It's all sculpting and chill in this episode, in which a guy named Onions delights (mostly) and confuses (somewhat) the whole gang with a very dark, punctuation-filled riff on Pygmalion (possibly). Loads of pun(ions), madness in artistry, and at last count, a baker's dozen eye rolls from Jess! Welcome to Whiskey and the Weird, a podcast exploring the British Library Tales of the Weird series! This season, we're transmitting our sixth book in the collection, ‘The Night Wire: And Other Tales of Weird Media,’ edited by Aaron Worth. In this episode, our featured story is: Benlian by Oliver Onions.
Bar Talk (our recommendations):
Jessica is watching Scavengers Reign (TV Series; 2023 - ); drinking a Noble Oak Double Oak Hot Toddy.
Damien is watching The Dead Center (2018; dir. Billy Senese); drinking Walcott Kentucky Straight Bourbon.
Ryan is reading Wylding Hall by Elizabeth Hand; drinking the showdoggedly named Old Particular's Probably Orkney's Finest 12 yr old Highland Single Cask.
If you liked this week’s story, read "In The Pines" by Karl Edward Wagner... if you can find it.
Up next: "Wireless" by Rudyard Kipling.
Special thank you to Dr Blake Brandes for our Whiskey and the Weird music!
Like, rate, and follow! Check us out @whiskeyandtheweird on Instagram, Threads & Facebook, and at whiskeyandtheweird.com
W&W: Benlian
Damien: [00:00:00] If you thought that Pygmalion Was the weirdest relationship between a sculptor and a statue. Wait till I introduce you to Benley and
Ryan: this just in This just in whiskey. And the weird is back for its sixth season. Welcome back everybody. I'm Ryan whitley
Jessica: I'm Jessica Berg.
Damien: and I'm Damien Smith.
Ryan: And together we're whiskey and the weird the podcast where we drink first and ask questions later.
For the last five seasons, we've brought you literary critiques of some of the best weird stories of yesteryear, as well as other ones that were just fine. Fine. All of them have been from the British Library's Tales of the Weird series. Each season, we've covered one book, and each episode, one story.
We've always telegraphed a full spoiler summary in ahead of time, so make sure you read the story first. Or, if you don't care about that sort of thing, feel free to jump right into listening. And now we invite you to draw your chair closer to [00:01:00] the radio, friends, as all good American families do on Sunday evenings.
Because this season, we're receiving a message, and it's called The Night Wire and Other Tales of Weird Media, edited by Aaron Wirth. Jessica's our radio operator, so tell us, Jessica. What transmission do you have for us tonight? Oh
Damien: my god. That was commitment.
Jessica: Okay, we are going with Fenlian by Oliver Hynes.
Damien: That sounds
Ryan: fantastic, Jessica. Thank you very much. How long can Ryan keep this up? Not much longer
Damien: is the answer. Oh good. Oh, thankfully. 90 seconds was long enough there. Eee,
Ryan: boy. But before we get to that story, we've got some bar talk to
Damien: do.
Damian, what are you drinking? Oh, we're starting with me. How do I follow that? Gee whiz. I decided to draw, I decided to buy a short bottle of a moderately expensive bourbon one that I hadn't tried before. And that would be the Walcott Kentucky [00:02:00] straight bourbon over a ball of ice. Here you go. Let me show you the bottle.
Nice crack open specifically for this episode. It distilled by Barton 1792. It's a 90 proof bourbon whiskey. I would say a little pungent right off the, like off the first taste, like on the nose, a little spicy, spicier than most bourbons. I would put it more in the rye category on the nose. But it actually mellows out really well.
Smooth. The flavor profile is less on the sweet side. And more on the like, Char and spice. It continues. It's no, there's no caramel. It's a little, it's a little feistier, a little spicier.
Ryan: Than those It's an appetizer whiskey. A
Damien: little bit, but yeah, I don't know. As it turns out, it's I believe that it's bottled by clear springs.
Let me double check. In which case, yes. So it's a clear Spain, a clear spring distilling whiskey, which is part of the Buffalo trace. Family of distilleries, [00:03:00] so probably made for mass consumption, but still drinks reasonably well. It was a 30 bottle and so I'm not hating it. I'm not going to go and, get Walcott tattooed on my bicep next to mom in a heart.
Yeah. I'm sorry. Not right now, but it's a, it's pretty decent actually. Have another one. We'll see. We'll ask you later. Yeah. It's just I would definitely say going into it thinking that it's. Because it's a 100 percent bourbon whiskey that it would be something on the smoother, maybe a little more on the sweeter side.
It definitely struck me as more of a rye on the front end after sitting over an ice ball for a few minutes, it definitely mellows out, opens up a bit. Yeah, again, that's Walcott Kentucky bourbon whiskey. Outside of what's in my glass, I decided to watch and seeing as how last episode I became obsessed with Jess's recommendations that this time I decided to become obsessed and follow up with one of Padre's.
I know you're a huge fan of shutter. I don't watch as many shutter movies and made for shutter movies as I should, because there are some real gems in there. So I did actually watch two that you had suggested. Oh, good. I watched the Wounded Fawn, which is not going to be my recommendation [00:04:00] because that movie was.
Very weird. It was just a very weird movie.
Ryan: And I think that the super uncomfortable beginning and then super weird ending.
Damien: Yeah yeah, that could describe a lot. But yes, it was, it just had to do with a certain statuette and an obsession over said statuette and then the possibility of severe brain damage.
Yeah, so that one was a little weird, but what I will suggest that was just an awesome haunting tale is the dead center. I really enjoyed that flick. The character that the entire film like surrounds the physicalization of this actor is phenomenal. He's just a scary presence in general. And I won't go too much into what this movie's about, but I think when Ryan last described it, he said a very dead.
Person decides to show up at a psychiatric hospital, very near a morgue where he very real left said morgue. And you don't know anything about what's going on. And because of the natural bureaucracy of paperwork, like no one can identify who this person is, but he's not denied care. And there are a [00:05:00] few people who get involved with what happens with this person and a series of almost apocalyptic events ensue.
It's best to go in as blind as possible. It is really haunting. It's got a great climax. A very rewarding and and so thank you, Ryan, for suggesting. Oh, I don't have any of the information about it. It is called the dead center and it is from 2018 and it is directed by Billy Sinise. Yeah. And
Ryan: I just say great.
Great physical acting in that one. Yeah, really. Yeah, definitely.
Damien: Top notch. Yeah. Oh, what about you, Jess?
Jessica: I've got a big giant mug.
Damien: There it is. Yellow even.
Jessica: This is my Marvin Windows and Doors mug,
Damien: oh, you have one of those too? Yeah, sweet swag.
Jessica: I inside my mug is a hot toddy with the Noble Oak Double Oak that seems to be a hit over the last season and a half with both Damien and I.[00:06:00]
Yeah, I loved it last week. Yeah, it's, I don't know if I really loved it the first glass I had, but It's been growing on me. I probably won't buy another full price bottle, but if I see it on sale again I'll grab it. And I have been watching a very incredible show. I just finished it last night.
