"a.n.smith" wrote:
>
> I'd like to find more works like these, Brown, weird
film noir, etc. , where
> the writers were just out of their gourds and would
probably fit in more
> today than they did in their own times. Any
suggestions?
Nobody wrote like Fredric Brown in THE SCREAMING MIMI. That
easy conversational style, like a wicked stepfather
whispering in your ear, is hard to come by. But I can suggest
a few strange, weird, and twisted books you might try.
Jerome Charyn has been mentioned here. All of his stuff is
funny and surreal. Two of the best are PARADISE MAN and THE
EDUCATION OF PATRICK SILVER.
HOW LIKE AN ANGEL by Margaret Millar. She was the wife of
Ross McDonald and, for my money, a better writer than her
husband. Here she invents a nut cult in the middle of the
desert and, instead of going the easy route of mocking it,
she shows us its human face. An unusual novel with a
surprisingly tough inner core.
THE JOHN FRANKLIN BARDIN OMNIBUS contains three novels, two
of which are very strange indeed: THE DEADLY PERCHERON and
DEVIL TAKE THE BLUE-TAIL FLY. The first is a mystery as wild
as anything Fredric Brown ever wrote. The second is a tour de
force about a woman descending into madness told strictly and
with great conviction from her point of view.
EYE OF THE BEHOLDER by Marc Behm has recently been reissued
in pb as a movie tie-in after being out of print
approximately forever. Called the private eye novel to end
all private eye novels, it comes pretty close to living up to
the hype. A warped journey into the heart of the whole PI
myth.
Along the same lines, only more so, or possibly less,
depending on how you look at it, is Paul Auster's CITY OF
GLASS. Also worth a look on the general weirdness front are
THE SO BLUE MARBLE by Dorothy B. Hughes, A SCANNER DARKLY by
Phillip K. Dick, and THE BOX by Peter Rabe.
BobT
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