An extract from my real-time review of 'The Mauve Embellishments' by Charles Schneider (Passport Levant 2011) here.
The Stereograph
“Yes. He had heard a fragment of a rumour many years ago at a slide collectors convention in Blackpool.”
Blackpool, or Menton? Seriously, I’m sure I’ve now reached a genuine Weird fiction classic, as if I’ve been led craftily towards this story by the previous ones so the shock is processed to the fullest. The obsession of collecting, to the point of not even sharing the primest item in the collection with oneself! Collecting and death in symbiosis. The secret of parthenogenesis reached but only for those of us who can ‘gestalt’ the twin paintings or illustrative leitmotifs affixed-within-white-space to this text. A rorschach of extreme identical opposites. Clark Ashton Smith eat your heart out. (27 Jun 11)
TO BE CONTINUED
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