Oct

17

The Loopy Garou.

Posted by Christopher Waldrop

October 17, 2008 |

Haven’t you noticed a kind of madness in my eyes?
It’s only me, dear, in my midnight disguise.
Pay no attention if I crawl across the room.
It’s just another full moon.

-The Kinks

I try to indulge my werewolf fetish on a regular basis, but in October it seems to come on even stronger, so I have to pull out a few favorite stories. Right at the top of the list is Daniel Pinkwater’s The Magic Pretzel, which opens with Chapter Minus Three, and an important and useful Q & A about werewolves, which includes:

Q: What makes a person turn into a werewolf?

A: Everyone knows people turn into werewolves if they are bitten by a werewolf, but you can turn into a werewolf by:

1. thinking about werewolves

2. using a drinking fountain after a werewolf

3. reading a book like this one

4. for no reason at all

It’s the story of Norman Gnormal, whose parents wish they’d had a dog but ended up with him instead. Fortunately Norman has understanding parents who send him to obedience school and give him plenty of toys to chew and a liver treat before bed if he’s good and doesn’t bark at night.  Norman gets signed up by his school’s principal for the Werewolf Club. The other members include Ralf Alfa (ambition: to bite the President of the United States), Billy Furball (ambition: to bite Miss America), and Lucy Fang (ambition: to be named Miss America then bite the judges). The club is led by teacher Mr. Talbot who’s been cursed by his giant half-brother Lance Von Sweeny, and is stuck as a half-human, half-werewolf. The only cure is the magic pretzel, which Sweeny keeps in the Pretzel Museum, along with a piece of the Great Pretzel of China, pretzels that resemble famous people, and the largest pretzel in existence, which holds up the museum ceiling. It’s classic Daniel Pinkwater goofiness, and even though at times it’s in danger of going over the top (Sweeny drives a giant parsnip) it’s all good fun. It’s the first in a series.

When I’m in the mood for something a little more serious, Hunting The American Werewolf is what I reach for. Linda Godfrey, who also wrote The Beast Of Bray Road, set her net even wider for her second book on werewolves, gathering stories in her home state of Wisconsin, as well as Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee. She includes stories of Bigfoot sightings as well as a Lizard Man. Godfrey briefly suggests theories for these creatures, noting the topography around each sighting and suggesting where such large animals might find prey, water, and shelter, and she occasionally suggests possible supernatural explanations for the creatures. And yet, overall, she’s got a wonderfully detached style, never judging any of the people whose stories she takes down. She’s just curious, and, more than anything else, an objective collector.

My all-time favorite werewolf story, though, is The Ambassadors by Anthony Boucher. The first manned expedition to Mars discovers that the Martians are Canis lupus sapiens. Naturally this causes some problems, especially with communication and diplomacy. Professor Hunyadi, who led the expedition, immediately calls on the werewolves of Earth to step forward and act as ambassadors.  As Boucher explains,

Barbarous though it may seem to us now, mankind was at that time divided into three groups: those who disbelieved in werewolves; those who feared and hated werewolves; and, of course, those who were werewolves.

Finally seeing a chance to integrate, those who are werewolves, who include a Catholic Cardinal, a professor at Duke University, and a canine star who, as it turns out, is only canine part of the time, come out of the, er, closet. It’s enough to make you look a little more closely at those commercials with talking animals.

Boucher’s short story can be found in the collection 50 Short Science Fiction Tales, a collection of short short science fiction stories. The same collection also includes the epistolary story Who’s Cribbing? by Jack Lewis. Compact and extremely funny with a great surprise ending, Lewis’s story is the perfect short story in every way except one…there are no werewolves in it.


Comments

3 Comments so far

  1. Baino on October 17, 2008 3:35 am

    Erm is this a pre-Halloween obsession or should I be worried! Ah short stories, now those I could finish!

  2. Christopher Waldrop on October 17, 2008 8:08 am

    No need to worry–unless you’re a squirrel or rabbit in my yard.
    That book 50 Short Science Fiction Tales is really wonderful because they’re really short-short stories–many under two pages. The writer Frederic Brown also specialized in such short-short stories, usually with a very funny (and often twisted) twist at the end.

  3. Jeffrey Marks on October 17, 2008 6:01 pm

    Boucher also had a collection of his fantasy and SF works, The Compleat Boucher (a riff on his collection The Compleat Werewolf.) You should check out Boucher’s story, “The Compleat Werewolf” and my biography of Boucher, appropriately entitled Anthony Boucher.

Name (required)

Email (required)

Website

Speak your mind

<< Post Navigation >>

« « Book ‘Em: For The Love Of Lovecraft. | Word Of The Week: October 18th, 2008 » »