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War crimes: Short stories
In the dark recesses of the lost property office, strange atrocities are being committed. A luxurious train thunders north carrying a clerk who must pay dearly for his indulgence. Roses betray the secret of an old man, and a young unemployed couple explore the mysteries of exotic pleasures.
Bizarre, funny, and chilling the stories in this collection are all, in one way or another, about power - about those who wield it, those who want it, and those who recall only its dazzling exhilaration and degradation.
Bizarre, funny, and chilling the stories in this collection are all, in one way or another, about power - about those who wield it, those who want it, and those who recall only its dazzling exhilaration and degradation.
- GenresFictionShort Stories
282 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1979
1 person is currently reading
170 people want to read
About the author
Peter Carey
102 books1,031 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. Not all books on this profile are by the same author. See this thread for more information.
Peter Carey was born in Australia in 1943.
He was educated at the local state school until the age of eleven and then became a boarder at Geelong Grammar School. He was a student there between 1954 and 1960 — after Rupert Murdoch had graduated and before Prince Charles arrived.
In 1961 he studied science for a single unsuccessful year at Monash University. He was then employed by an advertising agency where he began to receive his literary education, meeting Faulkner, Joyce, Kerouac and other writers he had previously been unaware of. He was nineteen.
For the next thirteen years he wrote fiction at night and weekends, working in many advertising agencies in Melbourne, London and Sydney.
After four novels had been written and rejected The Fat Man in History — a short story collection — was published in 1974. This slim book made him an overnight success.
From 1976 Carey worked one week a month for Grey Advertising, then, in 1981 he established a small business where his generous partner required him to work only two afternoons a week. Thus between 1976 and 1990, he was able to pursue literature obsessively. It was during this period that he wrote War Crimes, Bliss, Illywhacker, Oscar and Lucinda. Illywhacker was short listed for the Booker Prize. Oscar and Lucinda won it. Uncomfortable with this success he began work on The Tax Inspector.
In 1990 he moved to New York where he completed The Tax Inspector. He taught at NYU one night a week. Later he would have similar jobs at Princeton, The New School and Barnard College. During these years he wrote The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith, Jack Maggs, and True History of the Kelly Gang for which he won his second Booker Prize.
He collaborated on the screenplay of the film Until the End of the World with Wim Wenders.
In 2003 he joined Hunter College as the Director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing. In the years since he has written My Life as a Fake, Theft, His Illegal Self and Parrot and Oliver in America (shortlisted for 2010 Man Booker Prize).
Peter Carey was born in Australia in 1943.
He was educated at the local state school until the age of eleven and then became a boarder at Geelong Grammar School. He was a student there between 1954 and 1960 — after Rupert Murdoch had graduated and before Prince Charles arrived.
In 1961 he studied science for a single unsuccessful year at Monash University. He was then employed by an advertising agency where he began to receive his literary education, meeting Faulkner, Joyce, Kerouac and other writers he had previously been unaware of. He was nineteen.
For the next thirteen years he wrote fiction at night and weekends, working in many advertising agencies in Melbourne, London and Sydney.
After four novels had been written and rejected The Fat Man in History — a short story collection — was published in 1974. This slim book made him an overnight success.
From 1976 Carey worked one week a month for Grey Advertising, then, in 1981 he established a small business where his generous partner required him to work only two afternoons a week. Thus between 1976 and 1990, he was able to pursue literature obsessively. It was during this period that he wrote War Crimes, Bliss, Illywhacker, Oscar and Lucinda. Illywhacker was short listed for the Booker Prize. Oscar and Lucinda won it. Uncomfortable with this success he began work on The Tax Inspector.
In 1990 he moved to New York where he completed The Tax Inspector. He taught at NYU one night a week. Later he would have similar jobs at Princeton, The New School and Barnard College. During these years he wrote The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith, Jack Maggs, and True History of the Kelly Gang for which he won his second Booker Prize.
He collaborated on the screenplay of the film Until the End of the World with Wim Wenders.
In 2003 he joined Hunter College as the Director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing. In the years since he has written My Life as a Fake, Theft, His Illegal Self and Parrot and Oliver in America (shortlisted for 2010 Man Booker Prize).
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 23, 2023
CRITIQUE:
Gerald Murnane Meets Mad Max
I fell in love with Peter Carey's short fiction in his first collection, "The Fat Man in History".
This love affair continued to a slightly lesser extent with my first reading of "War Crimes".
Having just re-read the second collection, I wonder why I wasn't as impressed with it at the time. There is certainly much to love.
Struggling to define its appeal, my first reaction was to describe it as a cross between Gerald Murnane's "The Plains" and the first two "Mad Max" films. The latter analogy had occurred to me once before in relation to the story, "Crabs" (the source of the film, "Dead End Drive-In").
Status and Standing
The first story in this collection ("The Journey of a Lifetime") sparked the thought of relationships as a source of hierarchy, status, power and privilege.
The narrator is taking a train trip he's dreamed about and studied in detail for most of his adult life:
Until this journey, he had to content himself with compiling scrapbooks of tickets, reservations, menus and other memorabilia of other people's train trips. Because of his standing, he was always at least once removed from a trip of his own. His standing distanced him from the pleasures (some of them exotic) of others.
