Weirdmonger by D F Lewis (2003)
 

Published by Prime Books (Canton, Ohio); printed by Lightning Source, 2003.

A preamble: or how Weirdmonger saved me from planning murder.

You know that old curse about living in interesting times. Yesterday was interesting; I attended a disciplinary hearing at Cornwall College. The disciplinary hearing was their response to my most recent crack up, but never mind that. (For those who don't know me, my breakdowns are frequent. I hope this will not prejudice you against this write-up.)

I kept my temper for about half an hour listening to lies and more damned lies. I passed the time wondering what stone they’d looked under to find this pair of idiots conducting the ‘hearing’.

Finally I stood up and had the brief satisfaction of seeing them both jump back in their chairs in alarm. I told them that I thought I’d been extremely patient with them so far but now I was going. When I got home I paced up and down trembling for a while. Then there was a rattle and a thump from the letterbox.

The book:

A parcel from D F Lewis, the Weirdmonger himself, and the book was... Weirdmonger. The book that I think he's described as the most definitive or representative of his writing.

It’s a hefty volume. And at that time and in that mood, I didn’t think I’d be up to glancing over more than a few pages.

Surprisingly enough, I read a number of its short stories straight away, and as I read, it was a bit like relaxing in a warm bath and the frustrations of the day seemed to melt away. And of course, you know Des Lewis's writing, sometimes exasperating, often brilliant, always weird. It’s going to be impractical or impossible to mention every story here - there are 65 of them in the book - but here's a taster.

Always in Dim Shadow paints a haunting miniature of childhood loneliness, sexual abuse and parental incomprehension in the (astonishing) space of a page. Apple Turnover – which I mustn’t attempt to synopsise, it would spoil things – might be a simmering romantic reworking of a Biblical tale in the style of Cider With Rosie. In this one, consciously or not, Des has touched on one of the more curious aspects of vampirism as sexual symbolism in dream imagery, touched on by Tom Chetwynd in his brilliant Dictionary for Dreamers, namely the idea of double-penetration: that as the vampire’s teeth enter the victim’s skin, the victim’s flesh is entering the body of the attacker.

Back Doubles is a slightly longer story, about 8 pages: Kit is obsessed with St Paul’s Cathedral. Representations of its dome are shown in wallpaper decorating his bedroom walls. He collects colour supplements, second hand books, prints and old maps dealing with the history of the cathedral. But until today, he has never actually seen the place with his own eyes. Today will be the day that he finally realises his dream.

Clutching some guidebooks and a packed lunch, he boards a bus and sets off on a journey enlivened at first by the cute bum of the bus driver's groupie. But as he reaches the second stage of his journey, a ride on the underground, things start to fall apart; his travelling companions become more decrepit and sinister, the underground platforms are lit by candles and thronged with shadowy figures, and we wonder if there is truth in the old myths of passengers long lost to daylight in collapsing tunnels and trapped carriages.

Escaping the train, he becomes lost above ground, and entering an alley finds himself in a quite different place – a woodland lost in the heart of the city, and in the wood, another cathedral.

But there is something very wrong about this cathedral. Something dreadfully wrong about the crucifix in its shadowed interior.

This story begins in whimsical fashion, becomes a little grotesque, then as it brings to mind memories of films like Death Line and Quatermass and the Pit, actually gave me some very real chills. I’ve dealt with this story in some detail here because the ideas and imagery are quite intensely packed and as I’m writing, I can see there’s more to find in it yet.

What I’ve read so far suggests that Weirdmonger is a pick-and-mix goodie bag of the strange, the disturbing and the really quite nasty best of D F Lewis.
More to come.

Re: Weirdmonger by D F Lewis (2003)
 

I decided to edit my post above as I think my comments on misspelled notices and notes from tutors should not have gone in the same post as my comments about people who believe illness is a reason for "discipline".

I spent five very rewarding years teaching adults to read and write. My students were often intelligent people who might have been unable to read a teacher's blackboard in childhood because no one had realised that they needed glasses.

Whether teachers and admin staff at a college should know how to spell, is probably a matter of opinion.


I've read a post here where Des says some personal issues are making demands on his time. I hope things will sort themselves out soon.

Re: Weirdmonger by D F Lewis (2003)
 

Thanks, thanks, Rog, for setting up this thread - and for your comments.

I myself chose which stories to appear back in 2002. I would have chosen quite a different selection from HERE if asked to do it today, I'm sure!

And the turquoise cover that Amazon wrongly shows for the paperback is in fact the hardback cover!

Glad I stopped you planning murder, Rog. ;-)
Hope things pan out for you.

Things do go up and down when one's very nearly 60 (as I am), and thanks for your thoughts.
des


PS: PF Jeffery (the Red Brain of 'Dagon' Magazine and an old University chum from the Sixties) commented on my stories during much of the eighties and nineties in regular handwritten letters. The stories probably wouldn't have existed without his support.
But I don't absolve myself of the blame for them, though! :-)


PPS:
Not many people have seen the back covers of the Weirdmonger Book:

Paperback:
http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o...s/File0024.jpg


Hardback:
http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o.../weirdback.jpg


Reviews of this book are listed HERE, including the order in which I suggest the stories should be read!!!!!