I think it's 12 episodes. It's called Scavenger's Reign. It is on HBO. I have not hearing nearly enough people talk about this. It's animated. It is an animated I have never heard of this. It horror, sci fi, it is about like a cargo spaceship that breaks up and different groups of survivors land on this planet, and the animation is all of these incredibly horrible things of they're just plunked into an already existing ecosystem with Predators and bugs and monsters, but it's all very [00:07:00] pastel and beautiful and very cool animation.
Wow. Really sparse dialogue. But it's about there's different groups and how they're adapting to living on this planet. Sure. A couple of them are scientists and they're, like, trying to figure out the biology. One is working with a robot.
Damien: It's got some Vandermeer vibes to it.
Jessica: It's it
could be any
Ryan: Did you just watch the episode, Damien?
Damien: No, I'm just saying based on her description. Oh, I thought you
Ryan: Yeah. You had a glazed look. I thought you were watching the episode.
Damien: Yeah, BRB guys, I got some commentary I'll deliver to you in 35 minutes here.
Jessica: I would say almost any still from the Cartoon is going to be the most cool thing you've seen in a year and also could be the cover of a Vandermeer novel.
It's really interesting. I already finished it and I'm planning to go back and rewatch it just because it's so You're watching how ecosystems work, but on an alien planet, so none of it makes sense. There are things that are [00:08:00] recognizable, but The character and the creature design is so crazy.
It's incredibly compelling.
Damien: Yes. I am really looking forward to this. It's one
Jessica: I never recommend Oh, you got to get HBO max or whatever. But like this, I don't have it. Get a free trial. Get a
Damien: trial and watch the entire is the whole season out or do they release? And it's
Jessica: all out now.
It's 12 episodes. I don't think the episodes are even a full hour. Maybe they might be half hours. Okay. I binged it in a couple of days and had a really lovely time doing it. Oh,
Damien: amazing. Wow. What a great recommendation. I it's so wild when we hear something that like none of us have ever, or the other two have never heard of.
And this totally caught Ryan and I by surprise. Looks, looks great. Trendsetter
Jessica: over here. Ryan, what are you bringing to the table? What are,
Ryan: what's your I've got Jess, I'm sorry to say, I've got an extraordinarily tall bottle of whiskey tonight.
Damien: Oh, that's That is a longin Yeah, this is
Ryan: Anyway I think this is [00:09:00] a fairly expensive bottle of whiskey. It was a gift. This was a gift from my friend, David, who gave it to me at a Burns Night party last year. And thanks David. Thanks David. Yeah. Like Oliver. Onions stories. This is one to savor over a longer period of time. This is a bottling by Old Particular, Douglas Lang's Old Particular, which takes whiskey from single casks and bottles it only from that cask, and they do nothing else to it.
This is probably as close as I will ever come to Tasting a whiskey straight out of the cask at the distillery. There's no added coloration. There's no added anything to the, to this whiskey. This is a
Damien: 12 cask
Ryan: whiskey. Okay. They don't tell you they have they have some hints on the bottle. So this says probably Orkney's finest, which suggests to me that this is a Highland Park [00:10:00] whiskey.
Okay. It's a very light colored whiskey. Damien, you might like this one. This one reminds me. Somewhat of some of the Japanese whiskeys that you've recommended that I've tried. Oh, okay. Great. It's got a flavor profile similar to that. There's a lot of barley and straw in this. There's a certain amount of sweetness.
They go overboard in their descriptions here. Like we're supposed to be tasting warm fudge, vanilla pastries and caramel chews. I'm not sure I got any of that. Oh,
Damien: wow. Somebody somebody raided the candy shop, right?
Ryan: I will say there's a fair amount of salt sea air to it. And, but it's just, this is a really good bottle of whiskey and recently as I near the end of it here, I was looking it up to see where I could perhaps find another bottle and discovered that I might have to wait for David to give me another bottle of this.
It's a little bit out of my price range.
Jessica: David, I would take a less
Damien: expensive one. David, can you just send me some of that rock gut vodka that you find on the bottom shelf of any liquor store? Thanks. I appreciate
Jessica: it, David. We are not [00:11:00] old peculiars. We are unparticular.
Damien: Probably Orkney's worst. As
Ryan: for what I've been doing I just finished a short novel that I think both of you would enjoy.
It was called Wilding Hall by Elizabeth Hand. Okay, it's one that i've heard recommended by a lot of people in the ghost story category People say this is one to read. It comes in just under 200 pages, I think so. It's a quick read a little novella it is about a a rock band at least they're about to record their second album and for inspiration their their label rents out an english like Mansion for them to dwell in for the summer to gain inspiration from the woodsy surrounding and from the like Orgiastic affairs that occur inside said mansion with this rock band and all of their friends It and it's told in such a unique way.
It's told like whatever the presenting issue [00:12:00] was that happened Which, which you're unclear about at the beginning of the novel. This story is told about from the perspective of being after that has already happened. And they're interviewing all of the surviving characters. Oh, okay. So each, yeah each little chapter is a super short snippet of one character's perspective on one thing that's happened.
And so as you move along in the novel, you're getting the story kind of in reverse.
Damien: Yeah. That reminds me of what was it? Fantastic Land or something? Have either
Ryan: of you read that? No, I haven't
Damien: read that one. About a Lord of the Flies meets an amusement park.
Jessica: I bought it after you recommended it in book club like years ago.
Oh.
Damien: I haven't read it yet. All right. It's, let it sit there. It was a good, easily digested. I don't know. Yeah. It sounds very similar,
Ryan: but this is creepy. I will say I ended up liking it less than I expected to, but only because I think it was so hyped up for me. I think it's a really strong a really strong piece of writing.
[00:13:00] I've read Elizabeth Hand before and I've liked her. She was just tapped by the Shirley Jackson estate to write the sequel to Haunting of Hill House. So yeah. If that tells you anything.
Damien: Okay. I
Jessica: just bought that one also. Apparently I've been on a book buying spree for the for the last, all of my life.
But a haunting on the hill is what her new one is called. That's also sitting on a shelf upstairs.
Damien: Then there's part three, Hill Haunting. Then there's part four, house haunting, on hill, under hill, then there's part five, king of the hill, a haunted cartoon, then there's
Ryan: part seven, haunting of the hill from the perspective of the doorbell.
Hilling of the
Damien: haunted.
Listen, I'd watch that. Sick burn. Anyway,
Ryan: that's Wilding Hall by Elizabeth Hand, a delightful, creepy, short little novel about a rock band and a haunted. That's going to take us to our author and publication info for this evening. We've got George Oliver Onions being born on [00:14:00] November the 13th, 1873 to a bank cashier, George Frederick Onions and Elizabeth Fearnley.
As a lad, he was into various extracurriculars, such as motoring. Science and amateur boxing, but art would also capture his interest. And he was taught at the national arts training schools in London, where he focused on commercial art being one of those artists, who wanted to make a living, he was later employed as a poster and book designer.
