Hello? Thank you, fellow booklover, for calling. You must be dying to know what just happened to me. Hmm. Where to begin?

Well, my first ever proper read of surrealist literature just happened! It's is this cute little book of short stories by one Leonora Carrington, who, as far as I can tell, was a major figure in the surrealist movement. A staunch feminist as well. And a painter! How cool is that 😊

The blurb calls these short stories “dreamlike, carnivalesque fables”. Oooh! They are also “masterpieces of invention and Grand Guignol humour”. What on earth is Grand Guignol? Well, I looked it up and it was some kind of theatre where they performed naturalistic horror shows.

You are intrigued. I can tell.

Me too, I’ve been intrigued by surrealism ever since I heard about it in school, and I should have explored it much, much earlier.

You know, actually, I recently discussed Carrington’s collection with my imaginary friends from the upper echelons of the void. We sat in an abandoned, poorly lit and overgrown warehouse full of alien footwear. Some of my younger friends found her short stories too silly and called them confusing and dumb. In response, two of my two-year older friends slammed their fists down on the expensive mahogany table - purchased exclusively for this meeting - and disagreed with a raging tongue and bulging eyes, shouting that Carrington’s writing style is simply whimsical and quirky, meant to simply entertain, so we would be happier and better served letting go of our arrogance! And then, in the corner of the room was seated a strong, savage sage with a withered rose on his left shoulder and flies swarming around his cheap toupee while he smoked the last cigar of our former king. He whispered how clever Carrington had been, how immaculately astute of her to write in this manner. “Shut up!” interrupted a tired, gray tree outside the banana shaped window, “she’s too eccentric”, he moans. “Too wonderful for her own good. Meeting adjourned.” And so, they all left, and I was, again, forever alone in the imaginary dark mires of time and space.

Ahem. Through these stories I’ve learned how surrealism performs (!) a life and a world which is constantly changing, where transformations happen extraordinarily and unexpectedly, and where the imagination is but a mirror-image of our soul. You bet! My mind was warped and twisted in profound ways. It was like going out one night to a place you’ve been hundreds of times before, but never once have you seen it in the dark. Can you imagine? Or it was like turning my head upside down, just so that I could see the world from a different view. Like, I’ve sometimes been struck by a fancy to lay down in the corner of some room I’m very familiar with and look up at it from a new angle. It’s like seeing the room for the first time! Like seeing a different room, even! That’s what’s called jamais vu, by the way. The opposite of déjà vu. And that’s what it’s like reading Carrington’s stories.

Unfortunately, because of the symbolism and randomness of it all, I sometimes struggled to figure out what she meant, getting many bad answers in return, or too many, or too few. And I sometimes struggled to understand what was happening. You see one thing, then another, then nothing or everything. But then I asked myself: does it even matter? I don’t think so. It’s a bit like poetry or a prose poem: Just feel the words, react to the situations, oooh and aaah and hahaha at the surreal wackiness. Just let go of your questions and have fun. That’s what I did, and it was all worth it. Promise!

White Rabbits – 6

A woman observes from her balcony the house opposite. A woman appears and scarily fascinating stuff happens.

“Do you happen to have any bad meat over there that you don’t need?
[…] Any stinking meat? Decomposed flesh meat?” (3)

Uncle Sam Carrington – 6

Opening lines say: “Whenever Uncle Sam Carrington saw the full moon he couldn’t stop laughing. A sunset had the same effect on Aunt Edgeworth. Between them they caused my poor mother a great deal of suffering, for she had a certain social reputation to keep up.” (8)

When I finished reading the story, I made an observation, which I wrote down in my notes:

I don’t understand what it all means. Snippets of wisdom. Amusing observations. Sprinkled bits of philosophy on a cupcake making a serious face. It is made of rebellious dough.

“The vegetables have to suffer for the sake of society” (13)

The Debutante – 4

A friendship between a privileged girl and a caged hyena in a zoo. The ending was unsatisfying, too simple. Dumb. Or maybe I was the dumb one here? Hah! Whatever.

“She’ll probably die if she hasn’t got a face.” (17)

The Oval Lady – 5

Someone visits an unusual family of three and a magpie.

“’Madam, do you like poetry?”’

‘No, I hate poetry,’ she answered in a voice stifled with boredom,
without turning to me.” (21)

The story made me think of domestic abuse, bad parenting and imaginary friends.

“As for me, I danced a sort of polka so as not to die of cold.” (24)

The Seventh Horse – 3

Opening line: “A strange-looking creature was hopping about in the midst of a bramble brush.” (29)

What even is the significance of the number seven? Carrington mentions it all the time here. Asking for a friend.

“Do you know that I can hate for seventy-seven million years without
stopping for rest. Tell those miserable people that they are doomed.”
(30)

My Flannel knickers – 4

Hmm. Is the narrator a metaphor for something? Or a symbol of something? An idea? A concept? Beats me, I enjoyed this nonetheless.

“There I was, sitting in the dark bloodstream like a mummified foetus
with no love at all. (41)

“The quickest way of retiring from social face-eating competition
occurred to me when I attacked a policeman with my strong steel
umbrella.” (44)

The Skeleton’s holiday – 6

This was my favorite! No wonder, though, as it is about a happy skeleton. I love undead things. And contains some rich imagery. It’s layers upon layers of positive effects:

I found it to be wonderfully whimsical when

“The skeleton knew how to give him the slip, by letting fall a young
zeppeline bone, on which the professor pounced, reciting chemical
hymns and covering the bone with hot kisses.” (45)

Super sad when I was asked:

“Have you heard the appalling moan of the dead in slaughter? It’s the
terrible disillusionment of the newly born dead, who’d hoped for and
deserved eternal sleep but find themselves tricked, caught up in an
endless machinery of pain and sorrow.” (47)

Brimming with beauty when

“He looked like a transparent monument dreaming of an electric breast,
and gazed without eyes, with a pleasant and invisible smile, into the
inexhaustible supply of silence that surrounds our star.” (46)

And curiously clever when

“In the evening, at cocktail time, he went to the café on the corner,
where he read the Necromancer’s Journal, the paper favoured by
high-toned corpses.” (47)

By the way, there’s a book written about the author called "Leonoras reise" by Susanne Christensen, which traces Carrington’s life in pursuit of her desires and her own alternative, but powerful vision of the world, of feminism and mystery and insanity. That’s what it says in the blurb, anyways, and after having read these short stories, I’m eager to explore more of her work and have added to my list both "The Complete Stories of Leonora Carrington" and the novel "The Hearing Trumpet". Next up in surrealism for me, though, is reading "Mad Love" by André Breton.

I think have it here somewhere.

Oh well, I’m hanging up now. Talk soon. Bye.