Third Bear Carnival: "The Surgeon's Tale" and "Three Days in a Border Town"

When deciding on whom to invite for the Third Bear Carnival, one person I knew I really hoped to convince to join us was Micaela Morrissette, because Jeff VanderMeer, Ann VanderMeer, and I had become aware of her short fiction at the same time -- when we read her story "Ave Maria" in Conjunctions 49 and immediately decided to reprint it for Best American Fantasy 2.  (We weren't alone in loving the story -- it won a Pushcart Prize, too!)  She has since gone on to all sorts of wonderful things, including publishing an acclaimed story in Weird Tales, "Wendigo".  My first encounter with Micaela, though, had been way back in 2005 when my story "The Art of Comedy" appeared on Web Conjunctions and Micaela helped with the layout and formatting.

And now, with Micaela writing about two of Jeff's stories, it feels like we've all come full circle!  But more importantly, here are some wonderful, and wonderfully-written, insights on Jeff's work.

(Be sure to check out the Carnival link collection, too, because folks from around the world and around the web have recently posted their contributions.  And we've still got a few more coming later...)

On "The Surgeon's Tale" and "Three Days in a Border Town"

by Micaela Morrissette

“The Surgeon’s Tale” and “Three Days in a Border Town” are both love stories, or erotic tragedies; and the universes in which the stories occur bump and rub each other in places. Each takes place in a Weird but decrepit dimension that postdates the collapse of a stronger, richer civilization. In “Three Days in a Border Town,” that past can be read as the readers’ own present, the here and now; and this creates a relevancy, a poignancy that is echoed in the despairing ache of the tone. Despair, enervated but grim, bitter, and ruthless, is everywhere in the stark, moistureless ecosystem of this reptilian narrative, in its dusty, mirage-ridden desert and crumbling border town.