And as a magazine illustrator now in 1909, he marries a sweetheart, a writer by the name of Bertha Ruck. And 10 years later, he officially changed his name to George Oliver, probably because she told him to. I read somewhere that he apparently insisted his name be pronounced Onions. Judging from the looks on your faces right
Damien: now.
Onions forever.
Ryan: We can all guess how well that went [00:15:00] over. Do we have a
Jessica: sense on if his parents were onions or onions? His
Ryan: parents were definitely onions. Okay. Which is just a silly thing to say, but yeah, they were the onion family. But
Damien: their story brings tears to your eyes when you actually dive into it.
It does. That's
Ryan: going to be the first of many
Damien: Terrible punions.
Ryan: As a writer himself,
Damien: god. Jess.
Ryan: You can't, yeah. This is an audio experience for the rest of the people. It really is. Sorry. As a writer himself, David Hartwell describes. Onions as slow and careful, and I think that we can all see that here in this story tonight. As a fan of older horror fiction, his name is synonymous with his most famous work, The Beckoning Fair One, a ghost story of almost unrivaled quality.
In fact many have said it even beats out Henry James The Turn of the Screw as the best ghost story ever [00:16:00] written. A theme shared between that work and our story tonight is the connection between creativity and insanity. A theme that will resonate with many artists, I suspect. Keeping in line with his style of a slow, steady buildup, another regular theme of Onions work is that of a gradually increasing psychosis.
This gives his stories the ability, often, to be interpreted both from a supernatural and a psychological angle. Onions work was very well received by his contemporaries. Gahan Wilson called him, quote, one of the best, if not the best, ghost story writer. Algernon Blackwood described The Beckoning Fair One as, quote, the most horrible and beautiful, while Robert Aikman said of the same story that it was, quote, one of the possibly six great masterpieces in the field.
The really [00:17:00] disturbing thing about that Aikman quote is he only shared what three of those masterpieces were before he died. Six is a
Jessica: funny number to say because you mean
Damien: sixth. Yeah, exactly. This isn't the top seven sandwiches I had last year. It's number seven. Yeah, there's no other reason.
You don't say number three, but, I just went to look it up. I was like, what
Ryan: are the other five stories that Robert Oden thought were terrific? And there's only two others that he named. And then. Oh, that's just annoying. However, and this will come as no surprise to long time listeners of the podcast, however, not everyone was as favorably inclined.
At least one significant contemporary just found Onions story. Teary, and I'll bet you can guess who
Damien: it was. HPL said,
Ryan: I have onionses, ghosts by daylight, I didn't care much for the various tales.
Damien: Oh, Howie. But didn't he like the [00:18:00] original stuff? He didn't like it anything. Ah, that's true. There's not much he liked.
He's such a curmudgeon. He's a literary curmudgeon.
Ryan: We'll go with that. All right, sounds good. Still love him, but he is
Damien: curmudgeonly. You think?
Ryan: Onions has died on April the 9th, 1961 without leaving me a first edition of his famous collection, Wittershins, which I keep a sharp eye out on eBay for.
Damien: All right.
Jessica: All right, David, add that to the list. Also,
Ryan: It's a hard one. You can find it, but it's really expensive because it's got the beckoning fair one in it. And I've read that story and it is stellar. Excellent. That's going to take us to our summary of this story though, for this evening. And Damien has that probably in just under five
Damien: minutes.
Probably in just under five minutes. You got it. The thing about the story is it's a dense one folks. So I'm sure we'll talk about that post recap. So because of that, getting into some of the [00:19:00] nuances of the tail it just doesn't make sense for the summary. So I'll give you a high level story arc of what goes on some of the key actions.
But then really, I'm relying on the on the conversation afterwards to dive into some of those. Our narrator is a sculptor with a residency in a, let me check my notes here, wood processing yard. Okay. He sets up for his abrupt and peculiar first meeting with Benley and one of the neighboring studio owners and a demanding patron who's gunning to commission the completion of a statue of himself, which he named, Bentley and the sculptor, a man more accustomed to dealing with molding materials than the social elite feels a little sheepish and put off by this first meeting.
But as it turns out, Bentley, his reputation had preceded him. There's been a flood of tales of his demanding nature and insatiable perfectionism that the sculptor had to prepare for. He had even heard whispers of Bentley and his ruthless pursuits of his ability to reduce [00:20:00] grown men to quivering heaps of artistic insecurity with a mere flick of his checkbook.
The sculptor who is not much better off financially than a very not financially well off individual was initially reluctant to take on this project. He had heard these stories of Bentley is demanding nature and just didn't want to deal with the hassle. After all, he was a person who mostly created sculptures, miniatures from photographs.
So this isn't really in his bailiwick anyway, but he was offered a lot of money and being in the financial position. He was, he couldn't, he simply couldn't afford to turn down the job. So the sculptor begins to work on the statue, which upon seeing it for the first time, he notices it has this massively out of proportion arm.
Okay, let's talk about that eventually, because not much is mentioned other than the fact that this is a really giant, grotesque arm. He quickly realizes that Benleyan, once he begins his work, is even more of a P. I. T. A. than he had imagined. He was constantly criticizing the sculptor's work, every single aspect.
As a matter [00:21:00] of fact, even before taking the job, Benleyan had asked the sculptor, Tell me something that you saw that nobody else saw in a photograph. And some of the examples that he had outlined were seeing the crown of someone's skull underneath a cap and that was the kind of detail that Bentley was looking for the sculpture.
So of course he gets started on his work and nothing is good enough. The Bentley and keeps telling him to make changes that the sculptor doesn't think are necessary. The sculptor wants to tell Bentley and to just take a long walk off a short pier and let him do his job. But he knew that he couldn't afford to lose the work.
It was paying too much. So he basically sheepishly accepted all the criticisms and moved as quickly as he could to get those things done. The sculptor's work on the statue eventually becomes, begins to completely consume him. There are a lot of allusions to whether or not there is a spiritualism or some sort of like demonic force behind the statue.
If it is something that's really trying to subsume the sculptor's personality. He gets obsessed with making it perfect. Is it because of this magnetism from the statue? Is it because of Bentley [00:22:00] and his relentless Drive to make it as perfect as possible. He starts to neglect all his other responsibilities.
He cancels all their projects. He starts to physically look like a ghost. He gets sallowed and sullen. His friends and family get worried about him. One night as he's working on the statue, he's trying to do something magical with a weird oversized arm. He just doesn't know what to do. He feels as if Benley and his Even though not in the room, still watching him, he hears his voices, he hears his voice whispering in his ear, calling him pudgy, probably an inordinate number of times he gets called pudgy a lot from one point in the story through the end, as it turns out, he was a little overweight when he was younger, it was a nickname, but Bentley and.
Somehow magically came up with it and starts calling the sculptor pudgy nonstop. He gets terrified. The sculptor gets absolutely terrified and basically runs out of his studio. He starts to have nightmares and daymares about Bentley and in his voice. And he becomes increasingly paranoid. He's convinced that Bentley and is out to basically get them, whatever that may mean.
