Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories

newinside

McSweeney's is releasing another anthology edited by Michael Chabon, "McSweeney's Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories." Although it's not listed on this Amazon link, the collection will have a short story by Stephen King according to Diamond Comics' Previews catalog for November. Any word on what's in it? The last one had a Dark Tower excerpt...



http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1400078741/qid=1093554753/sr=1-9/ref=sr_1_9/002-9813088-2818467?v=glance&s=books



Blu

newinside

Anyone know who else will be in this?

BevVincent

The only author I know will be in it for sure is Poppy Z. Brite. China Mieville is another name that's been bandied about, but nothing concrete.

BluGilliand

Do you know for sure about King's involvement in this, Bev? I thought that it might have had his name because of his involvement with the previous anthology - no titles were given in the description in "Previews."



Thanks,



Blu

BevVincent

The table of contents hasn't been released anywhere yet.

BevVincent

MCSWEENEY’S ENCHANTED CHAMBER OF ASTONISHING STORIES - Coming in November!



Edited by Michael Chabon, with illustrations by Mike Mignola



Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Chabon and the editors of McSweeney’s have cajoled a stellar group of contemporary fiction masters — including Alan Furst, Peter Straub, Roddy Doyle, and Stephen King — into offering their original takes on the tried-and-true genres of adventure, science fiction, crime story, and horror.



Soft Cover, 464 pages, $13.95

BevVincent

King's story is "Lisey and the Madman"

CRinVA

WooHoo - a title for what it's worth! ;D

newinside

Any word on if this is a new short story?

BevVincent

All I know is the title, but it's a new story.

Lilja

From King's offical site:



New Fiction

A new work of fiction by Stephen titled "Lisey and the Madman" will be included in McSweeney’s Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories, an anthology edited by Michael Chabon, published by Vintage. The anticipated publication date is November 2004.

Posted 9 September 2004



Lilja

CRinVA

Well there now - I still just got a title! :-[

BevVincent

I just finished reading this story and it is very, very tense and powerful. It's about 30 pages long, the story of a writer who has a strange encounter with a member of the crowd at a public appearance, told from the point of view of his wife.

CRinVA

??? Amazing - do you have an ARC or what? ???

Lou_Sytsma

I just finished reading this story and it is very, very tense and powerful. It's about 30 pages long, the story of a writer who has a strange encounter with a member of the crowd at a public appearance, told from the point of view of his wife.

Woah! That should be intense.

BevVincent

Yep, an ARC--just came today



Contributors in order of appearance:

• Margaret Atwood
• David Mitchell
• Jonathan Lethem
• Ayelet Waldman
• Steve Erickson
• Stephen King
• Jason Roberts
• Heidi Julavits
• Roddy Doyle
• Daniel Handler
• Charles D'Ambrosio
• Poppy Z. Brite
• China Mieville
• Joyce Carol Oates
• Peter Straub

Lou_Sytsma

Wow - that's a very impressive line up.

BevVincent

From the author notes:

[King] has promised to retire but "Lisey and the Madman" is from what may eventually be a new novel called Lisey's Story. In his own defense, King points out that all novelists lie--sometimes to others, almost constantly to themselves.

Lou_Sytsma

In his own defense, King points out that all novelists lie--sometimes to others, almost constantly to themselves.

Haha!



So True!

BevVincent

Is it true with the novel Lisey's Story? If so, that's great, since there's also the one about an incident which happened at his house.

BevVincent

I have my doubts that there are two different novels--I'll bet they are one and the same and that the details just got munged up a little in translation.

BevVincent

Thankee-sai Bev, and I can see it now: King has had a few "madmen" in/or approaching his house, and one of the times Tabby was home alone. Given the description of "Lisey and the Madman" where the writer's wife tells the tale, I'm sure this is Stephen King's way of expressing Tabby's frustrations of the dark side of her husband's fame.

Almost non-fiction, although I'm sure King puts a lot of fiction in it.

BevVincent

Here's what King says about the book in his Guardian interview:

He has another book written, though he says it's "a mess", and has yet to decide whether anybody else should read it. It is about a writer's widow, and came about when he returned home from his hospitalisation for pneumonia to find his wife redecorating his office. "My wife says to me: 'Don't go in your office'. Like Bluebeard or something. I said 'Why not?' She says: It's just a mess in there and it will really upset you. One night I couldn't sleep and I went out there and she was right - it upset me. The furniture was all gone. The books were off the shelves. Everything was in boxes. It was just like a room that has been cleared out following an old person's death. It got me thinking about my own death and what would happen afterwards."

