Read The Apocalypse Reader Online
Authors: Justin Taylor (Editor)
Tags: #Anthologies, #Anthologies (Multiple Authors), #End of the world, #Fiction, #Literary, #Science Fiction, #Short stories; American, #General, #Short Stories
The Apocalypse Reader
THE
APOCALYPSE READER
THE
APOCALYPSE
READER
EDITED BY JUSTIN TAYLOR
Thunder's Mouth Press I New York
THE APOCALYPSE READER
Compilation and introduction copyright © 2007 by Justin Taylor
Published by
Thunder's Mouth Press
An Imprint of Avalon Publishing Group, Inc.
245 West 17th Street, 11th Floor
New York, NY 10011
First printing, June 2007
Pages 316-18 constitute an extension of this copyright page.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN-13: 978-1-56025-959-6
ISBN-10: 1-56025-959-0
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Book design by Pauline Neuwirth, Neuwirth &Associates, Inc.
Printed in the United States of America
Distributed by Publishers Group West
For my parents, who read to me
CONTENTS
NYARLATHOTEP | H. P. Lovecraft
THE APOCALYPSE COMMENTARY OF BOB PAISNER | Rick Moody
FRAISE. MENTHE. ET POIVRE 1978 | Jared Hohl
WHAT IS IT WHEN GOD SPEAKS? | Diane Williams
SIXTEEN SMALL APOCALYPSES | Lucy Corin
EARTH'S HOLOCAUST | Nathaniel Hawthorne
I ALWAYS GO TO PARTICULAR PLACES | Gary Lutz and Deb Olin Unferth
SQUARE OF THE SUN | Robert Bradley
SOME APPROACHES TO THE PROBLEM OF THE SHORTAGE OF TIME | Ursula K. LeGuin
THINK WARM THOUGHTS | Allison Whittenberg
THE ASH GRAY PROCLAMATION | Dennis Cooper
MISS KANSAS ON JUDGMENT DAY | Kelly Link
WHEN WE WENT TO SEE THE END OF THE WORLD by Dawnie Morningside, age 11 ¼ | Neil Gaiman
I AM 'I DON'T KNOW WHAT I AM' AND YOU ARE AFRAID OF ME AND SO AM | Tao Lin
THE ESCAPE―A TALE OF 1755 | Grace Aguilar
SO WE ARE VERY CONCERNED | Elliott David
THE END OF THE FUTURE | Colette Phair
CROSSING INTO CAMBODIA | Michael Moorcock
THESE ZOMBIES ARE NOT A METAPHOR | Jeff Goldberg
THE RAPID ADVANCE OF SORROW | Theodora Goss
THE CONVERSATION OF EIROS AND CHARMION | Edgar Allan Poe
APOCACALYPSE: A DIPTYCH | Joyce Carol Oates
SAVE ME FROM THE PIOUS AND THE VENGEFUL | Lynne Tillman
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THANKS, AND IN some cases absolutely bottomless gratitude, are due to the following individuals and institutions, whose various efforts on my behalf have included, but are in no way limited to: personal, professional, and material support; extreme love, hot coffee, relentless faith, honest criticism, inexhaustible patience, home-cooked meals, and unsurpassed bartending.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to:
All the contributors to this volume;
Action Books, Alt.Coffee, Broadview Press, Eldritchpress.org, The Graduate Writing Program at The New School, The Hungarian Pastry Shop;
Joshua Bilmes, Carl Bromley, Jill Ciment, Julia Cohen, Michael Cohn, Shanna Compton, Dan Fowikes, Michael Galchinsky, David Gates, Andrew & Caryn Goldner, Gavin J. Grant, Dien Huynh, Amy McDaniel, Richard Nash, John Oakes, Amanda Peters, Robert Polito, Ryan Reed, Jennifer Rumberger, Shya Scanlon, Jeremy Schmall, Michael Silverblatt, Tom Steele, Eva Talmadge, Frederic Tuten, Lukas Volger.
INTRODUCTION
THIS GENERATION SHALL NOT PASS, TILL ALL THESE THINGS BE FULFILLED.
-MATTHEW, 24:35
You HOLD IN your hand thirty-four short stories about the Apocalypse.
People have been telling me this is an especially timely book, but the fact is that, historically, every single generation has imagined itself uniquely in crisis and fantasized that theirs will be the one that witnesses The End. The twentieth century was unique mostly in that it marked the moment when humanity became capable of bringing Apocalypse upon itself, but even the novelty (if not the menace) of that prospect has long since worn off. If this is a timely book, I think the reason is that the topic is perennially timely. It is also, as Frank Kermode puts it in
The Sense of an Ending
, "infallibly interesting."
It's worth pointing out that the word Apocalypse comes from the Greek, and literally means "a revelation" or "an unveiling." It can be used to describe cataclysmic changes of any sort. Revolution, for example, or social upheaval. The American Desegregation movement was Apocalyptic in that its success necessitated the destruction of a certain way of life. (That we're better off without it is not the point.) There are micro-Apocalypses that mark moments in our lives: childhood's end, a relationship's sudden implosion, Death.
There are no excerpts in this book. Even ostensibly "self-contained" excerpts seem unfulfilling to me, and frankly, I don't like them. I have limited this book's scope exclusively to the short story, the ultimate in "self-contained" literature, that eternally embattled form that writers are constantly told "does not sell" or "has outlived its usefulness" or other nonsense. This anthology is a celebration of the short story's inexhaustible vitality, as well as an in-depth (though certainly not exhaustive) survey of its variety.
The forms these stories take, the styles they adopt or invent, the concerns they have, the places and positions and eras their writers come from, and the boundaries they push are as varied as the types of Apocalypse they engage. There are funny stories and deeply touching stories; gory ones and heady ones; stories that focus on an individual or a small group and stories that take on (or take down) the whole world; there are a few very long stories and more than a few very short (or "flash" or "short-short") stories; there are "realistic" and "experimental" stories; overtly and implicitly political stories; utterly apolitical stories; stories that could be classified as belonging to this or that genre (New Wave Fabulist, Horror, Satire, etc.); and stories that defy any attempt at classification. Some are the work of best-selling authors or cult favorites, and others are by people I can guarantee you've never heard of. At least one story has been published elsewhere as a poem.