And [00:23:00] he starts to take steps to protect himself. He isolates himself from loved ones. He locks his doors and windows when no one's around. He even arms himself. Things get a little weird. The sculptor eventually finishes the statue, and Ben Lian still isn't completely satisfied, so little in fact that he allegedly falls over dead at its final critique with a couple Outward grunts, he falls out of a chair, and by the report of a now somewhat unreliable narrator, Benlean is dead.
Benlean's estate removes the piece that it's finished, though, and the sculptor is, relieved to be rid of the statue, but he's still haunted by his experience and somewhat obsessed with the piece. He just can't shake the feeling that Benlean is still driving him to make it better, still watching him, and pushing for greater.
Never satisfied the sculptor never fully recovers from these experiences with Bentley and eventually soon after being committed to an asylum that he insists is a vacation resort. He can leave at any time. Trust me. I'm fine. So the big question for me is what actually happened to Bentley and he may have.
Yeah [00:24:00] he probably really died, right? Or he may have lived happily ever after surrounded by his wealth and his perfect statues. One thing's for sure, though, Bentley and never gave the sculptor another thought. Excellent
Ryan: summary, Damien. And a tough story to summarize, I
Damien: have to say. This one's you got to read it to believe it.
Yeah, you do.
Ryan: You heard me earlier quote editor David Hartwell, who said of Onion's work that it was slow and careful. Did you find that to be true here? And if so, or even if not, how did you respond as a reader?
Jessica: So I read this story a couple of times, was generally confused.
Through most of it, just of who was doing what, even in Damien's summary, I was just like, hi, that guy did that? I just,
Damien: yeah, I know
Ryan: what you mean. There was a lot of times where I had to check who's who's completing this action?
Jessica: Yeah, so in my mind, when I got to, and we can talk, beat by beat plot points of who is doing what, but the writing was, Unclear enough in a way that in other [00:25:00] stories I would excuse you're writing about someone who is in an agitated mental state.
They're dealing with a weird bully and whatever else. In some of those stories, it makes sense to have an unreliable narrator, things are unclear, but in this, there were chunks of it where I genuinely wasn't sure who was doing what, who was sculpting what I, I thought Benleyan was doing, so just there's a few chunks where it's That should have been clearer.
Ryan: Yeah, I felt like the shifting realities was on purpose. Yeah,
Damien: 100%. I was gonna say the same thing. And it was sometimes mid sentence. It was really odd, the way it was written. It was very difficult. And I, the same way, not just because I had to recap this beast of a tale, but it was also just to go back and get some more clarity.
What exactly happened here? Did I miss something? Even before we started recording, I was like Y'all, straight up did Benleyan really die? We couldn't, we didn't have consensus there. It really was a point of [00:26:00] contention as to what actually happened in the story, because And this
is
Ryan: despite the fact that it says in the text, Benleyan dies,
Damien: but we still have this question.
Jessica: He's still writing letters at the end. So it's just I understand including some of those You know, confusing, misleading, things where it's just the story structure mimics the, plot of the story, right? Things are unclear, we're not sure who's doing what.
But there also has to be like, enough clarity in a short story that you can be like, Oh yeah, that guy said that, and this other guy responded. Like at some chunks I feel like we didn't even have that level of
Damien: Yeah, maybe. At least Faulkner, when Faulkner did it, he had different narrators and chapter separations to where you're like, Oh, we're back to the crazy one.
Okay, cool.
Jessica: And that kind of like Faulkner's I don't know, the form fit with what was going on, right? Like we're grieving and we don't have our right mind. And this is just I don't know, for whatever reason, I had a harder time reading this one than [00:27:00] most of the others in the, Collection, which is why I thought we should include it.
Yeah,
Damien: no, I thought it was a great inclusion and that probably feeds into Ryan's observation or, account of the fact that it reads like slow and purposeful, right? Is that what you said? Slow and purpose? Yeah, careful and slow. Yeah, careful and slow. I think that makes sense. It makes a lot of sense now.
And I feel validating hearing that externally because I think we're so used to, especially, not just with the pod, but the fact that we're all like really fast readers and we read a lot, like we just want to be able to tear through and we like thinking, we like it to be a little academic, a little intellectually stimulating, challenging a bit, but not so much to where we're going back and we feel like we're, analyzing Shakespeare or yeah.
And we have to figure out line by line analysis. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And this was a little test to that. I really enjoyed the story and it was incredibly unnerving. Maybe because of the dynamics onions took in the method in which he wrote the story, but also just in the subject matter itself.
I think it was a great one to punch that made me feel uncomfortable. [00:28:00] So if HBO sitting here being like, I don't think I like it that much, that means it was good.
Ryan: That means it was good. Yeah. Some of my favorite kinds of short stories are the ones where I'm unsure what is really happening. A modern example for me is Laird Barron's, the procession of the black sloth from his.
Damien: I love that story.
Ryan: I love that story, but I had to read it two or three times to what is going on here? I have no idea. I have no idea. And I felt a little bit like that here. I get the slow and careful remark. And I like how you said, Damien, that it felt validating to hear that externally, especially from.
in the field like David Hartwell, who, if you don't know, edited the dark descent you, you could take a college class on horror fiction over the last century and a half and not get as good of an education as you would, if you read the dark descent by David Hartwell or edited by David Hartwell.
But the slow. Build up of dread and uncertainty throughout this story was masterfully done. I [00:29:00] thought and I think that having read it, one. Other onions story. Say that five times fast. Where the beckoning fair ones really long. So it's almost a short novel in and of itself.
Where, and so it's even slower and even more premeditated and careful. Okay. And this was a shorter version of that kind of writing. I just, I really liked it in both cases.
Damien: Parts of
Jessica: this writing a lot. I am a sucker for. Parentheses, like it mimics how I write, like a lot of em dashes, a lot of parentheses, every sentence is a little bit frantic.
I thought that was really
Damien: effective.
Ryan: Like I enjoyed reading. Subjective clause upon subjective clause.
Jessica: That didn't not add to the confusion of 12 thoughts in one sentence of okay, alright. Start over. Take it a little slower.
Damien: Some
Ryan: thoughts which may be insane.
Damien: But, but, punctuationally.
It really helped to set the, [00:30:00] what was going on in the, mental diarrhea of the narrator and the shifting tones. So that's what it is, right? It's like this constant output of process thoughts, sometimes spoken, sometimes not sometimes accounted, sometimes fabricated, you never know.
So having those em dashes and parentheses and semi colons, it really helps to like, keep that flow. It's, I think one of the, like the things that I attribute to I want to say that Joyce Carol Oates, did Joyce Carol Oates do that a lot? Like use punctuation to set that weird shifting narration or am I completely making that
Jessica: up?
No, she's done everything. I think that's accurate.
Ryan: Especially if it's oozy.
Damien: You got me. I don't know where to go from there.
