Sunday 8 August 2010

Tall Short Stories. Edited by Eric Duthie

Tall Short Stories

edited by Eric Duthie

Published by Ace Star, New York, 1959.

This is a lovely collection of short stories that I first, serendipitously, laid my hands on nearly 30 years ago. The book then disappeared from my shelf. When I wanted to re-read it, it was out of print. Recently I located a second-hand copy on Amazon.com and got Chitra to get it for me. On the second (actually nth) reading it is still as lovely as ever. The book collects together about 50 short stories,all of them, as the book title says, 'tall' stories. It has a nice introduction by Duthie (who apparently is/was a kind of compulsive editor of various collections of short stories). Let me list some of my favourites, that I remember from the previous, 30-year old, reading as well - The open window, 'Saki'; The unicorn in the garden, James Thurber; Earth to earth, Robert Graves; Two bottles of relish, Lord Dunsany; Guest of the Redshields, Christina Stead; Pigs is pigs, Ellis Parker Butler; The awful fate of Melpomenous Jones, Stephen Leacock; The Golden Scilens, Sir John Squire; God and the machine, Nigel Balchain; I'll always call you Schnorrer, my African explorer, S.J. Perelman; Love is a fallacy, Max Shulman.

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