This story begins with a woman talking to a realtor about moving to the city of Prester to open a car rental business. As they talk, she notices that every building in the city is a church of some kind. Typical of Donald Barthelme, things get stranger. Nobody rents cars in Prester, but the city has a problem. It needs a girl to work in its car-rental agency to make the town ‘complete’. The girl has a special talent; she can will her dreams. When told she cannot leave, she threatens to dream the life [they] are most afraid of. More…
Heavy-Set
Ray Bradbury‘s character Lenny (Leonard) lives at home with his mother and has a lot going for him. He has a body-builder’s physique, secure job, nice car, and no shortage of girls wanting to go out with him. Unfortunately, he is also mentally and socially challenged. He doesn’t take disappointment or ridicule well, often barely able to control his temper. The story takes place over a Halloween night. Lenny is excited, but the party he was looking forward to is a flop, leading to a potentially explosive homecoming. Themes include alienation, repression, interdependence, arrested development, fitting in, fear, despair. More…
Mammon and the Archer
Mammon is a biblical term for great wealth. In this story by O. Henry, a self-made millionaire is initially of the belief that money can buy anything. When his son falls in love with a woman from an aristocratic family, he learns there are two things his money can’t buy: love and family recognition among New York High Society. Fortunately for his son, it is able to buy the young man enough time to allow the archer to do his job. Themes include money vs. love, pride, new vs. old money, upper class etiquette, superstition, deception. More…
Axolotl
Julio Cortázar gives away the plot of this story in the first paragraph: There was a time when I thought a great deal about the axolotls… Now I am an axolotl. The rest of the story talks about this Kafkaesque transformation, which is partial and may have only occurred in the protagonist’s mind. He (the axolotl part) sits in an aquarium tank watching himself (the unchanged part) looking in from the other side. Considering his life from this perspective seemingly builds the man’s self-esteem, and he no longer feels the need to return. Themes: loneliness, alienation, obsession, connection, enlightenment, inertia. More…
The Outsider
H. P. Lovecraft was a pioneer of cosmic horror, a sub-genre in which gothic settings and “other-worldly” elements replace shock and gore. A feature of his writing is nightmare-like plot twists that defy logic or reason. Here, a man grows up alone in a decaying castle set among frightening woods. When he climbs the crumbling castle tower to look further afield, he finds a stone slab that leads to an earth-like world above the clouds. He is excited to encounter other people, but soon learns a frightening truth. Themes include alternative reality, isolation and loneliness, social rejection, alienation, self-discovery. More…