Shelley Jackson

Shelley Jackson’s most recent novel, The Melancholy of Anatomy (Anchor Books, $12), was published in April. Here she lists six “underappreciated” books from the “what is it?” category—her favorite.

The Tunnel: Selected Poems by Russell Edson (Field Translations Series, $17). This isn’t poetry as you know it. “There was a man who had too many mustaches.” “We bought an electric monkey.” “A woman was fighting a tree.” “If the head could be converted into a sort of shack for animals …” Edson proposes an absurdity, unpacks its logical consequences, then leaps right into the sublime.

Motorman by David Ohle (out-of-print). This novel (there is a story here, somewhere, though it’s told in visionary snippets) concerns Moldenke, who has four hearts (implants) and is occasionally menaced by jellyheads, who look like humans but have nothing but goo between their ears. Why does the powerful Bunce have it in for him?

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Cobra by Severo Sarduy (Dalkey Archive Press, $14). This outrageousness concerns the transsexual Madam (diva in the Lyrical Theater of Dolls), her dwarf double, and their attempts at metamorphosis. The book is a baroque barrage of prose, poetry, diagrams, equations, and stage dialogue. It was originally written in Spanish; pity and wonder are due the translator!

The Words After Carl Sandburg’s Rootabaga Stories and Jean-Paul Sartre by Carla Harryman (Tumba Press, $12). This “novel” collages fragments of Carl Sandburg’s Rootabaga Stories with the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre. The robust and playful lyricism of the children’s book meets the high abstractions of philosophy to amazing effect. “One day the nihilist held forth at the lily slump…”

My Horse and Other Stories by Stacey Levine (Sun & Moon Press, $12). “My horse is a very strange pet. It whimpers, is covered with sores, needs a clamp to hold its loose skin tight.” In these short stories, surreal situations are treated with a painstaking sobriety; terror and hilarity are both close at hand.

Darkness Moves: An Henri Michaux Anthology, 1927–1984 by Henri Michaux (University of California Press, $25). “Pon was born of an egg, then he was born of a codfish and while being born made it explode, then he was born of a shoe through bipartition…” Michaux acquired a cult reputation during the 60’s for his accounts of his mescaline experiences, but his mind is quite interesting enough off drugs, and some of these unclassifiable works are little masterpieces of the surreal.