Pleasant Tales - Brendan Connell

Evans

Evans

Grimscribe
Weird Fiction is dead and Brendan Connell killed it

https://www.eibonvalepress.co.uk/books/books_pleasant_tales.htm

This book is so nice – Tim Parks

Pleasant Tales replicated the experience of mild intoxication whilst at an equitable temperature better than anything else I know - Haruki Murakami

This book cures wars – Karen Armstrong

It’s like Peake, but Peake were he well-groomed, socially stable and possessed of a passing interest in collectable rubber beer mats - China Mieville
 
I think people are probably underestimating just how pleasant the Pleasant actually is. Anyway I will probably make my introduction to Brendan's book public shortly before it is released. I am also working on Pleasant Tales II which will likely be released either at the end of this year or early next year. I can't reveal much about it but some of the story titles include "A Walk in the Park," "The Grace of God" and "The Adorable Child."
 
cover_pleasant_tales.jpg

Here's the cover! or at least, half of it. And just to clarify, the book is now available for preorder. We're running a special as well, for the first orders. Brendan has provided an exclusive chapbook entitled 'Curious Births to Light the Universe', limited to just 50 copies. Buy a hardcover and you will get the chapbook for free while it lasts; we have also prepared a bundle deal with the paperback. You can find full information on the Eibonvale website: http://www.eibonvalepress.co.uk/books/books_pleasant_tales.htm
 
I am intrigued. I have always wanted to read more BC, ever since I read snatches of his prose on Amazon - snippets from Metrophilias and the Lives of Notorious Cooks. And here he comes across as very well read and playfully belligerent. He strikes me as a weirdist who treads a path first opened to the Weird by Borges. Borges is also pleasantly weird, or weirdly pleasant, but his pleasures are meant for the adept.

It is hard to think of pleasant weirdists. Lewis Carroll is pleasantly weird, but not always. Paul Willems comes to mind, there are strong elements of nostalgia and wish fulfillment in his tales, which are achingly pleasant. Michael Ende, for sure. Contrary to Ligotti's assessment, I don't find Schulz systematically unpleasant - there is a sense of lethargic wonder in some of his tales. After this, I am drawing a blank. Symbolists, Decadents, German Expressionists, the rest of the Belgian School, the new Weird, all of that is unpleasant at core.

I suppose a lot of folklore could be considered pleasantly weird, at least when it is bereft of explicit moral instruction. But I am rambling.

Will probably get the book in the near future. I am also curious about Justin Isis as a fictional character. Will he be treated well? Is it going to be like HPL and Bloch annihilating each other in the Haunter of the Dark, the Shambler from the Stars, etc.? Or will Connell's literary magnanimity see Justin truly ascend to those higher spheres "through amore and refined fashion-sense"?
 
And here's the cover blurb.

"According to inductive process, the more weed someone smokes, the more likely they are to eat a green apple. Billy Glandzk has been smoking too much pot and hates apples, so it’s time for him to change his lifestyle. Justin Isis lives in a single tiny room in Ikebukuro but, through amore and refined fashion-sense, hopes to rise to higher spheres. Ricky Fishback is a bicycle cop who has spent too much time in the saddle, and his restless sex life is taking a turn for the worse. Can he get his mojo back? Carla Jo Arduini works at the Family Dollar Store, but her aspirations go higher—much higher. Will her faith guide her to success?

In Pleasant Tales, a contrasting follow-up to his critically acclaimed 2010 collection Unpleasant Tales, Brendan Connell has written ten unusual and colorful stories of contemporary life. The brittle and deranged mundanity that surrounds us is viewed through a lens that is both extremely perceptive and ever so slightly flawed, resulting in both an inverted projection of the familiar and a dose of the alien. These are modernist, sparse and slightly subversive expositions on the normal that perform a disjointed dance with the world you thought you knew."
 
xylokopos said:
I am also curious about Justin Isis as a fictional character. Will he be treated well?"?
Click to expand...

All I can say to that is would that I one day have the honour to be treated as such. It does involve buying Flaubert’s penis at auction though, and subsequent developments, so I guess you will have to judge for yourself. :-)
 
xylokopos said:
Contrary to Ligotti's assessment, I don't find Schulz systematically unpleasant - there is a sense of lethargic wonder in some of his tales.
Click to expand...
I wouldn't be surprised if Ligotti is in minority with his reading of Schulz. That was never my main impression of his fiction either. Yeah, there's some nightmarish and sad stuff in there, but there's a lot of beauty and wonder in it too.
 