Ryan: Let's go to the next question, shall we? Alright, sounds good. And that's this story is collected in several ghost stories through the decades.
Through several ghost story anthologies. My question is simple. Where's the ghost in this story? Is the ghost the sculpture? Is the ghost Ben Lian himself? Is the ghost the narrator? Where did you find the ghost? [00:31:00] And maybe this gets to Damien's original question of did Ben Lian die?
Jessica: Okay, so my reading of it is that the guy who is painting the miniatures who works in the studio is taking pictures of Benlian disappearing and becoming a ghost.
Ryan: Because he's going into the
Jessica: sculpture. Because he's putting all of his oomph into
Damien: the sculpture. His chutzpah.
Jessica: And so you're seeing him become the ghost, yeah, okay. He's getting fuzzy in the photos and then he Oh yeah, like Then he maybe dies, but also maybe is a statue.
Ryan: There's that really creepy line about the photography where he says, have you ever seen anything like go through?
Yeah. And it's unclear what he means by that, but.
Damien: But I think it means like becoming a ghost. Yeah. Yeah. Like the sequence that Jess was alluding to where the last one is like the [00:32:00] hands in front of the face. But you can see everything right. And they even referred to the statue as like a man who cannot be x rayed, which was a nice little shout out to a last week's story, by the way, it was it was pretty cool.
I can see that train of thought, Jess. And I can appreciate that. There's even when Bentley and allegedly falls out of his chair and they carry him out in the stretcher. I think that the sculptor mentioned something about a glowing green light or some sort of like green apparition that appears over the body.
But again, at that point you just have no idea because at that point it's, the thread's been snapped.
Ryan: There's some similarities to how this story ends to how the beckoning fair one ends as well, which were fun, but I don't want to. I don't want to give those away.
Damien: You just spoiled it.
That's not what we signed up for. It's one story gets spoiled every episode.
Ryan: I had fun trying to imagine as a thought exercise okay, if the ghost is the sculpture, like the sculpture is some sort of demonic spirit or something like, what does that do to the story? Or if Benley and is becoming the ghost, what does that do to my reading of the story?
And [00:33:00] I think that's probably where I landed, honestly, that Benley and. Is ultimately the ghost of the story. But the most fun I had in this thought exercise was imagining the story from the perspective of the narrator is the ghost. Okay. The whole thing that happens at the end with him saying, I'm in a vacation villa that I can leave anytime.
No, you've died and you've gone to the afterlife now. That was a fun way to, to think through this story for me.
Damien: I. I definitely if I had to attribute some sort of spiritual quality, I saw the statues being a vessel I saw, and that's largely because of like that, the cosmic culture of having the rich elite, like finding some way to skirt death or to alter the natural progression of life.
And so this is a very wealthy guy who has an eccentric idea about transferring his essence, his oomph. As Jessica calls it, to this permanent vessel. And so joy to. Yes, you had the and then bringing along this like poor, sculptor to just be the [00:34:00] transferent agent, knowing that it will absolutely break their humanity.
But. Ah, c'est la vie, so that's exactly, that's what I decided to take away from it. But in honesty I don't think it was anything other than a man who was just at his wits end, who took a weird project, who had some circumstance, had some circumstantial declination of events that just led him to absolute mental ruin.
And this is his ruination.
Ryan: So shifting gears towards the philosophical then, what does it mean to you for an artist to quote Put themselves into their work and is there a limit beyond which this sort of thing is no longer healthy?
Jessica: I was trying to think of some if this then that's for this weird story and we ended up landing on one that's different so I feel fine talking about these. But I this story reminded me of the black swan.
And the wrestler. Oh
Ryan: yeah. Yeah. Wow.
Damien: Great. Yes. Yeah. Both Aronofsky's. Yeah, exactly. I think [00:35:00]
Jessica: fun fact, I think those were supposed to be one movie at one point. And then he made them two movies, like a ballerina fell in love with the right. Yeah. I think they were supposed to be co mingled stories.
Ryan: I'm glad that didn't end up being the case.
Jessica: Yes. Instead we got too much
Damien: better. Mostly because I can see Mickey Rourke and Natalie Portman is like an item. To be honest,
Jessica: but I think that helped me Oh, okay. Like a different idea of what art is. And then the actual physical effects of are you an aging artist? Are you an aging wrestler making really bad decisions and not quite knowing it's time to step away? Are you a ballerina? And the pressure of doing your art is making you go bonkers.
Yeah so for me, that was easier to visualize, then someone doing sculpture for some reason, but it's also just like the shining kind of right, like sitting at a typewriter and going crazy.
Damien: There's obviously when you think of modern artists who met like [00:36:00] some weird tragic end and whether it was depression or other forms of mental illness or affectation that really brought them there.
You wonder like how much of it was the art, how much of it was just biology, how much was neuro chemistry, et cetera. But, people who know about Sylvia Plath and tragic efforts that like, you know, like Virgin or not. I guess Virginia Woolf killed herself, right? Or at least she tried.
She like walked in a river with stones in her pockets and stuff. And then Van Gogh, he's cutting off his ear. And so when you rationalize that, I think you can find obsessive personalities often overlapping with artistic minds. So maybe there's almost like it makes sense because this sort of like.
Almost delirious genius has the delirious part
Ryan: of it. There's like a predetermined factor for this genetically or biologically. Yeah,
Damien: You gotta wonder. Yeah. I think it makes for a good medium and it makes for a good central figure that if you're going to have somebody, I thought it was [00:37:00] really impressive that it was this sort of mediocre.
Caricaturist, this like sculptor who sculptures miniatures off of photos and doesn't think that his work is very good. So I thought that was a really like genius point to not bring, to not make the artist in said work, like so good and best in class at their
Ryan: craft. I thought that was a really effective choice.
It goes to his biography, right? He was, he became a commercial artist where he's illustrating magazine covers and doing posters for businesses. Yeah. Onions himself, yeah. He's doing the art, but he's on the side of it that's marketable and financially sound and.
Not soul selling. Yeah, not the upset. Yeah, he's selling his soul, but he's not losing his life, right? I don't know. I think you could have a lot of interesting conversations with artists about this. This line and where it is and how healthy is it to cross it and how often I enjoy talking about that sort of thing.
One time I helped put on an art [00:38:00] show and on the opening night of the art shows, big art show. And we had this Swedish artist and we had 130 some pieces on display and there was lots of people coming for the opening reception. And. Right before it, I asked her, I said, so are you excited?
And she said, no, I'm terrified. I'm like, what do you mean? You've done this thing. You've done these kinds of shows a lot before. Like you still get nervous then. And she says every time. I have one of these shows, it says if I'm standing naked in front of a brand new audience and that sense of vulnerability that artists have when they put their work into the world is really incredible.
That's a good point. Continuing a little bit on the philosophical vein, on page 1 44, onions writes this, A man can't both do and be. I remember he said to me once, He's so much force, no more, [00:39:00] and he can either make himself with it, or something else. If he tries to do both, he does both imperfectly.