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Re: Weirdmonger by D F Lewis (2003)
 

This story seems to be a later and expanded version of one which I critiqued in vying for a free copy of des' Weirdmonger in his "bumps for books" thread. My review of "The Monkey Who Did Not Like Its Hat" appears below:

"When and how does innocence become experience? When and how does ignorance become genuine kwowledge? D. F. Lewis' brief tale 'The Monkey Who Did Not Like Its Hat' answers these questions in a very entertaining manner. The story is that of Davenport, a seventeen year old bumpkin with a consuming ambition. Since early childhood, Davenport has been fascinated by a photograph of St. Paul's Cathedral in London. One day Davenport sets out by rail on his pilgrimage to London and the cathedral of his dreams. The people that Davenport encounters along the way are rather colorful, making our protagonist's imminent coming of age all the more memorable and monumental. The ever-busy word clowns behind Mr. Lewis' story also point up the frustration and/or futility of effective and satisfying human communication. This is one of the best pieces I have ever read on the theme of unrequited love (not to mention other things). Highly recommended! 'The Monkey Who Did Not Like Its Hat' first appeared in Krax in 1989."

Re: Weirdmonger by D F Lewis (2003)
 

Thanks, Phil.

Well spotted, but although there is a similarity of thrust in those two stories you mention, they are, in this case, as I recall, two quite distinct stories - albeit sharing one paragraph, as I also recall !

Having said that, if you explore the vast Weirdmonger Wheel, you will find stories that do feed off from each other more closely than those two. And I think a Lawrence Durrell passage quoted elsewhere and elsewhom yesterday seems, in hindsight, to represent my observed aim - at least to a vague degree:

"My style may be described as one of jump-cutting as with cinema film. The basic illustration is of course the admission that reincarnation is a fact. The old stable outlines of the dear old linear novel have been sidestepped in favour of soft focus palimpsest which enables the actors to turn into each other, to melt into each other's inner lifespace if they wish. Everything and everyone closer and closer together, moving towards the one."
From 'Quinx' (the fifth novel of the Avignon Quintet) by Lawrence Durrell.

Thanks, Mr Can, for drawing that to my attention - which I have taken the liberty of pasting directly to this thread. Sorry to hear you won't be back.

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Re: Weirdmonger by D F Lewis (2003)
 

I've been doing a lot of reading just lately, returning to a habit of years ago of reading novels at night and short stories with lunch. How did such a habit ever get broken? ::)

The Dead: “Giles stared at Marie. He had helped her expendable flesh into a brassiere earlier. He rather fancied skeleton girls, though. With feet that knuckled along rather than pounded. And puppet-strings so tenuous they made them appear wireless. Hand puppets tended to have too big holes.”

Dear Mum: The astronaut, lost in space, spends his last days writing a message to his mother – now probably dead herself – but science is wonderful, so she might still be able to read it. There are enemies out there in the black depths, and he thinks he has seen the silvery flickering of a tail. It’s time to jettison Holmbee’s body, but what will those space dwellers do with it?

Digory Smalls: “My father told me on the eve of my wedding: how the ordinary attic led up to other interlocking attics, yet I never explored until....”

The house is like an English House of Usher (assuming of course that this is England in the story); it’s located at the edge of the eastern marshes, and its foundations are sinking into the mud. The child rejoicing in the name of Digory Smalls seems to be a relative of Henry Kuttner’s mutant hillbilly family, an excitable and cheerful infant with paddles instead of limbs. When the narrator decides to explore the upper reaches of the attic, he takes along Digory for company. And who knows what strange family members might be found up there. So begins an exploration which, at six pages, is a Lewisian epic and tour de force.

Three good ones, and Digory's great. :D

This time for Weirdmonger, I decided to forget all advice on the more accessable or difficult stories, and just opened the book at random. That worked.

Re: Weirdmonger by D F Lewis (2003)
 

Thanks, Rog. Glad you're still enjoying the book.

The above bit makes me think that I am justified in keeping faith with 'The Intentional Fallacy'! :)

Re: Weirdmonger by D F Lewis (2003)
 

'The Workshop of Filthy Creations' - encountered by me (for the first conscious time) on the Vault website. I've not known this expression before nor known, until the last few weeks, that it is a quote from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. It now makes me think of the context of the 'Weirdmonger' book. I find myself able to do this with a certain objectivity granted both by the passing of time and by my 'crazy' belief in Nemonymity (a mutant form of the high-faluting Aesthetic theory of the Intentional Fallacy)!
The book is ragbag of some of my mildly 'filthier' pieces as well as pieces I now actively detest (as well as some that remain good ones in my eyes!). It is almost as if it compiled itself. It has become a sort of Frankenstein monster. I never saw myself as Weirdmonger. This was surely a word for a fiction character. But I find myself being subsumed by it. It is a Horror film being played out on the internet, with a motley (often disinterested, sometimes engaged) audience *very sparsely* scattered in the cinema stalls.

Re: Weirdmonger by D F Lewis (2003)
 

It being a word for a fictional character doesn't necessarily mean that you don't identify with it. :confused: Or does it? :confused:

Re: Weirdmonger by D F Lewis (2003)
 

Good point.
I do sound a bit like Gerald Ratner above. :-)

Re: Weirdmonger by D F Lewis (2003)
 

You do a bit. :confused: Maybe you should leave it to others to rubbish your work.

Re: Weirdmonger by D F Lewis (2003)
 

I've recently started an experimental real-time self-review of this book:

http://weirdmonger.blog-city.com/realtime_review_of_weirdmonger_by_df_lewis_by_df_l ewis.htm

http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o...s/File0024.jpg

http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o...s/c13331-1.jpghttp://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o...189481584X.jpg

Re: Weirdmonger by D F Lewis (2003)
 

Just to formalise the position on this thread kindly started by Rog (Calenture):





For your information, Weirdmonger (Prime Books 2003) is now out of print:
http://weirdmonger.blog-city.com/wei...t_of_print.htm


ps: I've now thanked a number of people at the above link for this wonderful gig.

Re: Weirdmonger by D F Lewis (2003)
 

Since, putting the 'Weirdmonger' book out of print, booksellers have been gradually depleted of it, I have noticed.
Nobody's rushing (!), but you may regret not buying it eventually.
As far as I can tell, just as a tip-off to any interested out there, the cheapest edition left on the whole book market is shown on Amazon.com as a used copy.

I have six copies left myself that I intend to give away in due course in competitions.
The first such competition is currently being held here:
http://www.britishfantasysociety.org...?topic=2338.60

Re: Weirdmonger by D F Lewis (2003)
 

Since going out of print a few months ago, I note that 'Weirdmonger' (Prime 2003) is now for sale on Amazon, as a the sole copy available, for £460. Used and unsigned:
I own only six unused copies of 'Weirdmonger' (other than my own personal copy) and I intend to offer these gradually as prizes in free competitions - signed by me if required to the winner.
The current competition (still unwon) is here: http://weirdmonger.blog-city.com/fre...ompetition.htm

Re: Weirdmonger by D F Lewis (2003)
 

By comparison, the hardback signed edition of 'Weirdmonger' (limited to 50 copies) is on sale here for only £250:
http://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/SearchResults?an=D.+F.+Lewis+-+SIGNED+%26+DATED

Re: Weirdmonger by D F Lewis (2003)
 

Glad I got mine while copies were somewhat plentiful a couple years ago. The towering price increases after scarcity sets in are always amazing.

Re: Weirdmonger by D F Lewis (2003)
 

I only read one of D.F. Lewis's stories awhile back and at the time just didn't 'get it' or understand it and didn't bother reading any other stories. The other day by chance I read 'The Water Boatman' on this website and was blown away. Loved it! I just managed to buy an unread copy of Weirdmonger for $19 plus $20 postage to the UK. Am looking forward to diving in....

Re: Weirdmonger by D F Lewis (2003)
 

Thanks, Lucian. Hope you enjoy it.

But I am intrigued where you got it? The only used copies that seem available (other than my few free competition prize ones) have ridiculous prices here:
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/l/...eirdmonger.htm
(The prices for new ones are not applicable as there are no more new ones for sale, being out of print).

If I see any cheaper ones in the future (like Ebay) I shall report back here. Not that I expect many to be interested. :)

des

Re: Weirdmonger by D F Lewis (2003)
 

Hi Des, I brought it from a shop called Borderlands Books which I found on the World Book Market website. I was abit surprised as the other 2 listings for Weirdmonger on World Book Market were a hardback copy for £250 and another copy for something ridiculous in the region of £400!! When I ordered mine for $19 I was kind of expecting to receive an email and refund stating the book was not available but it turned up in the post a few days ago. Pretty much mint and unread. The bottom of the book was slightly grubby (appears as though it was placed on a dusty shelf) but am pleased with it.

Re: Weirdmonger by D F Lewis (2003)
 

Congratulations to The New Nonsense for winning the Weirdmonger book (see link below for details).

http://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/...o-be-gathered/

That link also holds the details of a new competion for the now rare Weirdmonger book. Between 500 and 2000 words, please write a sequel or prequel to THE TELL-TALE HEART by Edgar Allan Poe.

Re: Weirdmonger by D F Lewis (2003)
 

Rare 'Weirdmonger' Book - free competition. Write a short sequel or prequel to THE TELL-TALE HEART. Please see link below.

http://nullimmortalis.wor...weirdmonger-competition/

http://img1.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/c2/c13331.jpg

Although it is rare, you can buy it here:
http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o...remen1-3-2.jpg

Re: Weirdmonger by D F Lewis (2003)
 

http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o...thus/we3-2.jpg
As the WEIRDMONGER book is now almost impossible to obtain, here are the raw rich text format files for anyone to read only. Password: merriment

Re: Weirdmonger by D F Lewis (2003)
 

There are still two editions of the out of print WEIRDMONGER book that I own and wish to give away free, leaving me with just one paperback edition and one hardback edition for myself.
See: | Weirdmonger: The Nemonicon (Prime 2003)

Re: Weirdmonger by D F Lewis (2003)
 

Another has just gone. Only one left now.