The Seventh Horse and Other Tales

On the outskirts of our sad savage town, I was overcome by a feeling of profound melancholy, though I fought it off by stuffing a large amount of jasmine essence up my nose.

Remember that trousers are the first rung down the ladder of degeneration.

This is a love letter to a nightmare.

These few statements are ones pulled in a random attempt to sum up this wondrous collection of surrealist painter and writer Leonora Carrington's short fiction. The pieces range from the folkloric and fairy tale-esque to completely bizarre, off-the-wall absurdism. They are often dark, but with a light touch, if that makes sense. The centerpiece is a shortened version of Carrington's novel The Stone Door. This labyrinthine tale describes two epic journeys show more through time and place, the first of which occurs in a "dream, memory, or vision." A basic premise guiding the story is that someone becomes trapped on the wrong side of the stone door, which separates the land of the Dead from the land of the Living. Someone else tries to save the first someone. There's some back story on each of the someones. I can't do it justice so I'm sticking with vagueness.

The other tales all entertain in one way or another. In "The Happy Corpse Story" someone goes to Telephone Hell because he died of a heart attack during a telephone conversation. In Telephone Hell everyone has a phone "constantly glued to their lips or ears" for, in this person's unfortunate case, nine hundred and ninety-nine billion aeons before finally getting rid of it. [One wonders what Leonora would think of today's widespread and voluntary enactment of her version of Hell]. Also in this story, Carrington takes aim at corporate culture, describing a character as "an executive at a firm," meaning that "he actually executed persons with showers of legal documents proving that they owed him quantities of money which they did not have." But her scathing mockery does not stop there...

'Firm' actually means the manufacture of useless objects which people are foolish enough to buy. The firmer the firm the more senseless talk is needed to prevent anyone noticing the unsafe structure of the business. Sometimes these Firms actually sell nothing at all for a lot of money, like 'Life Insurance,' a pretense that it is a soothing and useful event to have a violent and painful death.

Another of my favorite stories in which Carrington's satire shines is "How to Start a Pharmaceuticals Business," in which an innocent picnic of the narrator and her two noble guests, Lord Popocatepetl and the Viscount Federal District, strangely results in the narrator's receipt of a Joseph Stalin mannikin, whose moustache hairs turn out to possess properties useful in the treatment of "whooping cough, syphilis, grippe, childbearing and other convulsions." The story is set in the Mexico of some sort of utopian world in which society has opted to voluntarily regress from the modern age. As one example, the Black King of the North, New York the First, issued an edict known as the Law of De-Electrification of the Americas.

This collection offers a good introduction to Carrington's fiction, showcasing her many storytelling styles as well as her keen social insight. Highly recommended and pairs well with her collection The House of Fear. show less

The more I find out about Leonora Carrington, the more I love her. From the very 1st story, "As They Rode Along the Edge", she sets the tone for her being an extremely strong-willed visionary (for a recited version of this story w/ illustrations by Justin Duerr & Mandy Katz go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LuinGmYtdM ). She's described on the back cover as "A precocious child, expelled from convent school" & her anti-Christian enthusiasm & full-blown paganism is completely heartfelt & all-encompassing. Cf the anti-clericalism of surrealist Benjamin Peret w/ the wonderfully articulate & humorous character of this writing. These stories were written between 1937 & the 1970s & they cover alotof territory. I'm particularly fond of show more "The Stone Door" - the version here being a shortened version of something that's apparently published elsewhere as a bk all its own. In this one, Carrington starts off w/ what at least seems to be a personal diary of discontent that gradually mutates entirely into an heroic & epic quest. I often complain that I find much surrealist writing of little interest but w/ Carrington the writing is as great as her phenomenal painting. show less

I love this book! It's a collection of mostly short stories from one of Surrealism's most imaginative painters. The stories evoke humor and magic.