The Cleft and Other Odd Tales

Twenty-four fantasy and horror stories include "Campfire Story," "The Marble Boy," and "It Twineth Round Thee in Thy Joy"

From Publishers Weekly

Though he's better known for his darkly funny cartoon grotesqueries than for his short stories, Wilson has written numerous tales whose weird wit matches that of his drawings. In fact, an aptly odd original illustration accompanies each of the 24 stories?many previously published in Playboy or genre magazines?in this collection, which traces Wilson's writing career from 1962 ("The Book"; "Phyllis") through 1998 ("The Cleft"). Wilson writes in a straightforward, intelligent, anecdotal style that presents an amusingly sinister look at humanity. Many of the stories are first-person narratives told in distinctive character voices, varying from the boyish breathlessness of the graveyard classic "The Marble Boy" to the cattily feminine purr of "Best Friends." In "The Sea Was Wet As Wet Can Be," perhaps the book's most chilling tale, Wilson combines Lewis Carroll, the vapid lives of the well-to-do and genuine horror with impressive originality. There is a strain of social satire in many of the stories, as members of the upper classes often meet unusual?and decidedly unpleasant?fates. In "Them Bleaks," Wilson describes a certain ghoulish item as "a macabre object, without doubt, but it undeniably had a peculiar kind of charm." The same can be said of this collection. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Macabre cartoonist Wilson is the peer of Charles Addams, Edward Gorey, and Gary Larson, but he bests them all at simultaneously eliciting shivers and giggles. He works the same magic in his short stories, here collected for the first time. There are 24 of them, ranging in length from 4 to 20 pages and in manner from Bradburyish boyhood idyll to direly fractured fairy tale to mild ribaldry in pieces first published in Playboy, the principal outlet for Wilson's cartoons. In them, such things as a boy donning a monster suit and becoming a monster, bored sophisticates encountering the walrus and the carpenter from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, and an impecunious book collector finding a rare volume for a song all happen, but with outcomes that usually dispel the protagonists' initial glee. The reader's glee--which is of the type one would feel if the velociraptors of Jurassic Park actually got those bratty kids, as you just know they really would--is, however, always increased. Ghoulish good fun. Ray Olson

From Kirkus Reviews

Wilson (Everybody's Favorite Duck, 1988, etc.), the master cartoonist of the macabre, returns with 23 chuckles in the dark, plucked from Playboy, Omni, and elsewhere, covering the last 35 years or so. The primary attraction of the collection are its many illustrations, black pen-and-ink works reminiscent of Beardsley's illustrations of Faust, although the writing here and there approaches the level of S.J. Perelman (especially in The Casino Mirago). One of the more bizarre moments is the story named . . . well, it has no name, only a black blob for a titlea blob that could be a cat's paw fresh from the inkwell, perhaps, or a coal-black pear that keeps growing like a Rorschach blot throughout the story. Just what is it? Well, it's carnivorousbut we're not saying another word. The (new) title piece tells of a narrow mountain cleft that leads up to a monastery. Only one person at a time can pass through it, so anyone who wants to go up or down must ring a warning gong. The gongs require care, however, and soon a huge Kafkaesque retinue is needed to tend them. Campfire Story describes some boys listening to a story so scary that some of them might not live through it. In The Power of the Mandarin, only Evan Trowbridge stands between the malevolent Mandarin and his conquest of the worldand the storyteller Aladar Rakas has allowed the Mandarin to kill Trowbridge, Pillar of the Establishment and Pride of the Empire. Now who's going to fight the diabolical Mandarin in this series? Why not Aladar Rakas himself? But Rakas (the author) finds himself going mad, becausewith Trowbridge deadRakas (the hero) keeps getting into fixes the author can't get out of. The thriller grows to massive length (matching Margaret Mitchell's masterpiece) and the Mandarin threatens to turn the horrified Rakas into a garden ornament. Will the evil humor slithering through these pages slurp off into real life? Unclean, unclean! Read at your own peril. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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