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5 Stories

by Peter Straub (Goodreads Author)

4.04 · rating details · 25 ratings · 3 reviews

Offered for the first time in a collected format, this selection of short stories features five gripping tales by one of the horror genre's most literate and endlessly inventive writers, Peter Straub - "Little Red's Tango," "Lapland, or Film Noir," "The Geezers," "Donald Duck," and "Mr. Aickman's Air Rifle."

Paperback, 125 pages

Published August 27th 2008 by Borderlands Press (first published July 16th 2008)

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Feb 04, 2009

Terri rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: anthologies-short-stories

As the title says, 5 stories. Each are very different but they all seemed dull to me. Nothing very memorable. The one about Donald Duck was amusing at least. I didnt hate them, they just don't seem memorable to me.

· see review

Apr 27, 2008

Stephen rated it

· review of another edition

There are very few Straub stories that I have not enjoyed. Here is no different. These tales are strong, perhaps not as strong as his early works, but strong non the less.

Look for 'Poe's Chi;dren' in October 2008 and 'The Skylark' in Spring, 2009.

· see review

Apr 11, 2009

Christopher Roden rated it

· review of another edition

Two real favourites here: 'Little Red's Tango' and 'Mr Aickman's Air-rifle'. Clever stuff.

· see review

Feb 09, 2012

Heath marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Jan 31, 2012

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Jan 15, 2012

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Jan 15, 2012

Jdjones27 marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Shelves: buy

Dec 21, 2011

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Dec 13, 2011

Brett rated it

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Shelves: straub

Dec 10, 2011

Charlotte Conley rated it

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Nov 06, 2011

Arizona marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Shelves: bram-stoker-award-winner

Nov 03, 2011

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Oct 26, 2011

Randy Wiggins rated it

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Oct 23, 2011

Ellen Leclaire rated it

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Oct 22, 2011

Jacob marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Shelves: owned, collections, powells-material, trade-size

Sep 17, 2011

Matthew Pridham marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Aug 19, 2011

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Aug 07, 2011

Chris marked it as to-read

Shelves: own

Aug 05, 2011

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About Peter Straub

Peter Straub was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on 2 March, 1943, the first of three sons of a salesman and a nurse. The salesman wanted him to become an athlete, the nurse thought he would do well as either a doctor or a Lutheran minister, but all he wanted to do was to learn to read.

When kindergarten turned out to be a stupefyingly banal disappointment devoted to cutting animal shapes ...morePeter Straub was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on 2 March, 1943, the first of three sons of a salesman and a nurse. The salesman wanted him to become an athlete, the nurse thought he would do well as either a doctor or a Lutheran minister, but all he wanted to do was to learn to read.

When kindergarten turned out to be a stupefyingly banal disappointment devoted to cutting animal shapes out of heavy colored paper, he took matters into his own hands and taught himself to read by memorizing his comic books and reciting them over and over to other neighborhood children on the front steps until he could recognize the words. Therefore, when he finally got to first grade to find everyone else laboring over the imbecile adventures of Dick, Jane and Spot (“See Spot run. See, see, see,”), he ransacked the library in search of pirates, soldiers, detectives, spies, criminals, and other colorful souls, Soon he had earned a reputation as an ace storyteller, in demand around campfires and in back yards on summer evenings.

This career as the John Buchan to the first grade was interrupted by a collision between himself and an automobile which resulted in a classic near-death experience, many broken bones, surgical operations, a year out of school, a lengthy tenure in a wheelchair, and certain emotional quirks. Once back on his feet, he quickly acquired a severe stutter which plagued him into his twenties and now and then still puts in a nostalgic appearance, usually to the amusement of telephone operators and shop clerks. Because he had learned prematurely that the world was dangerous, he was jumpy, restless, hugely garrulous in spite of his stutter, physically uncomfortable and, at least until he began writing horror three decades later, prone to nightmares. Books took him out of himself, so he read even more than earlier, a youthful habit immeasurably valuable to any writer. And his storytelling, for in spite of everything he was still a sociable child with a lot of friends, took a turn toward the dark and the garish, toward the ghoulish and the violent. He found his first “effect” when he discovered that he could make this kind of thing funny.

As if scripted, the rest of life followed. He went on scholarship to Milwaukee Country Day School and was the darling of his English teachers. He discovered Thomas Wolfe and Jack Kerouac, patron saints of wounded and self-conscious adolescence, and also, blessedly, jazz music, which spoke of utterance beyond any constraint: passion and liberation in the form of speech on the far side of the verbal border. The alto saxophone player Paul Desmond, speaking in the voice of a witty and inspired angel, epitomized ideal expressiveness, Our boy still had no idea why inspired speech spoke best when it spoke in code, the simultaneous terror and ecstasy of his ancient trauma, as well as its lifelong (so far, anyhow) legacy of anger, being so deeply embedded in the self as to be imperceptible, Did he behave badly, now and then? Did he wish to shock, annoy, disturb, and provoke? Are you kidding? Did he also wish to excel, to keep panic and uncertainty at arm's length by good old main force effort? Make a guess. So here we have a pure but unsteady case of denial happily able to maintain itself through merciless effort. Booted along by invisible fears and horrors, this fellow was rewarded by wonderful grades and a vague sense of a mysterious but transcendent wholeness available through expression. He went to the University of Wisconsin and, after opening his eyes to the various joys of Henry James, William Carlos Williams, and the Texas blues-rocker Steve Miller, a great & joyous character who lived across the street, passed through essentially unchanged to emerge in 1965 with an honors degree in English, then an MA at Columbia a year later. He thought actual writing was probably beyond him even though actual writing was probably what he was best at - down crammed he many and many a book, stirred by(less)

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