What do you make of this idea that someone can't both do and be? I found this idea intriguing.
Jessica: I found it stupid.
Damien: So this
Jessica: is how I'm reading it. Jessica
Damien: does
Ryan: and bees very well, thank you.
Jessica: I can do and be as much as I want.
Damien: I am and will. To
Jessica: I read it as, Ben Lian is the one doing the sculpting, so he's making this thing and he's dragging our narrator into it. He's trying to excuse his mania, right?
Of I can't think about this because if I think about it, I will realize how crazy I am. Instead of being able to balance the two [00:40:00] of having a healthy, normal relationship with art and the things you're doing. Most people are, and do that seems like a pretty foundational way to live your life.
Damien: maybe. I like your philosophy there. And I think that it could be the excuse for the lazy maybe. And that Bentley and knew he didn't have the talent and wasn't looking for real severe talent, but he was looking for a conduit to do what he envisions, and he just doesn't have the technical wherewithal to be able to conduct that.
And so he finds this throwaway character in the sculptor. And says,
Jessica: I think Benley and is doing the sculpting. I think he just keeps bringing the other guy in to look at his sculpture.
Damien: Oh, I know. I think the sculpt, I think that the sculptor is doing the sculpting and he's doing it with Bentley and standing over his shoulder being like, no more.
This is what's so fascinating
Ryan: about this. We all read the same story. We can read these such different. And it's [00:41:00] not like a
Jessica: long story.
Damien: It's not no, it's not huge. Now I gotta, now I gotta know Padre, what do you say? So who's actually, who is actually taking it to the statue?
Ryan: I read it as Bentley and is doing the sculpting. I think I'm with Jess on it. Really?
Jessica: I think Ben Lian is doing the sculpting, but we don't see him doing the sculpting. We
Ryan: don't see him doing the sculpting. He's manipulating the narrator and abusing and using him. But Ben Lian is the sculptor. That's my read.
But
Damien: I thought that he sculpted up to a point and he brought in the narrator, the sculptor, to actually refine it and make it right because he created this monstrosity. Yeah, there's no doubt but I thought that was all preamble to the story that he's actually
Ryan: monstrosity work the monstrosity that he creates Is because the sculpture is creating itself as it's a god.
He calls
Damien: it a god. He does call it his god and he says it'll be your god too and he tells the sculptor that, yeah.
Jessica: Which is a cool [00:42:00] way to think about your art, I think.
Ryan: I think Jess is dismissing the demonic possibilities of this story entirely too easily. Pretty
Damien: quickly. Sure, but also
Jessica: if I just said this self sculpting art Yeah, I probably think it's pretty cool.
And also a God, right? If I, or even if he was like sculpting it and doing a weird job, like my reading of it is Benley and is either sculpting or pretending to sculpt or whatever. And it's pulling his life, his oomph, it's pulling his
Damien: oomph out of him. The oomph sucking is, I think that's consensus here.
Like we've all got consensus on oomph
Jessica: suckage. And I think the narrator is hanging around. So when he's asking the narrator at first about what's the like weirdest photo you've ever taken? You ever seen a guy's skull or whatever? I read that as maybe Ben Lian had been somewhere, like [00:43:00] he's working on this art, he'd been somewhere.
Someone had taken a photo of him and he saw himself starting to disappear. And he brings the narrator in to take Pictures of him and maybe the art to track his disappearance.
Damien: Yeah,
Ryan: because that gets at another question I had. What does Ben Leon need the narrator for?
Jessica: Like, why can't he just do a selfie?
That technology exists, you just press a button. Yeah I don't, he's dragging the narrator in for something specific. And I don't know if it's just for the witnessing of it, or for, it could be for technical help, it could be for
Ryan: Did you guys read it as Benleyan was somehow controlling the narrator?
Okay. So
Damien: Some sort of controlled him by working his way into his subconscious. Yeah. Like just some sort of weird
Ryan: hypnosis. Yeah. He's calling
Jessica: him the nickname
Ryan: that like weirdly he knows and he's making him like it.
Jessica: Yeah. He's just no, everything's fine.
Damien: You love him. I [00:44:00] think he de identifies with himself.
It's also why he we don't know his name, and he's only pudgy, like the only identifying Nam as his pudgy. And then at the
Jessica: end where we think Bean died. Dot,
Damien: question mark. I'm, I, I'll be honest. I'm the only one who thought, like both of you said very clearly, you thought he died.
I was the only one who called it in a question because I did not believe anything in there.
Ryan: Maybe Damien is
Damien: the, is he? We're
Ryan: doing here, Damien
Damien: is being. I had my mouth full of bourbon. Sorry for that weird high pitch.
Jessica: Okay, so at the end. End of the story, he falls out of his chair and maybe is dead.
Then the very last paragraph, when our narrator is on his holiday.
Damien: His holiday. Vacation. All I ever wanted.
Jessica: They're bringing him messages from Ben Lian, from the studio. So that's where the first time I read it, I was like, oh, okay, he died. And the second time I read it, it's, okay, maybe he didn't die.
And he is getting [00:45:00] messages.
Ryan: And the messages say, If you stay for two hours, you can have one of these timeshares every day.
Jessica: Okay, he writes a message.
Damien: Have you extended your car's warranty?
Jessica: Benley and always answers that it's all right, and I'm to stay where I am for a bit and then there's oh, it's
because he's a statue, but that's creepy.
It's creepy. It's because he's a statue. This story is all sorts of wild.
Ryan: A lot of people that I was giving up. I was reading about it online and a lot of people are comparing it to the great God pan by Arthur Machen. Okay. It's been long enough since I've read the great God pan that I can't immediately call up the similarities but if you can't out there then send us a message
Damien: on the socials.
Jessica: Definitely the uncertainty, the just the sitting there and being like, what are you talking about? I remember
Damien: Yeah. I thought Makan's pan was a little bit more clear. It was more like the
Ryan: ghost of But there was like weird experiments and there was art involved. Yeah, sure. Sure.
Damien: Yeah.
Yes.
Ryan: They tried to [00:46:00] get that girl to do something. And suck you by. Oh, this story got creepier the more I thought about it. I'm
Damien: telling you, totally. Like the unnervingness, if there was an unnervingness scale, every time I read it and re read it and thought about it, it like, the needle moved a little bit up more.
Jessica: But I want to see the statue. I'd like to see the
Damien: skull. I don't.
I don't want to see the statue. Do we
Jessica: think it's just like a big arm and a little body? Cause
Damien: that's not that. It looks like an arm wrestling trophy. It's just like a big flexing bicep. Oh, that's so funny. No, I think it's, I think it's distorted humanity. I think it probably looks like, as opposed to these Adonis type statues.
It looks like something that should not be. Yeah, exactly. But does. Which, I don't know why,
Ryan: I don't know why Lovecraft hated it. This is up his alley.
Damien: Exactly, he thought it was a little too, he thought it was a little too close to home, I think. He thought Onions was sniffing around his turf.
