by Saki (H.H. Munro)
-- Adam and Eve and pinch me / by A.E. Coppard
-- Revelations in black / by Carl Jacobi
-- The price of the head / by John Russell
-- The chaser / by John Collier

Genres: Horror

184 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1948

About the author

Bennett Cerf was one of the founders of the publishing firm Random House. Cerf was known for his compilations of jokes and stories, and for his regular appearances on the panel game show What's My Line?

Reviews

[Shawn]

PLACEHOLDER REVIEWS
An aggressive salesman, up on the latest methods, plays his customers just as he's trained in "Salesmanship" by Mary Ellen Chase, but can't figure out why they don't want any of the extras in this bitterly ironic tale.

I pulled this off the shelf to re-read Carl Jacobi's "Revelation In Black." It's an interesting, odd story and possibly Jacobi's most famous - a man killing time in an antique store comes across three one-of-a-kind memoirs (written by the owner's institutionalized, now deceased brother). The writings tell a symbolic, melancholy narrative which ends up compelling the man to unconsciously discover the locations intimated by the symbols and meet a mysterious woman on the overgrown grounds of a boarded-up mansion. The woman remains perpetually veiled and goes on and on about her missing brother who she followed to America after WWI. Our main character, also a photography buff, takes her picture - which angers her - and when he develops it... Okay, well, here's the thing (spoilerized) this story is actually a weird hybrid - it's a fairly traditional vampire story (possibly introducing the concept that vampire's can't be photographed to the canon - I'm not an expert so I don't know) enmeshed in a slightly more ambitious semi-frame that's obsessive and partly KING IN YELLOW-ish...in fact, the vampire aspect is the least developed and most boiler-plate but the more interesting aspect of the dead madman's mysterious writings and the unconsciously prompted lure through the city into the scenario written about are pretty cool. An interesting story, if more for interested genre devotees than the general, modern reader.

[Kevin Brown · Rating 2 out of 5]

A weird little book of weirdness from the 1940s here, with twisty short stories inside, browned pages and plenty of "old book smell," that I don't recall ever buying. Where did it come from? Who gave it to me? What horrors will it unleash once I start reading it?!?! Ah yes. An old book of spooky tales that showed up mysteriously on my shelves one day--sounds like the opening of one of the stories contained herein.

It was not great, and especially dated in how some of these writers depict women and minorities, but I guess an interesting time capsule from when horror writers used excessively baroque language--have you ever heard of a character having a nostril described as "contumelious"?--and twist endings in the vein of: "... in fact she was a VAMPIRE!"

If you find this for twenty-five cents at a yard sale I'd say go ahead and get it. But the stories are not nearly as interesting as the book itself. I found myself wondering more about the long dead writers inside, and the now-ancient world they inhabited. But if you read this book, don't linger too long on those kinds of thoughts, because you may soon find yourself sitting at the typewriter, drinking brandy, clicking and clacking through one of these stories yourself. And then you'll be lost! (cue scary music!)

[Maura Heaphy Dutton · Rating 2 out of 5]

Stories from a time before Post-Modern obscurity, which beat you over the head with Shock/Horror endings that can be seen coming from a mile off. A mix of stories by writers with names like "McKnight Malmar," who seem to have been stalwarts of magazine fiction in the early decades of the 20th Century, and lesser works by better writers like Dorthy L. Sayers, Ambrose Bierce and Saki.

Stories by the A-listers are by far the best of a bad lot: they clearly knew how to spin out a whisper-thin idea, and make it more about character and circumstances than about the Big (Disappointing) Reveal; Saki even managed to sneak in a half-decent twist at the end of his story, "The Interlopers."

My favorite, by far, was "Two Bottles of Relish" by Lord Dunsany, not because I didn't see what was coming, but for the style and the sheer unlikeliness of the premise: an armchair detective and his Watson, a "drummer" (or salesman) for a brand of relish called "Num-Numo" which prominently features in a disappearance/murder case that has the best minds of Scotland Yard baffled. Makes me hope that Lord D may have written more adventures for his unlikely team of Linley and Smithers ...