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American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from the 1940s to Now

Edited by Peter Straub

“What remains when the conscious and functioning self has been erased is mankind’s fundamental condition—irrational, violent, guilt-wracked, despairing, and mad.” — Peter Straub
“An astounding collection of modern horror.” — Kurt Busiek

Overview
News & Views
Table of Contents
Contributors

Overview

Interviews Jonathan R. Eller on Ray Bradbury, “first and foremost a teller of tales”
October 21, 2022

Story of the Week Frank Norris, “Grettir at Thorhall-stead”
October 30, 2017

The Moviegoer Terror, suspense, and the power of suggestion in The Haunting
November 11, 2016

The second volume of Peter Straub’s pathbreaking two-volume anthology American Fantastic Tales picks up the story in 1940 and provides persuasive evidence that the decades since then have seen an extraordinary flowering. While continuing to explore the classic themes of horror and fantasy, successive generations of writers—including Shirley Jackson, Ray Bradbury, Charles Beaumont, Stephen King, Steven Millhauser, and Thomas Ligotti—have opened up the field to new subjects, new styles, and daringly fresh expansions of the genre’s emotional and philosophical underpinnings. For many of these writers, the fantastic is simply the best available tool for describing the dislocations and newly hatched terrors of the modern era, from the nightmarish post-apocalyptic savagery of Harlan Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” to proliferating identities set deliriously adrift in Tim Powers’ “Pat Moore.”

“At its core,” writes editor Peter Straub, “the fantastic is a way of seeing.” In place of gothic trappings, the post-war masters of the fantastic often substitute an air of apparent normality. The surfaces of American life—department store displays in John Collier’s “Evening Primrose,” tar-paper roofs seen from an el train in Fritz Leiber’s “Smoke Ghost,” the balcony of a dilapidated movie theater in Tennessee Williams’ “The Mysteries of the Joy Rio”—become invested with haunting presences. The sphere of family life is transformed, in Davis Grubb’s “Where the Woodbine Twineth” or Richard Matheson’s “Prey,” into an arena of eerie menace. Dramas of madness, malevolent temptation, and vampiristic appropriation play themselves out against the backdrop of modern urban life in John Cheever’s “Torch Song” and Shirley Jackson’s unforgettable “The Daemon Lover.”

Nearly half the stories collected in this volume were published in the last two decades, including work by Michael Chabon, M. Rickert, Brian Evenson, Kelly Link, and Benjamin Percy: writers for whom traditional genre boundaries have ceased to exist, and who have brought the fantastic into the mainstream of contemporary writing.

The 42 stories in this second volume of American Fantastic Tales provide an irresistible journey into the phantasmagoric underside of the American imagination.

Peter Straub, editor, is the author of 18 novels, which have been translated into more than 20 languages. He has won the British Fantasy Award, eight Bram Stoker Awards, and two World Fantasy Awards. He edited H. P. Lovecraft: Tales, volume #155 of The Library of America series.

This Library of America series edition is printed on acid-free paper and features Smyth-sewn binding, a full cloth cover, and a ribbon marker.

This volume is available for adoption in the Guardian of American Letters Fund.
News & Views

Interviews Jonathan R. Eller on Ray Bradbury, “first and foremost a teller of tales”
October 21, 2022

Story of the Week Frank Norris, “Grettir at Thorhall-stead”
October 30, 2017

The Moviegoer Terror, suspense, and the power of suggestion in The Haunting
November 11, 2016

Story of the Week Julian Hawthorne, “Absolute Evil”
November 7, 2016

News In New York, starry names highlight a 100th birthday party for Shirley Jackson
February 23, 2016
Table of Contents

John Collier | Evening Primrose
Fritz Leiber | Smoke Ghost
Tennessee Williams | The Mysteries of the Joy Rio
Jane Rice | The Refugee
Anthony Boucher | Mr. Lupescu
Truman Capote | Miriam
Jack Snow | Midnight
John Cheever | Torch Song
Shirley Jackson | The Daemon Lover
Paul Bowles | The Circular Valley
Jack Finney | I’m Scared
Vladimir Nabokov | The Vane Sisters
Ray Bradbury | The April Witch
Charles Beaumont | Black Country
Jerome Bixby | Trace
Davis Grubb | Where the Woodbine Twineth
Donald Wandrei | Nightmare
Harlan Ellison | I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream
Richard Matheson | Prey
T.E.D. Klein | The Events at Poroth Farm
Isaac Bashevis Singer | Hanka
Fred Chappell | Linnaeus Forgets
John Crowley | Novelty
Jonathan Carroll | Mr Fiddlehead
Joyce Carol Oates | Family
Thomas Ligotti | The Last Feast of Harlequin
Peter Straub | A Short Guide to the City
Jeff VanderMeer | The General Who Is Dead
Stephen King | That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French
George Saunders | Sea Oak
Caitlín Kiernan | The Long Hall on the Top Floor
Thomas Tessier | Nocturne
Michael Chabon | The God of Dark Laughter
Joe Hill | Pop Art
Poppy Z. Brite | Pansu
Steven Millhauser | Dangerous Laughter
M. Rickert | The Chambered Fruit
Brian Evenson | The Wavering Knife
Kelly Link | Stone Animals
Tim Powers | Pat Moore
Gene Wolfe | The Little Stranger
Benjamin Percy | Dial Tone
Contributors

Charles Beaumont
Jerome Bixby
Anthony Boucher
Paul Bowles
Ray Bradbury
Poppy Z. Brite
Truman Capote
Jonathan Carroll
Michael Chabon
Fred Chappell
John Cheever
John Collier
John Crowley
Harlan Ellison
Brian Evenson
Jack Finney
Davis Grubb
Joe Hill
Shirley Jackson
Caitlin R. Kiernan
Stephen King
T. E. D. Klein
Fritz Leiber
Thomas Ligotti
Kelly Link
Richard Matheson
Steven Millhauser
Vladimir Nabokov
Joyce Carol Oates
Benjamin Percy
Tim Powers
Jane Rice
M. Rickert
George Saunders
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Jack Snow
Peter Straub
Thomas Tessier
Jeff VanderMeer
Donald Wandrei
Tennessee Williams
Gene Wolfe

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ISBN: 978-1-59853-048-3 713 pages

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N° 197 Library of America Series

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