Ryan: What about the The media element here. The photography, was that an effective part of this [00:47:00] story?
Jessica: The first time I read it, that seemed more important than rereads.
The first time you read it, you're just like, Okay, it's a fuzzy photo. I guess I know where this is going. And he's slowly disappearing. But then on the reread, the statue and their relationship, whatever it was, that takes
Damien: prime
Jessica: place. Yeah, that seemed much more important.
Damien: And that's actually why just I didn't even mention the photography in the recap because I thought that was one of a series of potential ex like exonerations, no, that's not the right word. I'm thinking of like exaggerations. That's the word I'm thinking of. . So like that could, that may or may not have actually taken place. Right,
Jessica: Because it's just like the, he's oh, the photo's blurry. It could be the film or whatever.
'cause he's using either old film right? Or new film or something.
Damien: Or he is moving.
Jessica: Or he's moving, or it's just this story is old. That's how cameras work. Every old photograph where there's a ghostly figure, it's probably just the photographer did a bad job or [00:48:00] someone was moving.
So that didn't seem that out of the ordinary, but like the, insistence on like documentation and having this guy like witness, whatever he was doing, come and check out the sculpture. And then even when he's. Put in some kind of asylum, he's still like checking on the statue. He's sending notes to it.
So it seemed like just a part of the it's important that someone witnessed what's going on, but then like, why this guy, just cause he was there.
Damien: Cause he was there. Cause he was, they shared, he was nearby and if Bentley shared a wood shop,
Ryan: Bentley is intentionally putting himself into the sculpture.
His oomph. He wants to make sure he's doing it right. So he needs the photography to show that this is actually happening. It's, the photography is his progress bar.
Jessica: If he's not
Damien: disappearing, he's not [00:49:00] going anywhere. Uploading. Uploading. 66%. That's the way
Ryan: I, that's the way I thought of it, that's why he needs the narrator to make sure that whatever he's doing is working, whatever
Damien: sorcery he's That's, yeah, and that's It's pretty low lift, because at that point money is inconsequential, so he just needs somebody there.
And he knew he would prey on this needy
Ryan: neighbor. Which just adds to the creepiness
Damien: adds to the I'm telling you what, I'm telling you what, yeah.
Ryan: I've had some of the stories that we've read out of these collections, where I've read them and I've thought oh, that was pretty good. I'll rate it, three and a half or four.
And then the more I've thought about it, give it a few days. That was too high. I keep making notes in my book. That's too high. That's too high, it's going down. It's going this one was the opposite.
Um,
here's a quote that I really liked. I liked, I loved the writing. I. I thought it was really excellent. But here's a quote that I enjoyed. This is on page 137.
In two months, I was in an extraordinary state of mind about him. I was familiar [00:50:00] with him in a way, but at the same time, I didn't know one scrap more about him. Somehow, when he was there, he had me all restless and uneasy. And
Damien: when he wasn't
Ryan: there, I was There's only one word for it, jealous, as jealous as if he'd been a girl, even yet, I can't make it out.
So I just loved this sense of unclarity about the relationship and the obsessiveness that was imbued into the narrator over, over the Benley and character. The way that Onions wrote that was to me very successful. I was with the narrator in that and felt that same way.
Jessica: There's a scene in the story too where the narrator like has a girl over right?
Yeah, it was just so weird like it
Damien: What a loser how do they have a girl over they were [00:51:00] sculpted and chillin I understand that people can
Jessica: like all sorts of things,
Damien: but
Jessica: the relationship with the sculpture and each other and this girl being thrown in there was like trying, in my mind was like, okay, these things are all connected.
Damien: I don't know. I thought it was a, I thought it was a literary device to show how obsessed he was with this because obviously at the time it's like. You have a potential romantic interest and you're not pursuing it because you're obsessed elsewhere. Obviously that shows the level at which The level of intensity.
Yeah, exactly.
Jessica: I had a cute girl over and you don't even
Damien: care. Yeah, you don't care. There was no sculpting and chill. Padre, I'm carrying that forward. I'm happily married, but I'm still gonna ask my wife if she wants to sculpt and chill at some point. Sculpt and chill. Sculpt
Ryan: and chill. I love the ending too.
We've talked about it a couple times already. I don't want to beat it into the ground, but this coda that puts the narrator in an asylum without actually [00:52:00] telling us that's what's happening. Terrific writing there at the end. And then in the beginning, the sort of semi constant reminder that we as the reader don't know Ben Lian was really well done.
That, that piqued my interest. And then. And thinking about the story after reading it a couple times he's sowing those seeds of uncertainty right from the start. Sure. And I just thought that accomplished a lot of goals with a very quick sentence about
Damien: how we don't know Ben Liam.
Jessica: It's I wrote down one thing from the writing that I really like, that on, it's on page 130. Benley and was described as his head was like a skull and I thought that was
But it is absolutely no information everybody's head is
Damien: a skull it's like a skull Yeah, no, but I don't know about you. But as soon as that was said I was like All right. I get it. Especially with the deep set, like almost inconsequential eyes. [00:53:00] You know what I thought of when I read that?
Ryan: The Masters of the Universe movie, the live action with the Skeletor guy. With Skeletor? That's what I
Damien: imagined. That would make for a pretty damn chilling Bentley. Like Skeletor. No I really liked the writing. I liked how it bounced back and forth between It was a ballet. It really was a ballet.
There was a dance to it. There was an ebb and flow and like going back to the punctuation. It was really super effective. Like it read like long form poetry to me. But I also liked how cheeky it was, like, especially at the beginning when we still had a little bit of a little bit of like sanity and he's like describing the scene and he's saying something about wood that's piled up and he goes or he's he's describing the wood yard and he goes, Oh, and then there's a pile of wood, how it piles up or whatever, and it was just so relatable.
And you're like, Oh, I like this. I like this guy. I get what you're going through. And then you see the degradation and like the freneticism and [00:54:00] writing and pace and it was just so super effective. I was like. This is a really well written story. I wonder if it was like,
Jessica: because those details were so clear that when it skipped around, like I was just like latching on to the wrong things.
Like I just, I genuinely had issues.
Damien: Again, I think it's on purpose. Yes. That's where the execution does more than the actual words. Yeah. You're
Ryan: supposed to be disoriented.
Damien: It it did that. So glad I had to recap this story. This is, I'm like then maybe something to happen. I don't know.
Anyway, what's that over there? It's a mockingbird. It's eating something. Oh, that's cool. Look at this
Ryan: with all this swirling uncertainty. Even in our discussion, we all liked the story, it sounds and we all thought it was creepy. Yeah, definitely. It's probably redundant at this point, but did the scare hold up?
For me, this was more creepy than scary, but yeah it's Yeah, it's my favorite kind of ghost story. It's very [00:55:00] creepy
Damien: and dreadful. unnervingness is still thinking back on the story, I just, I get a little chill. I get a
Ryan: chill thinking about it. If you make a ghost story too visceral or too overt, it becomes silly.