The Nether Regions
The second story is narrated by the son of an official cartographer (cartographers are highly regarded as an elite in the story, like the Plainsmen in Murnane's novel). His father's job is to map parts of Australia, during the course of which he and other cartographers discover that parts of the country are disappearing. Soon, people as well as property start to dematerialise:
Blue bird of paradise Credit:
The Genetic Lottery
One of two sci-fi stories, "The Chance", involves a genetic lottery set up on Earth by an alien race called the Fastalogians:
The possibility of such a change starts to interfere with the relationship between the narrator and his partner, Carla:
Still, Carla turns into a fat woman, and the narrator goes through his own changes (he becomes a homeless person):
Fabulist Twists and Turns and Conclusions
In the story, "Exotic Pleasures", the vehicle for the change is a beautiful exotic bird. The narrator and his partner experience such pleasure from stroking the bird that they start to question whether the two of them can experience mutual pleasure any more:
From something as simple as a bird, Carey conjures a symbol of love, distance and lovelessness.
This story, like the others, demonstrates Carey's ability to take something normal, ordinary or straightforward, and subtly tweak or twist it into something abnormal, extraordinary or exotic that enhances our understanding of our own normality, and the normality or difference of others who might not be quite like us. Ironically, Carey's ability gives us enormous pleasure as well.
SOUNDTRACK:
Gerald Murnane Meets Mad Max
I fell in love with Peter Carey's short fiction in his first collection, "The Fat Man in History".
This love affair continued to a slightly lesser extent with my first reading of "War Crimes".
Having just re-read the second collection, I wonder why I wasn't as impressed with it at the time. There is certainly much to love.
Struggling to define its appeal, my first reaction was to describe it as a cross between Gerald Murnane's "The Plains" and the first two "Mad Max" films. The latter analogy had occurred to me once before in relation to the story, "Crabs" (the source of the film, "Dead End Drive-In").
Status and Standing
The first story in this collection ("The Journey of a Lifetime") sparked the thought of relationships as a source of hierarchy, status, power and privilege.
The narrator is taking a train trip he's dreamed about and studied in detail for most of his adult life:
"It has been my ambition, my obsession, a hope too far-fetched for one of my standing."
Until this journey, he had to content himself with compiling scrapbooks of tickets, reservations, menus and other memorabilia of other people's train trips. Because of his standing, he was always at least once removed from a trip of his own. His standing distanced him from the pleasures (some of them exotic) of others.
The Nether Regions
The second story is narrated by the son of an official cartographer (cartographers are highly regarded as an elite in the story, like the Plainsmen in Murnane's novel). His father's job is to map parts of Australia, during the course of which he and other cartographers discover that parts of the country are disappearing. Soon, people as well as property start to dematerialise:
"It appears that for some time certain regions of the country had become less and less real and these regions were regarded fearfully even by the Cartographers, who prided themselves on their courage. The regions in question were invariably uninhabited, unused for agriculture and industry...
"There were long pieces of coastline which had begun to slowly disappear like the image on an improperly fixed photograph...
"As you know, the nether regions were amongst the first to disappear and this in itself is significant. These regions, I'm sure you know, are seldom visited by men and only then by people like me whose sole job is to make sure that they're still there.
"We had no use for these areas, these deserts, swamps, and coastlines which is why, of course, they disappeared. They were merely possessions of ours and if they had any use at all it was as symbols for our poets, writers and film makers. They were used as symbols of alienation, lovelessness, loneliness, uselessness and so on..."
Blue bird of paradise Credit:
The Genetic Lottery
One of two sci-fi stories, "The Chance", involves a genetic lottery set up on Earth by an alien race called the Fastalogians:
"So now for two thousand inter-galactic dollars we could go into the Lottery and come out with a different age, a different body, a different voice and still carry our memories (allowing for a little leakage) more or less intact."
The possibility of such a change starts to interfere with the relationship between the narrator and his partner, Carla:
"Even as I held her, even as I stroked her hair, I began to plot to keep her in the body she was born in. It became my obsession."
Still, Carla turns into a fat woman, and the narrator goes through his own changes (he becomes a homeless person):
"Pock-marked and ugly I have wandered the streets and slept in the parks. I have been bankrupt and handsome and a splendid con-man..."
Fabulist Twists and Turns and Conclusions
In the story, "Exotic Pleasures", the vehicle for the change is a beautiful exotic bird. The narrator and his partner experience such pleasure from stroking the bird that they start to question whether the two of them can experience mutual pleasure any more:
"You can't stand the sight of me having pleasure. You can't give me pleasure, so you're damned if anything else is going to."
From something as simple as a bird, Carey conjures a symbol of love, distance and lovelessness.
This story, like the others, demonstrates Carey's ability to take something normal, ordinary or straightforward, and subtly tweak or twist it into something abnormal, extraordinary or exotic that enhances our understanding of our own normality, and the normality or difference of others who might not be quite like us. Ironically, Carey's ability gives us enormous pleasure as well.
SOUNDTRACK:
November 21, 2010
I've read a couple of Peter Carey's novels, and I had no idea that he wrote speculative short fiction. I mean, there are fantastical elements in his novels, but several of the short stories in this collection are straight sci-fi. And they are fantastic stories - for the most part, very dark and bleak, and really stunning writing. My particular favourite was "Exotic Pleasures", in which a young couple discover a particularly beautiful and pleasure-inducing bird.
October 30, 2022
Delightful short story collection. Overall very thought provoking. It was often whimsical but always real, and that is a true talent to produce.
I really like the cover of my version. The line “People do not love those whose eyes show they are somewhere else” really stuck with me. It is delicious.
I really like the cover of my version. The line “People do not love those whose eyes show they are somewhere else” really stuck with me. It is delicious.
October 17, 2013
Truly surreal depictions of seemingly inane everyday evils. As someone who holds to the classic doctrine of original sin, I found Carey's collection of stories brilliantly exposed the war crimes/depravity lurking in everyone's backyard. I can't give him 5 stars because he made me smirk at it too much.
May 16, 2011
Beautifully succinct and powerful short stories around the nature of the abuse of power and what it means to be human. Insightful, sparse but potent. A treat.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews