Death to the Brothers Grimm

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Tue Jan 24, 2012 6:22 pm

Hey Den friends, I'm contributing to an anthology called "Death to the Brothers Grimm", a set of weird retellings of European fairytales (not just the Grimms). I hadn't posted on here earlier because I had thought that the roster was mostly taken care of, but some cancellations and such have left a number of openings.

You'll need to get your pitch in by January 31st, and then you'd have til February 12th to finish your piece- approximately 10K words is what they're looking for. So anyone who might have something laying around that would fit the bill now or after some tweaking, get in touch with the editors!

http://deathtogrimm.blogspot.com/

Oh, and Pinocchio is taken. I'm rewriting Pinocchio as the villain, and the protagonist is the narrator from "The End" by The Doors. Because I'm weird.

Parthenon · Post by **Parthenon** » Tue Jan 24, 2012 9:45 pm

My insinct is to go with something like Jack and the Beanstalk, and go with something like:

Jack swaps the cow for the three magic beans, but then his brother Jason decides to eat them. The next morning Jack finds the beanstalk growing out of Jason's mouth. The end outside Jason's mouth is stuck in the ground outside while Jason is on the roof. Jack decides to climb the beanstalk to help his brother but upon climbing it finds himself shrinking until he climbs inside Jason's mind.

I'm not sure where I'd go from there. Probably Jack being the giant and being swarmed by midgets before hiding on the clouds to get away from them. Then, collecting the chicken that vomits pools of silver coins before getting chased by the midgets.

Jack manages to run away and climb out of Jason's mouth down to the ground. He has enough of a lead that he decides to pull the beanstalk out of his brother's mouth and pulls him inside out. The story ends with Jack and his mum shrugging and being happy with Jason the bean plant and the cock that sprays out pools of silver.

However it really needs more crazy adding and I'm not sure I can be bothered. If anyone wants to take the idea and improve it feel free.

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Tue Jan 24, 2012 9:47 pm

The Bizarro fiction community will eat that shit right up.

K · Post by K » Tue Jan 24, 2012 10:01 pm

Is this one of those unpaid writing gigs? I get super-suspicious when they demand that you don't query them for payment.

Is it going to be a real book, or an ebook?

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Tue Jan 24, 2012 10:04 pm

As I recall, this is a paying gig. It's Emory's first anthologist gig, so I assume he just doesn't want to deal with those questions ATM.

Also as I recall, this will be both print and ebook.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Jan 24, 2012 10:44 pm

Meh. Spurted off a five minute Little Red Riding Hood and the Forest Necromancer proposal. I'm really not sure how weird they want their stories. The original version already involves Little Red's grandmother playing the role of Zeus to the Wolf's Chronos, and the actual Grimm version has Little Red played by a bunch of baby goats who then do an actual dance number after the Wolf dies. It's basically weirder than a David Lynch remake of Lazy Town as is. But maybe a little "grandmother totally got eaten and then gets sewn back together as a Frankenstein" deal is messed up enough to catch their attention.

10k words in a standalone short story is basically short enough that it could be done as a favor, so I'm not really worried one way or the other.

-Username17

angelfromanotherpin · Tue Jan 24, 2012 10:53 pm

Is there a difference between Bizarro fiction and just plain absurdist fiction?

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Tue Jan 24, 2012 11:01 pm

I was being a little snarky when I mentioned it. Technically no- they are functionally the same thing. There is more of a cohesive Bizarro "scene", and most of the people who are into that scene really like the "poopoo peepee fuckyfucky" as I call it. There's plenty of good Bizarro- Jordan Krall, Bradley Sands, Andersen Prunty, Garrett Cook- but they are good despite being Bizarro, not because of it. A lot of my friends write Bizarro, and I'm certainly lumped in with them at times. I've also been quoted in the Steampunk Bible as "absurdist author Jess Gulbranson", and I was infinitely more proud of that.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Jan 24, 2012 11:02 pm

angelfromanotherpin wrote:Is there a difference between Bizarro fiction and just plain absurdist fiction?

Yes. Bizarro-fiction people claim that they are pushing the boundaries of art by telling stories in ways other people haven't. Absurdists claim that they are breaking the boundaries of storytelling with new art. China Miéville, for example, is Bizarro and not absurdist, because he claims that he is still telling stories that have a narrative structure.

If that seems confusing or overly pretentious to you, that is because it is.

-Username17

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Tue Jan 24, 2012 11:04 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:
If that seems confusing or overly pretentious to you, that is because it is.

-Username17

I 100% agree. Though, I don't think Mieville has ever really identified with Bizarro directly- he's more of a "New Weird" guy.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Tue Jan 24, 2012 11:09 pm

We should start a thread on bizarro fiction at some point, because it's fun to discuss. Not always fun to read, but well, there's some of that in all fiction.

angelfromanotherpin · Tue Jan 24, 2012 11:12 pm

Interesting. I might try something with the Frog Prince. There's other stuff which is more conducive to weirding up, but Frog Prince has the name recognition.

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Tue Jan 24, 2012 11:21 pm

Go for it. And thanks, everybody. I feel like I called in the cavalry.

K · Post by K » Wed Jan 25, 2012 4:19 am

The funny thing is that I first heard about this genre this morning in a conversation.

That being said, I have no idea what it is even after I read the wiki page for it. Can anyone give me an example plot or maybe a text sample?

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 10:50 am

Jordan Krall's Squid Pulp Blues - I'm just going to steal the Amazon synopsis:

Three novellas of squishy-noir from Jordan Krall.

On the surface, Thompson looks like any other blue collar New Jersey town. But beneath the working class exterior lies a bizarro world of fetishistic crime, sleazy motels, and squid. In these three bizarro-noir novellas, the reader is thrown into a world of murderers, drugs made from squid parts, deformed war veterans, and a mischievous apocalyptic donkey...

THE HABERDASHER

Red Henry Hooper just got out on parole. He meets his friends, fellow small-time criminals Dix Hayden and Grant Minissi, in a cheap motel to drink a couple beers and perhaps plan another job. Things go sour when Grant takes some bad drugs. Meanwhile, in the next room, strange things are happening that will make Henry's day even worse: a woman is missing her feet and a notorious local gangster Robert Hapertas (aka The Haberdasher) is on his way. And he's not pleased...

THE LONGHEADS

Tommy Pingpong knew it was a mistake sending his partner Jake into the meeting with their boss. Now they were on the run from Peachy, a diaper-wearing gangster who would like nothing better than to kill the both of them. On top of that, the deformed war veterans called the longheads are buying up all the guns in town, planning something big that'll have severe implications for the town of Thompson.

THE APOCALYPSE DONKEY

When Simon Palmer took the black envelope from the tall man in the parking lot, he didn't know that this case of mistaken identity would make his day take such a weird turn for the worst. When the man finally realizes that he gave the envelope to the wrong guy, Simon is thrown into a dangerous cat-and-mouse game that finally leads to a sleazy carnival of squid violence...

The three novellas are set in the same town, and there is a quirky but developed background throughout which is kind of interesting and fun; if you can get past the obsessive weird sexual fetishes and toilet humor, it's almost noirish in tone. I'm not sure any of them have an actual plot; events just unfold and happen to the characters being focused on. You get a feel that there's something going on, but then Little Bing-Bong, the Apocalypse Donkey, climbs out of a trunk.

Compare or contrast that, maybe, to I Knocked Up Satan's Daughter by Carlton Mellick III. It's somewhere in California, and a mildly autistic scion of Christian Evangelicals lives in a house made out of legos. Legos are his thing, it's all he does is make shit with legos. Then a pregnant succubus turns up on his door, and it turns out he knocked her up. They have a few ups and downs, but it turns out her demon powers can give life to his lego creations...including his lego girlfriend. What follows is more or less a standard Hollywood romantic comedy plus demons, Christian ninjas and cyborgs, and demonically-powered lego weapons.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 11:49 am

So, basically just anime, then.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 12:20 pm

No...although there are a couple manga that would definitely qualify, I think. I've only read four or five books in the "bizarro" genre, discounting Edward Lee's stuff, which is more horror, but there's a definite trend toward threshold-breaking and deliberate extremes that reminds me of some early splatterpunk stuff, but more obsessed with poop, farts, pee, sweaty gym socks, cannibalism, etc.

Trying to think of an example...The Kobold Wizard's Dildo of Enlightenment+2, for example, is for the most part deliberately puerile, but that's because the author is making a point about the puerility in RPGs and among gamers in general. The plot works at two levels, like Game Night and a lot of other gamer-fiction: a bunch of terrible, fucked-up teenagers are playing dungeons and dragons, and we start the narrative from the perspective of their player characters, who do not initially realize they're in a game - until buggered by the aforementioned Dildo of Enlightenment. From that point on, you've got a PC that realizes he's in a shitty, nonsense dungeon created by a disfunctional, tits-and-lesbian obsessed teenage MC and being piloted by an equally retarded if slightly less emotionally stunted player. It's not great literature and I'll never read it again, but it's not actually stupid - just excessive.

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 3:30 pm

You pretty much nailed it, AH. I would say that if you liked Squid Pulp Blues, Krall's later one Fistful of Feet was even better.

And of course, discussing Mellick's stuff- he's the guy who pretty much set the tone for the Bizarro scene, and he churns out a half dozen of those books a year it seems like. If it's not legos, it's meat, and if it's not meat it's candy. And there are lesbian ninjas and people with hot dogs for heads. Yawn.

You brought up one interesting thing, mentioning that Satan's Daughter is basically a standard Hollywood romcom. I think the strength of the Bizarro scene is also its greatest weakness: inclusivity. Good because everyone is encouraged to create, and a lot of authors have seen publication earlier (myself included) because of that encouragement. Bad because the lowest common denominator is a formulaic story with rape, monsters, and random body part/food substitution bolted on, and that is what tends to get put out.

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 3:43 pm

Bizarro suggestions that don't suck:

Jordan Krall- Squid Pulp Blues, Fistful of Feet. At heart, these are genre books- noir and spaghetti western, respectively. They're loving pastiches, IMHO, and the weird tentacle element isn't TOO overdone.

Andersen Prunty- Jack and Mr. Grin, Zerostrata. The first is like a haiku version of mid/late period Stephen King. I'm not sure how to describe the second, but it's heartbreakingly beautiful in a way that almost seems like a translation of foreign-language magical realism.

Garrett Cook- Murderland, Archelon Ranch. Murderland was Garrett's first book, and it shows. It's a dystopian book about a world where serial killing has become mainstream media, which sounds like a terrible idea, but he pulls it off. Archelon Ranch is trippy, and one of the few books that actually makes 4th wall breaking work.

Bradley Sands- Rico Slade Will Fucking Kill You. Bradley and I are both big fans of Mark Leyner, so if you are familiar with him then you know a bit of what to expect here. Simple premise- an aging action movie star loses his shit, believes he is his character, and goes on a rampage. Hilarious.

Mykle Hansen- Help, A Bear is Eating Me. In the humor vein like the last one, this book's protagonist is a truly despicable yuppie manager type, who is trapped under his car in Alaska and being eaten by a bear.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 4:53 pm

JigokuBosatsu wrote:You brought up one interesting thing, mentioning that Satan's Daughter is basically a standard Hollywood romcom.

Well, granted that Mellick completely admits that and he just wanted to get the idea out of his head.

What I like about bizarro fiction is that at heart, it looks like the honest literary descendent of Philip Jose Farmer's Image of the Beast, or as I once put it elsewhere, the literary equivalent of second-generation exploitation cinema: books that are aware of the transgressive fiction of yore and deliberately and consciously use those tropes and images, escalating it to a greater degree. I don't know how much of that is artistic license and how much is Beavis & Butthead style "Heh heh, cool!", but I suspect a fair admixture.

Edward Lee...I don't know if he's "properly" bizarro, but he's at least on the edge of the genre, and some of his books are formulaic hackwork and some of them I really, really like. I've mainly just read his Lovecraft stuff because, y'know, my essay - when he's good and original, he's really good, and when he's bad, he's almost so-bad-its-good - which I think is what a lot of authors in the bizarro genre are going for.

I'm just waiting for one of them to take an Amish romance novel and add zombies.

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 5:01 pm

Well, Lee writes for Deadite Press, which is the "horror" imprint of Eraserhead, the biggest Bizarro publisher. I guess he's an edge case. The one book of his that I got, I couldn't get into despite everyone's heartfelt recommendations. It was... too rapey, I guess.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 5:04 pm

Haunter on the Threshold? That was the worst of his I've yet read.

erik · Post by **erik** » Sun Feb 05, 2012 3:06 pm

Here's another twist on Pinocchio, courtesy of Unshelved Book Club.

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Wed Feb 22, 2012 5:59 pm

Hey, anybody else here make it in? I know they're keeping a lid on the TOC, but this is the Den, so... fuck it.

Frank, your idea was pretty awesome. Kind of hoping it sees print.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Feb 22, 2012 7:26 pm

JigokuBosatsu wrote:Hey, anybody else here make it in? I know they're keeping a lid on the TOC, but this is the Den, so... fuck it.

Frank, your idea was pretty awesome. Kind of hoping it sees print.

I'm guessing not. They asked for a draft, so I wrote up and sent them a first draft in a few hours. Then I never heard from them again. Not even a rejection. I suppose it's just sitting in the "maybe, but probably not" pile. I'll post it in its entirety if they ever confirm that they aren't publishing it.

-Username17