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‘Short stories’ Category

  1. Reunion in Ropes & Other Stories book review, Eric Stanton – Fetish artist extraordinaire

    May 21, 2009 by Mathew Ferguson

    Reunion in Ropes and other stories

    There is nothing artist Eric Stanton loves more than an incredibly sexy woman completely dominating a man. His powerful women slap, kick, punch and wrestle men until they submit (and sometimes cry). All while wearing skimpy see-through lingerie, latex and other not-appropriate-for-dinner-with-the-parents gear.

    It’s bondage art people.

    And it is art of extraordinary colour and movement. An Eric Stanton fight is a real fight, full of swift slaps and punches that you can feel as you read.

    Reunion in Ropes contains four long stories, titled: Whippers All, Bonnie and Clara, Reunion in Ropes and The Dominant Wives.

    Hmm … what do those titles suggest?

    Some stories are presented in standard comic book format – wives spanking their husbands, speech bubbles floating around – and some have a more cut-and-paste sketch design with text at top and images below.

    This book will get someone to jump you

    This is one of those must-pick-up-now-from-your-bookshelf titles. Got a girl over at your place on a date? Let her idly peruse your bookshelf and discover it sitting side-by-side with some cool photography books. It’s not porn, it’s art … which people happen to read and get a bit hot and bothered about.

    Got a guy over at your house on a date? Even better! After he reads it then you can slap him and drag him to your room.

    Eric Stanton Bonnie & ClaraThere are certain books which serve two purposes. Firstly, they are simply cool. Beautiful art or an amazing story or a great front cover or whatever. Secondly, they introduce ideas or nudge people away from standard life towards a little bit of craziness.

    What is so very cool about this book and Eric Stanton’s art is that it captures part of the sexual behaviours and games people play. What girl hasn’t grabbed her boy’s hands and pushed them up over his head, holding him down?

    Although Stanton’s art goes further than most people do in their little games, it is still very enjoyable to read and the storytelling is on par with the art.

    How I got Reunion in Ropes & Other Stories by Eric Stanton: From none other than the most awesome provider of the freakiest underground books, magazines, films, comix and zines, Polyester Books! Located at 330 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, Melbourne.

    EricStantonBonnieClaraEric Stanton produced a massive body of work, some of which the very cool people at Taschen Publishing have reissued as part of their Icons series. A quick googlerama will also find you big chunks of his work out there on the connecto-webs (turn off filtering in preferences).

    Buy it from Amazon if you’re shy about face-to-face contact or head down to your local strange bookshop (not those adult shops. Although I suppose they could have them. Just don’t go anywhere the floor is sticky).

    Happy reading,

    Mat

    –

    we need a honey intervention for winnie the pooh

    Follow me:

    Twitter: http://twitter.com/mathewferguson

    Category adult, comic, Fiction, Short stories | Tags: ,,,,, | No Comments

  2. Who can save us now? Brand-new superheroes and their amazing (short) stories book review, edited by Owen King and John McNally

    May 18, 2009 by Mathew Ferguson

    Who can save us now book review

    I’m a sucker for superheroes and as for the dark side of super-powers and origin tales — mmm, tasty. Who Can Save us Now? delivers a whole lot of awesome wrapped up in one book. Featuring 22 short stories from some very talented writers and some very cool illustrations, this book is a pleasure to read.

    The short stories are so strong precisely because they are short stories. Let’s face it – any long contemplation of superheroes and superpowers soon begins to produce questions which threaten to wash the whole suspension of disbelief right away – how does Superman shave? Isn’t Batman being a big crybaby by not learning to deal with his parents’ murder? How come the Hulk’s pants never rip off? In the age of GPS and CCTV can we believe no one has figured out where Batman lives? Hmm … he always comes from the south end of the city …

    Who Can Save Us Now hands us small delicious morsels, each unique and strange and I guarantee after each story you’ll be sitting there thinking about what ifs and making up your own superpowers.