Glad you posted the update of Connell's book, Evans.
For several months, I had been skirting around the Eibonvale website, looking at titles to purchase.
Since the site had not been updated since 2015 at that point, I was a bit wary.
Thanks.
 
xylokopos said:
Lewis Carroll is pleasantly weird, but not always. Paul Willems comes to mind, there are strong elements of nostalgia and wish fulfillment in his tales, which are achingly pleasant. Michael Ende, for sure. Contrary to Ligotti's assessment, I don't find Schulz systematically unpleasant - there is a sense of lethargic wonder in some of his tales. After this, I am drawing a blank. Symbolists, Decadents, German Expressionists, the rest of the Belgian School, the new Weird, all of that is unpleasant at core.
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The Pleasant does not actually contain any antecedents, so the stories in this book are in fact more pleasant than anything produced by the writers mentioned above. I am going through the final revisions of PTII now and I am trying to make it even more mild than Connell's book although it is certainly a difficult task. At the moment it is the final word.
 
Quoth Morrissey: "It's so easy to laugh, it's so easy to hate, it takes strength to be pleasant and blithe."
 
It sounds intriguing. But what is meant by "pleasant?" If it's about a sort of childlike wonder, then I'm all in.

I'm usually cautious about new paradigms, but I just might check this out.
 
Mr. Veech said:
It sounds intriguing. But what is meant by "pleasant?" If it's about a sort of childlike wonder, then I'm all in.
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I don't think it's child-like, though there is maybe a certain innocence about the characters. A kind of hazed, almost automata- or puppet-like innocence as they live their unquestioning lives, while behind them lies an extremely knowing author. I'm also not sure it's a paradigm as such, more an aesthetic the author is playing with. The 'pleasant' is there in the colourscheme of the stories - a palette of vivid familiar colours that sit on you with slightly unnerving weight. The distilled essence of a glossy, mundane and sometimes odd world, knowingly presented in a kind of literary art gallery. There's a hint of irony in the title, even subversion, only not directly - more in the sense of presenting portraits, slices of life and odd occurrences and allowing us to realise just how strange they are.
 
Eibonvale said:
Mr. Veech said:
It sounds intriguing. But what is meant by "pleasant?" If it's about a sort of childlike wonder, then I'm all in.
Click to expand...

I don't think it's child-like, though there is maybe a certain innocence about the characters. A kind of hazed, almost automata- or puppet-like innocence as they live their unquestioning lives, while behind them lies an extremely knowing author. I'm also not sure it's a paradigm as such, more an aesthetic the author is playing with. The 'pleasant' is there in the colourscheme of the stories - a palette of vivid familiar colours that sit on you with slightly unnerving weight. The distilled essence of a glossy, mundane and sometimes odd world, knowingly presented in a kind of literary art gallery. There's a hint of irony in the title, even subversion, only not directly - more in the sense of presenting portraits, slices of life and odd occurrences and allowing us to realise just how strange they are.
Click to expand...

Ah, I see. I wasn't using "childlike" in a pejorative sense, though I'm sure you knew that.
 
Here is the "First Manifesto of the Pleasant" that Justin Isis and I wrote. He is calling it "The Vow of Chasity":

1. Conflict is a vulgar engine. Minimize it!

2. Restraint is good. Vulgarity is not so good. Restraint is pleasant; vulgarity is not. Whoever uses proper diction is sweet. Everyone likes to walk around in an empty house.

3. The tale must emphasize the absolute certainty and security enjoyed by human beings in our well-lighted universe.

4. The tale must not contain explicit sexual or violent content that would render it unsuitable for juvenile and/or particularly sensitive readers. Gratuitous scenes of horses being disciplined with rods are particularly unwelcome, as are scenes involving the consumption of insects for dietary protein.

5. Just as the peach blossom sheds its flesh-colored petals, so should the author shed their desire to incite lust and other untoward feelings in the reader. The peach petal can never be put back on the blossom once it has fallen.

6. Beach parties and walks in the park are particularly pertinent themes for the Pleasant. A Hawaiian atmosphere is also welcome whenever possible.

7. Enlightened and wise individuals refrain from wearing sandals and socks. In the same manner, the writer of Pleasant tales never adds long-winded discourse to their lightness of touch.

8. People worry. It is the duty of the Pleasant to offer some respite from life’s rough handling. We blow the pipes and strike the bells, drowning out untoward ringtones and the offensive accents of aged Valley girls.

9. The characters must not be placed in threatening or unpleasant situations. The writer is not a sociopath out to recklessly endanger the characters for the puerile entertainment of "the Reader."

10. Unpleasant situations are okay! Let’s not fight about this. The important thing is RESOLUTION! We are all sentient beings who need to understand one another, even if it means raising our voices. IT IS OKAY TO ARGUE!
 
It's a noble goal but personally I couldn't write anything that fell under these criteria. Mainly because I tend to find existence itself a threatening and unpleasant situation. :p

I also like writing explicit sex scenes. Just because I never have sex in real life doesn't mean my fictional creations should suffer the same fate!
 
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