Anyone here remember the short story "Night Drive", by William F. Jenkins? I have never forgotten it; in fact I searched it out on the web last night from what I remembered of the opening sentence: "Madge was in the act of turning out the living room lights when the telephone rang...." I studied it in junior high school, a period during which I learned to love the short story. We read so many good ones: "
The Monkey's Paw" by W.W. Jacobs, "
The Season's Dying" by Eugene Ziller, "
Leiningen Versus the Ants" by Carl Stephenson, "
Lather and Nothing Else" by Hernando Tellez, and Roald Dahl's "
The Landlady", just to name a few.
I read "Night Drive" again last night, and even though it doesn't seem
quite as much like great literature as it did when I was twelve, it's still a good spine-tingler and really stands the test of time. Read it
here, or listen to it
here.
(By the way,
Forgotten Classics looks like a site worth getting to know, not least because it leads one to
Happy Catholic, another blog by the same author. Looks like a place worth visiting!)
Yesterday's internet ramblings took me to a
gallery of covers from books written by the talented author of "Night Drive" (under the pen name Murray Leinster). I would love to get my hands on some of these - Mr. B. and I love this kind of sci-fi/fantasy.
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| We come in pieces. |
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| Made up words right in the title tell you you're in for a good read. |
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| Why didn't five of them come so this wouldn't be so confusing? |
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| They stole the Gravol, too. |
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| ...is very useful if you want to get to... |
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| ...but unfortunately you may end up on... |
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| DANG!! |
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| And this was before laptops had even been invented. |
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Grab a cola and read along with me!
.
Ha ha! Those were great! Just what I needed after a very long, tiring day a Music Festival.
ReplyDeleteAnd hey, when it comes to great short stories, what about "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut Jr? Way back in 1961, he had already nailed the Human Rights Commissions and the various Government Ministries of Not-unfairness.
As for "Diana Moon Glampers", she sounds like she could be the head of NACSOW, or Planned Parenthood, or even a U.S. congresswoman who doesn't have any breasts.
"Harrison Bergeron" is also great. I didn't read that one until I was an adult, though.
ReplyDeleteI'm also beginning to suspect that the 4 from planet 5 were responsible for "Plan 9 from Outer Space".
I forgot to mention that your captions under the book covers were as funny as the covers themselves. If only we'd thought of Cake Wrecks first! Then we could afford Steynamite tickets AND kitchen renovations!
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