Seven Cries of Delight

by Tom Newton

Reweirding the world.... This collection of twenty-four short stories explores unknown but vaguely familiar worlds. Charting the frontier between the real and the illusory, Seven Cries of Delight celebrates offbeat independent human curiosity, the unorthodox spirit of Renaissance enquiry into the nature of things and experience, and its exposition in fictions unfettered by either convention or doctrine.

A man spends years planning to eat his shoes, another defines his relationships with people as musical intervals. Effect precedes cause. There is a conscious and malevolent reflection in a mirror, and a writer who is forced to use italics in exchange for help in overcoming writer’s block. King Arthur and his companions are sleeping in a cave below a septic tank. Someone possibly confesses to murder, or maybe not.

The subject matter varies widely but what the stories have in common is their perception from unexpected angles—their serious absurdism.

"Radically disorientating, witty and discerning, Tom Newton’s new collection of stories plays with space, time and the interstices of consciousness, and in turn provokes, disconcerts and always entertains."
—Salley Vickers, author of The Other Side of You and Miss Garnet’s Angel

"Tom Newton’s pen probes the nature of consciousness... Is it a dream or palpable reality?... Totally engrossing!"
—John Ashton, The Psychedelic Furs, Satellite Paradiso, musician and producer

Pseudepigrapha:

"In this slim volume, on which he spent years of meticulous labor, Tom Newton has created not a mere imitation nor illusory replica but an actual verbatim original work of the 2019 classic Seven Cries of Delight."
—Jorge Luis Borges

"Ironing board, plucked chicken, seven cries, a peach. Eat this book."
—Salvador Dali

180 pages, Paperback

Published July 6, 2019

Reviews

[Brent · Rating 5 out of 5]

Seven Cries of Delight is not like most collections of literary short stories. As legions of MFA students busily workshop their childhood drama into market-friendly “realistic” fiction, Tom Newton has clearly been following a different muse. These stories (two dozen of them!) range widely in setting and imagery and allusion, but all are hung on a solid spine: a lively curiosity about the deeper, invisible nature of what we call reality. This curiosity is expressed as speculative imaginings and unharnessed mental rovings, with an articulate, wryly humorous voice that obviously springs from a well-traveled and well-read intellect. At every turn are enjoyable discoveries of unlikely connections, unpredictable logic, and unanswerable questions.

A few samples…. “The Best of Luck” opens the book by juxtaposing a love for idleness and an occult method for making utterly random travel plans. The brief title story is a disorienting mix of horse-riding astronauts, cryptozoology, an obscure literary science experiment, vintage electronic musical instruments, and an enigmatic password. “Effects and Causes” intertwines European spies, a South American knotted-string form of writing, and basement rooms that only sometimes exist. “An English Story” brings together in a pub four very British strangers with nothing in common but a sudden shared moment of bloodless violence and a peaceful, drunken death. “Antifoni” proposes a Viking-like village of seafarers who build a concrete boat to take them on a search for better quality housing.

Seven Cries of Delight is a genre-buster. I’m not familiar enough with the historical tradition of surrealist writings to say where this book may fit. I suspect that fans of Magritte and Dali who have a literary bent will appreciate it. It carries a hint of Lewis Carroll but is more adult; a large dose of Borges but is more accessible. For a contemporary comparison, perhaps the early work of Barry Yourgrau is apt. Or most recently, the highly lauded Ted Chiang. Chiang's stories are more obviously science fiction, and in my view are not as free and funny as Newton's.

But what’s the point of comparison? This is an unusual, entertaining, and thought-provoking collection. It contains genuinely metaphysical and visionary writing without the New Age trappings. On its opening “Pseudepigrapha” page is a quote from Dali: “...Eat this book.”

[Roger Wall · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started reading Tom Newton’s Seven Cries of Delight before the pandemic started but soon found myself distracted by Covid and put the book down. I noted, then, how I usually read unrealistic realistic fiction, and his story collection seemed more like realistic unrealistic fiction. But was it really?

Once the pandemic and antiracism protests were in full swing, I took up where I had left off. This time I easily slipped into its pages. Was I looking for an escape? Or had disease and protest opened my mind to other dimensions?

Often in analyzing stories we pay attention to structure. In the stories of Delight there was conventional “structure” as well as literal structures: structures appearing within the structure of the story itself. Or within the story within the story. Houses (“Inside the Greenhouse”). Lines (“The Tennis Court”). Caves (“Yell0w Pendragon”). Staircases (“Double Helix”). Cisterns (“The Sound of the Bridge”). Once inside these structures cause and effect could become effect and cause (as in “Effects and Causes”). Or mirrors might take on a life of their own and create mayhem for their human reflection in a rebellious attempt at liberation (“Freedom from Belief”).

Puzzles, elaborate reversals that are more than about the plot changing direction—more like reality changing direction. I’m reminded of Buddhist teachings about the mind and the difficulty of seeing things as they are. The tone of the stories is of the everyday, plain spoken but precise. Realistic. It’s as though these states of existence were always there but I was seeing them for the first time.

The title story, “Seven Cries of Delight,” was where I had initially put the collection down. The question it poses, “What is to be done with the sum of all things?” and the answer, “It is to be divided by seven cries of delight.” troubled me for several months. I often asked myself that question: “What is to be done with the sum of all things?” “Must something be done?” I’d wonder. And “What were the seven cries of delight?”

Had Mr. Newton written about no less than the sum of all things? And was I, the reader, being asked to divide that sum by seven cries of delight? As key to understanding his stories? Or was I being encouraged to pursue life in a more meditative way: to view problems and fears as delights that can open us to life, Pema Chödrön teaches? However you want to read Mr. Newton’s stories, as works of art or koans, they have a transformative power to alter how you view reality.

[Aleks Lokensgard · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book for far too long, reading a short story or two every sleepy Sunday morning. I found Tom Newton’s approach to writing quite unique. A wholly different interpretation to reality.
“The sound of the bridge” was my favorite short in this book. Alternately filling me with dreadful anticipation and earnest interest in a subject i find myself often pondering: memory. I felt this was an almost perfect short, as it evokes a multitude of strong feelings in quite a quick span of time, while also having an interesting twist in its closure. Other highlights for me were “The article,” “Double Helix,” “The Buried Queen,” and “Yellow Pendragon.” Perhaps the most pleasing thing about this collection of shorts was that they were all so different. As i finished each one i never knew what the next one would hold for me. Quite a pleasurable read. Cheers and Thank you Tom!