    The Stories

    We meet the support group for superheroes with useless powers in David Yoo’s The Somewhat Super. A guy who never has to go to the toilet as a superpower!

    Roe #5 by Richard Dooling is dark and unnerving in its glimpse of a superhero made by man (and probably something coming up once we get that genetic engineering business sorted).

    Some stories, like The Rememberer by J. Robert Lennon and Bad Karma Girl Wins at Bingo by Kelly Braffet edge into familiar I-can-almost-guess-what-the-story-is-about-from-the-title-and-I’m-pretty-much-right territory. They’re still enjoyable but in the sense of the least-best in a superb collection.

    The story I liked the least was The Meerkat by one of the editors – Owen King (son of horror novelist Stephen King). I think Owen King’s talent may lie in putting together story collections, rather than writing stories.

    supergirlI loved Girl Reporter by Stephanie Harrell – a sort of alternate Superman and Lois Lane tale told from Lois’ viewpoint (clearly it is them, without a name ever being mentioned).

    A sample:

    One night I said to him, “I want to fuck in a sweaty boxing gym.”

    There’s nothing like the smell of iron and decades of male sweat to make a gal wet for a pounding. So he took me to Silverado’s Gym after hours, in one of the warehouses down by the docks. We broke into the weight room. I stripped and lay myself out on the blue vinyl mat. I could see my reflection in the mirrored wall, amidst row of barbells and weight machines. I was pliant and powerful.

    “All right, stud. Ditch the suit.”

    He started to tug at his boots.

    “First the cape,” I said.

    How I got Who Can Save us Now? Brand-new Superheroes and their Amazing (short) stories: A Borders bookshop in Kuala Lumpur near the end of August 2008 (cost $62.90 ringitt). One of the shopping days on overseas holiday and I was dying for something to read. It leapt off the shelf, stomped through my mind and left me wishing the standard superheroes we know today were more nuanced.

    The upcoming Watchmen movie (based on the graphic novel), Heroes, the movie Unbreakable, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, Iron Man and this book all form part of the post-Superhero movement which is a reaction to the Superman-style stories of the past. No one accepts that Superman or superheroes are all amazing all the time.

    Ok, I haven’t delved too deeply into the selection of stories in this book because they are short stories and discussing them is very close to telling them.  It is a great collection that is much deeper, richer, funnier, scarier and awesome than the title suggests.

    Buy Who Can Save us Now from Amazon or hit up the library (although our libraries here rarely seem to get good short stories collections in).

    Gay Superman?I tried to find some cool Superheroes links but then came across some big stupid story about Stan Lee creating “the World’s first GAY superhero”.  Really, he’s about to make the World’s first gay superhero?

    Happy reading,

    Mat

    put your ear to the mown grass and you will hear sobbing

    –

    Follow me:

    Twitter: http://twitter.com/mathewferguson

    Category Fiction, Short stories | Tags: ,, | No Comments

  3. The Playboy book of short stories … not what you think

    February 14, 2009 by Mathew Ferguson

    Not what you think ...

    Not what you think ...

    The title is suggestive, yes? You’re probably thinking hot girls and sex stories that start “I always thought being a postman was boring until the day I delivered a package to University student dorm …”

    Yeah, no.

    Back when the old Hef with his absurdly young girlfriends was young Hugh Hefner and he was launching Playboy (first issue 1953) he wanted to create a publication that “would reflect a masculine (though not hairy-chested) zest for all of life” and would be “urban and urbane (not jaded or blasé), sophisticated (not effete), candidly frisky (not sniggering or risqué).”

    Good fiction was apparently part of this sophisticated magazine.

    You know what I think? Good fiction was part of the sophisticated magazine but it had nothing to do with appealing to a certain “urbane man” or anything like that. Hef knew that he couldn’t get away with a whole magazine of naked girls and so he had to put something next to them. It was a ruse, a trick to confuse his critics.