BevVincent

'Astonishing' stories far from tedious

By Mark Graham, Special To The News

November 12, 2004



Michael Chabon, a frequent contributor to one of the most prestigious literary magazines, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, complained to publisher Dave Eggers about the state of the modern short story.



Times had changed since the heyday of such periodicals as The Saturday Evening Post, Colliers and Liberty, and the plots in the few remaining venues for short fiction had become, in Chabon's words, "tedious."



Chabon sent out a call to the world's most popular writers, and the result was last year's most highly touted and praised anthology, McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, featuring stories from Stephen King, Harlan Ellison, Michael Crichton, Elmore Leonard, Neil Gaiman and 15 others.



The Mammoth Treasury was such a success that Chabon and McSweeney have followed it up this year with McSweeney's Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories, again featuring an original Stephen King story and this time including distinguished writers such as Joyce Carol Oates, Peter Straub, Jonathan Lethem, Margaret Atwood and Daniel Handler (who just might be better known as Lemony Snicket).



The stories are a bit uneven in Enchanted Chamber, but most will keep even the most discerning reader entertained.



In "Lisey and the Madman," King expounds on a topic he knows all too well: the lack of privacy, and even danger, that comes with being a famous person. This time, though, he tells the story from the point of view of the wife of a celebrated author as the madman of the title sets out to kill her husband.



Joyce Carol Oates offers "The Fabled Light-House at Viña del Mar." The isolated lighthouse keeper gradually falls into madness and finds bizarre companionship with a strange being from the sea.



Four men involved in the literary world - an author, an agent, a publisher and a critic - find themselves in a cardiac ward in Peter Straub's "Mr. Aikman's Air Rifle." The four are connected in awkward ways, and they soon discover that they might not be in a hospital after all - and that their cardiac episodes may have been more serious than they thought.



"Vivian Relf," by Jonathan Lethem, is a tale of obsession. A young man sees a beautiful woman at a party. From that point on, his life centers on their occasional meetings, but he never realizes the absurdity of his fascination with her as his existence becomes meaningless.



Margaret Atwood's very short story, "Lusus Naturae," is about a woman who is born a monster, told from the woman's point of view. It comes complete with villagers carrying stakes and torches, but in Atwood's hands, the cliché seems original.



In Daniel Handler's story, "Delmonico" refers to a cocktail: "Gin, vermouth, brandy. A dash of bitters." The narrator sits at a bar and watches the beautiful bartender make the drink and pass out supernatural advice. While he loves her, he knows he can never have her.



Other highlights in the 15-story collection include:



• China Mieville's "Reports of Certain Events in London," an epistolary tale about disappearing streets;



• Poppy Z. Brite's "The Devil of Delery Street," where a young girl is haunted by a ghost who says it is the devil;



• Chris Ambrosio's "The Scheme of Things," about two small-time con artists collecting money for B.A.D. (Babies Addicted to Drugs) and keeping it.



While there are fewer stories in the Enchanted Chamber than in the Mammoth Treasury, this new anthology proves again that it is possible to find short works that are far from "tedious." It's just a shame that there aren't more of them.

BluGilliand

I got an e-mail from Amazon.com yesterday stating that my copy of this is on the way. Sounds great - can't wait to get my hands on it. (Of course, I'll read the King story first and then start the anthology at the beginning...)



Blu

BevVincent

Baltimore Sun:



The goal of this short-story anthology is to revitalize genre fiction - crime, adventure, sci-fi, horror, and romance stories - by coaxing new examples from the hippest possible crowd of contemporary fiction writers. It's a formula that worked well in a previous volume, the 2003 Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, also compiled by novelist Michael Chabon and the editors of the literary magazine McSweeney's. Like most collections of its kind, there's a wide range in quality. China Mieville's "Reports of Certain Events in London" is a bloodless fantasy that tries, and fails, to unnerve. Jonathan Lethem's creepy romance, "Vivian Relf," is less substantial than his usual work, and Stephen King goes on too long in "Lisey and the Madman," but Roddy Doyle's "The Child" has some haunting moments, and Daniel Handler's "Delmonico" effectively mixes romance and noir.



It's the female authors here who really shine. Ayelet Waldman's "Minnow" and Heidi Julavits' "The Miniaturist" are luxuriously feminine ghost stories, while Margaret Atwood and Joyce Carol Oates deliver some impeccably scary stuff in a classical mode. Hands down the best tale is Poppy Z. Brite's "The Devil of Delery Street," a New Orleans exorcism tale in which every character, including the demon itself, is absolutely charming.