illustration - the well written - catherynne m. valente

I often enjoy fairy tale retellings, especially when a writer completely turns
the story on its head, from an angle of far left field.  "Bones Like Black Sugar"
(Hansel & Gretel years later) by Valente is one of those.  She basically writes
about the phenomenon of victims bonding with their kidnappers through the
medium of fantasy - amazing.  Have a read (link soon to follow) if you haven't
already.  And enjoy some illustrative takes on the tale below.

The moon slashes windows into the black soil, and he sleeps behind me,
sleeps dead and sweat-pooled. My steps grin on the pine needles and I
need no breadcrumbs, never needed breadcrumbs, north into the forest, the
wood, the thicket of breath and branches that pricks my skull hours on hours,
that tangles my lungs in sap and sweet. It is not that I remember where it is,
but my feet have learned no other path than this, this crow-hung track slinking
through the dark. They turn and point with the eagerness of a girl in pigtails,
a girl in braids, a girl with ribbons streaming like oaths behind her.

- Catherynne M. Valente, "Bones Like Black Sugar"

By Heidi Hanninen

By Marie Josee

the well written - daphne du maurier

They are not brave, the days when we are twenty-one. They are full of little
cowardices, little fears without foundation, and one is so easily bruised, so
swiftly wounded, one falls to the first barbed word. To-day, wrapped in the
complacent armour of approaching middle age, the infinitesimal pricks of day
by day brush one but lightly and are soon forgotten, but then—how a careless
word would linger, becoming a fiery stigma, and how a look, a glance over a
shoulder, branded themselves as things eternal.

- Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

By Amber Ortolano

photo stories - empire state building

Buildings can have personalities of their own - allure, mystery, evils.
The show 666 Park Avenue builds on this premise, as do Millhauser's
"The Barnam Museum" and many of his other stories in Dangerous
Laughter ("The Tower" and "The Other Town").   The lavish houses in
Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby play important roles as well.  The list
goes on and on.  What houses, towers, and skyscrapers play roles in
your stories?

Downtown. Lights on buildings and everything that makes you wonder.
And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.
- Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

By Warhol

on reading - gustave flaubert

You forget everything. The hours slip by. You travel in your chair through
centuries you seem seem to see before you, your thoughts are caught up in
the story, dallying with the details or following the course of the plot, you
enter into characters, so that it seems as if it were your own heart beating
beneath their costumes.

- Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

By Olaf Hajek

illustration - eric fortune

Eric's bio describes his work as characters in our world with a touch of
surrealism.  He fits the paintings with emotion through soft lighting and
atmosphere, along with specific and masterful color choices.  They are
tone and emotion, otherworldly portraits even, and while other artists may
paint specific moments, Eric paints the big picture, the essence.

There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion.
- Edgar Allan Poe

the well written - angela carter

She gained entry into the world by a mysterious loophole in its metaphysics
and, during her kiss, she sucked his breath from his lungs so that her own
bosom heaved with it.

She sank her teeth into his throat and drained him.  He did not have the time
to make a sound.  When he was empty, he slipped straight out of her embrace
down to her feet with a dry rustle, as of a cast armful of dead leaves, and there
he sprawled on the floorboards, as empty, useless and bereft of meaning as his
own tumbled shawl.

She tugged impatiently at the strings which moored her and out they came in
bunches from her head, her arms and her legs.  She stripped them off her
fingertips and stretched out her long, white hands, flexing and unflexing them
again and again.  She stamped her elegant feet to make the new blood flow
more freely there.

- Angela Carter, "The Loves of Lady Purple"

Pop S/S 2007, Mert & Marcus

illustration - a pod of mermaids

I recently read Millhauser's short story "Mermaid Fever," found here
at Harper's Magazine for free.  "The Little Mermaid" has been retold many
times (Midnight Pearls by Debbie Viguie, Mermaid by Carolyn Turgeon),
and then there was the rumor that Stephanie Meyer was writing a book
on the topic of mermaids.  Anyway, it's interesting to see different authors'
takes on the creatures (Sur La Lune has a list of modern literary
interpretations, short or long, for any who are interested), as it is wonderful
to see different illustrators' treatments below.  Enjoy.

At 5:06 a.m. the body was discovered by George Caldwell, a forty-year-old
postal worker who lived two blocks from the water and was fond of his early-
morning swim. Caldwell found her lying just below the tide line; he thought
she was a teenager who had drowned. The body lay on its side among strings
of seaweed and scattered mussel shells. Caldwell stepped back. He did not
want trouble.  “I thought she was a high school girl,” Caldwell later told a
reporter; we read it in the Listener. “It was still dark out there. I thought she
was wearing some sort of a dress with the top torn off. I could tell she didn’t
look right. I didn’t want to get too close.

- Steven Millhauser, "Mermaid Fever"

There are people all over the world who carry the mermaid inside them, that
otherworldly beauty and longing and desire that made her reach for heaven
when she lived in the darkness of the sea.

- Carolyn Turgeon, Mermaid: A Twist on the Classic Tale

By Steph Holmes

By Sophie Blackall