    I can imagine it:

    “He’s got naked girls in the magazines!”

    “Yes, but he prints literature from the greatest writers of our time next to them. It’s art not porn.”

    “Do we protest it or not? Argh – morality fighting with free-thinking art appreciating part of brain. Zzzzap. (brain short circuit).”

    PlayboybunnyI don’t care if it was a trick because Playboy really did print the short fiction of some of the greatest writers of our time. Recognise any of these names?

    Roald Dahl (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), Richard Matheson (I am Legend), Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451), Shirley Jackson (The Haunting of Hill House), John Updike (Rabbit), Jack Kerouac (On the Road), Gabriel Garcia Marquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude), Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita), Norman Mailer (The Executioner’s Song), Joseph Heller (Catch 22).

    The Playboy Book of Short Stories contains more authors than I’ve listed here. Alice K. Turner (the editor) selected one story from each year Playboy had been published and in the course of doing so has created the best collection of short stories I’ve ever read.

    Selected brilliance

    The trouble with talking about short stories, as I’ve written before, is that they are so short that talking about them is sometimes telling them. I won’t tell them here, I promise.

    Richard Matheson: A Flourish of Strumpets

    Published in 1956, this story blew my mind. How could someone back in 1956 think like this? The story is hot … very hot and wickedly funny. It is short and fast and if you think people back in the 1950s were conservative just forget it.

    Some descriptions:

    The second one came that night; a black-root blonde, slit-skirted and sweatered to within an inch of her breathing life.

    *

    The next night it was a perky brunette with a blouse front slashed to forever.

    *

    It was a raven-haired, limp-lidded vamp that night. On her outfit spangles moved and glittered at strategic points.

    *

    That night it was a redhead sheathed in a green knit dress that hugged all that was voluminous and there was much of that.

    kim_kardashian_playboyGabriel Garcia Marques: The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World

    Along with The Lottery by Shirley Jackson (not in this collection), The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World is one of the best short stories ever written. That it was originally written in Spanish and reads perfectly in English is a marvel in itself. This story made me want to learn Spanish simply so I could read the original version. If you do nothing else with your life, I urge you to hunt down this story – on the web, in the real world, read it standing up in a bookshop, wherever you can. Every line of it is a miracle. FIND IT AND READ IT NOW.

    Vladimir Nabokov: The Dashing Fellow

    A married man seduces a married woman – how dark and devious and shocking can it possibly be? Way dark. Way devious. Way way way shocking. No woman should ever read this story for they will never trust a man again. No man should read it because he will instantly feel bad and regretful for every sneaky thing he has ever done (and all men have done sneaky things, guaranteed). To read this story is to be filled with the desire to apologise for every male who has ever lived. It is a stunning piece of work, a jewel of perfection.

    609 pages, no waiting

    In any collection of short stories you’ll love some, like some and skip over or outright hate some. There are stories in this collection that I had a hard time reading but it wasn’t because the stories themselves were bad. The structure of writing, how stories are told, the phrasings and so on change over time and I am reader living in 2009 – some fifty years after a few of these stories were written. The mental fit I need to digest these stories can take a little adjustment. It’s like attempting to read Pride and Prejudice after reading a book written this year – it’s a bit of a jolt.

    playboy1How I got The Playboy Book of Short Stories: Salvation Army store in Camberwell, Melbourne. I cannot believe someone gave this away because it is an amazing collection. I’ve looked around for it online but it is out of print and you can only pick it up on eBay or in other second-hand places. I suspect changing the title (removing that Playboy) would have kept this book in print (as in, I was embarrassed to be seen reading it and often hid the cover).

    (Oh yeah, for those who were actually looking for Playboy stuff … enjoy the totally non-book related images.)

    Happy reading,

    Mat

    –

    i may be grey and featureless but i’ve got this glowing heart

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    Category Fiction, Short stories | Tags: , | No Comments