It becomes a parody. You have to have it, everything just behind at least one layer of scenery for it to be effective for me.
Damien: From zero
Ryan: fingers of whiskey, the worst story.
We haven't had a zero fingered story yet, which is a credit to our editors. To five fingers or the coveted full fist.
Jessica: I put down a three and a half. It wasn't Okay. Ugh. I don't know how I feel about this story. I've thought about it a lot since reading it the first time and the second time and the third time.
What I like to do if I'm having issues with a story is try to find an audiobook version and have someone read it to me. Try
Ryan: to find the 1963 film version.
Damien: Sautéed onions, one man's descent into mental decay.
Jessica: It's helpful for me to see stuff, or [00:56:00] hear stuff in other formats, but I couldn't find one for this.
Damien: Alright, fine.
Jessica: And I liked it, I was confused by it. I didn't like how confused I was because it made me feel dumb. But I did like the writing and having a lot of parentheses that went off topic.
Damien: It just says, I love the punctuation.
Jessica: I hated the story that I really liked. So I'm going with a three and a half.
Ryan: We'll take it. That's excellent. I'm going to come in with four fingers here.
I thought this was a creepy story that is really going to stick with me. And the more I think about it, the more it goes up in my estimation. Lots of weird elements to the story, which I really enjoyed. And as I'd mentioned, this is my favorite kind of ghost story where everything is a little bit obscured and obfuscated.
So four fingers of whiskey from me. Damien,
Damien: four and a half. There it is. I really like this story and. Let's think about why we're here. All right. Why are we here? Let's just draw back the curtain. We're [00:57:00] here because we want
Jessica: deeper. We got a few minutes left.
Damien: I do biological humans found attraction with each other and decide.
No.
Ryan: I
Damien: really liked the experimentation. I liked the slow, purposeful. Unveiling. I liked the ambiguousness of it, the ambiguity that it finished on. I liked the dispensability of the characters, but I will remember them. I like the entire concept of the story is just, it got under my skin and it's still wriggling.
And that is a sign of just proper authorship. I really enjoy this story. It's not a five finger story. Let's hold it back, Damien. I don't know. I don't know what holds it back. And I think it could be the same things that make me pleasantly uncomfortable, make me unpleasantly uncomfortable, which is I wanted more like.
I [00:58:00] wanted more coherence and cohesiveness as the story wrapped up because I did want a little bow on it a little bit. I like Paul Tremblay's writing, but sometimes I feel, and I've criticized him to his face and said, why can't you just tell us what happens at the end, And I think the similar thing here, it's a great device, but it doesn't as a reader, I still want to know what happens in a story.
And so that bothers me a little bit. And I think that's what, what's holding it back from five fingers. But I just, everything about the story, everything that you both said, it struck all the right chords for me. So I give it a
Ryan: very strong four and a half. I feel like if we come back to the story in a week or so and did this part again, we might at least Damien and I might go up a half finger.
Damien: I might give it the full five. Jessica might be like, nah, screw this story. I'm done.
Jessica: No, we're going to come back and I'm going to be slowly fading.
Somebody
Damien: take her picture quick. This might be it. We'll put you in a ring [00:59:00] doorbell.
Ryan: We've got a really unique, if this, then that. I want to recommend to you another short story by Carl Edward Wagner and fans of this story already are going to know where I'm going with this. Carl Edward Wagner wrote a short story called In the Pines, which is a modern retelling of this story.
It is beautiful. It takes place in a secluded cabin, in a forested mountainside. And. For a long time, it was mostly inaccessible to modern day readers. It was in Wagner's short story collection called in a lonely place that had long been out of print. Paperback copies were selling on eBay for over a hundred bucks.
People just couldn't get at it. You might know Carl Edward Wagner as being the author of sticks, which is a super scary, creepy story. It was the the inspiration. For the Blair witch project. And in the same collection that story was in, we have in the pines, but thanks to Valancourt press who are [01:00:00] doing the Lord's work in terms of bringing, bringing old horror stories back to the forefront.
Last year, they reprinted in a lonely place. They got the rights to reprint it. They have it in a beautiful hardback volume as well as paperback and ebook. So you can enjoy Carl Edward Wagner today. And if you do, I suggest that you check out In the Pines, a modern day retelling of Oliver Onions Benleon.
Jessica: Awesome. That sounds genuinely very cool.
Damien: Yeah. Speaking of which, that's another reason that the the rating came in high is because I am definitely going to go out and search for more Onionsworth. Yeah, me too. I am. I am. I'm like super stoked to discover him
Ryan: too. You both should read the Beckoning Fare one next.
And I will read, okay, the Beckoning Pale one. Yeah. Yeah, I'm with you. I want to read more of Onions work. I know that Tartarus Press in the UK released a two volume hardback complete. Complete set of his work. That's probably pretty pricey for us to get here in the U S look us
Damien: up. Yeah. If you're now a sponsor, we just mentioned your [01:01:00] name three times while looking in a mirror.
So show up with a show, but the collection of onions.
Ryan: Got three, three of them, please. Three
Damien: onions. Oh, we can share custody. We'll rotate.
Ryan: That's going to do it for us tonight here on Whiskey and the Weird. Thank you so much for listening. We always enjoy producing these podcasts for you, discussing this fiction that we love so much and hope you do too, and if you do, would you mind giving us a rating or review wherever you listen to your podcasts?
We would really appreciate that. Of course, we always want to thank Dr. Blake Brandes for providing the music for Whiskey and the Weird. And Damien, if they want to invite you to sculpt and chill, where could they do that on the socials?
Damien: Slide in my DMs on my Finsta. Okay. That's right. But if you want to reach the rest of the podcast, you could find us at WhiskeyWeirdPod on Twitter slash X at WhiskeyWeirdPod on Twitter slash X.
You can also find us at [01:02:00] Whiskey and the Weird. On Instagram. That's at whiskey and the weird on Instagram. We spell our whiskeys with an E and we hope you do too. If not, plan on transfusing your own soul and oomph into some device proximal to you. Look around. What do you have? What do you own? What is art in your world?
Would you like your soul, your oomph, to be in that piece? I hope so, because it's happening. Jessica is holding up a baby seal in overalls? Is that a seal? Is that a seal in overalls? Yep. Oh, okay. Jessica's device is a seal in overalls. And trick wrap, which is really scary. Yeah, sorry. He's all wrapped up.
This got really interesting. We just opened up a whole can of worms at the end of this episode. He's a collectible! Anyway. That's where you can find us on the socials. That's what Benleyan
Ryan: said too. Jessica, what's our next
Jessica: story? We are actually doing a Rudyard Kipling story called WIRELESS.
Damien: Sounds good to
Ryan: me.
Damien: I'm Ryan Whitley. I'm Jessica Berg. And [01:03:00] I'm Damian Smith.
Ryan: And together we're Whiskey and the Weird. Somebody send us home.
Damien: As always, keep your friends through the ages and your creeps in the pages. Bye bye everybody.