I’ve been reading Barry N. Malzberg’s short stories and novels since the 1960s. Malzberg’s fiction focuses on paranoia, the Kennedy assassination, and the fluidity of Reality. Stark House collects two of Malzberg’s short story collections, The Man Who Loved the Midnight Lady (1980) and In the Stone House (2000), which covers some of the best of Malzberg’s hundreds of published short stories.
In The Man Who Loved the Midnight Lady, at the end of each story, Malzberg comments on the genesis of the story, the publishing circumstances at the time (sometimes dire), and details surrounding subsequent reprinting of many of the stories.
In addition to excellent stories like “The Man Who Loved the Midnight Lady,” Malzberg includes three stories he wrote with Bill Pronzini. Malzberg and Pronzini also teamed up to write three excellent and underrated novels.
Also impressive is Malzberg’s thoughts on Science Fiction: “The Fifties (essay).” As Malzberg points out, dozens of SF magazines that provided a large market for Science Fiction stories at the start of the decade disappeared by the end of the decade. The market for SF morphed to paperbacks, hardcovers, and competition for sales to the remaining SF magazines in the Sixties.
THE MAN WHO LOVED THE MIDNIGHT LADY/IN THE STONE HOUSE displays Barry N. Malzberg’s unique talents and interests while delivering an adrenaline rush equivalent to a literary zipline thrill ride! GRADE: A
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
THE MAN WHO LOVED THE MIDNIGHT LADY — 7
Introduction — 8
On the air — 9
Here, for just a while — 16
In the stocks — 22
The fifties (essay) — 30
The man who married a beagle — 38
Big Ernie, the royal Russian, and the big trapdoor — 48
Ring, the brass ring, the royal Russian and I — 53
Of ladies’ night out and otherwise — 58
The annual once-a-year bash and circumstance party — 63
The appeal — 70
Yahrzeit — 77
Another burnt-out case / with Bill Pronzini — 80
I’m going through the door — 91
Cornell — 96
On account of darkness / with Bill Pronzini — 99
Impasse — 104
Varieties of technological experience — 111
Varieties of religious experience — 116
Inside out — 121
Line of succession — 126
Reaction-formation — 131
Indigestion — 135
A clone at last / with Bill Pronzini — 142
Backing up — 144
September 1958 — 148
Into the breach — 152
On ‘Revelations’ (essay) — 157
Thirty-six views of his dead majesty — 162
The trials of Sigmund — 178
The man who loved the midnight lady –182
IN THE STONE HOUSE –189
Heavy metal — 190
Turpentine — 203
Quartermain — 213
The Prince of the Steppes — 222
Andante lugubre — 230
Standards & practices — 236
Darwinian facts — 242
Allegro marcato — 253
Something from the seventies — 261
The high purpose — 266
All assassins — 282
Understanding entropy — 289
Ship full of Jews — 293
Amos — 302
Improvident excess — 309
Hitler at Nuremberg — 316
Concerto accademico — 321
The intransigents — 326
Hierartic realignment — 332
The only thing you learn — 343
Police actions — 347
Fugato — 356
Major league Triceratops — 374
In the stone house — 396
AFTERWORD: The Sprawl of Intensity, the Intensity of Sprawl — 422
Acknowledgments — 425
Bibliography — 428
I love Malzberg’s writing but can be very dense and I can only read him in short chunks. As I recall, it took me several weeks to read each of these collections when they first came out. The only other writer who affected me like that was J. G. Ballard.
Jerry, you’re right about the similarities between Ballard and Malzberg. Fortunately, many of Malzberg’s stories are short, 3-5 pages in many cases.
I love Malzberg’s writing but it can be very dense and I can only read him in short chunks. As I recall, it took me several weeks to read each of these collections when they first came out. The only other writer who affected me like that was J. G. Ballard.
Did I just stutter?
Jerry, yes, you did stutter, but Biden stutters, too.
I think it would be fairer to say that Among the things his focuses on would be those three…he has written some stories about the JFK assassination, as he has about the Apollo space program, but he wanted to work his way through what he wanted to get at with them, I believe.
The fluidity of personal and “objective” reality is a fairer cop, even in such memorably funny stories as his collaboration with Pronzini, “Another Burnt-Out Case”, which is not a fantasy and nothing like sf but did appear in FANTASTIC back when I could buy new issues…his Writer’s Heaven stories began running in F&SF at about that time.
Todd, as you point out, Malzberg’s career had a lot of twists and turns. Malzberg wrote plenty of novels and stories for Roger Elwood in the 1970s. Later, his collaboration with Bill Pronzini on stories and novels proved to be successful.
I’ve read a number of his short stories, his mysteries written with Bill Pronzini (inducing THE RUNNING OF BEATS and PROSE BOWL), some of his “Mike Barry” Lone Wolf series, and a number of the short stories. Will definitely look for this one.
Jeff, I forgot about Malzberg’s “Mike Barry” men’s action series. I actually read the LONE WOLF series, all 14 volumes.
George, I’ve always considered the Lone Wolf series to be one large single book in which Malzberg successfully deconstructed the men’s adventure novel. This was probably not his intention at the beginning, but viewing the series as a single story does add a startling new dimension to the reading.
Jerry, I had the same feeling while I was reading the LONE WOLF series! I binged reading them, one after another and they all blended into one really, really long book in my mind!
Barry has said/written he was attempting just that.
Todd, I’m happy STARK HOUSE is reprinting Barry N. Malzberg’s work and making it available to a new audience of readers.
I have a Best of Barry Malzberg which contains more of his early stories such as A Galaxy Called Rome and Final War. I read a lot of his early novels such as Beyyond Apollo and Herovit’s World bu none of his later ones. Haven’t read the Best of yet due to the extremely small print which is difficult for my old eyes.
Steve, I love “A Galaxy Called Rome”!
Sounds like a good one, not sure if I’ve read his stuff or not, if so in an anthology. My quibble with the Stark House books is their size: they’re too tall for the paperback shelves, so they have to be squeezed onto the already full hardcover area. Yes, I have full shelf problems, which I’m trying to solve by getting rid of books.
Rick, STARK HOUSE also has a line of paperbacks in regular size. I don’t mind the trade paperback format, but like you, I’m running out of shelf space. I just donated six boxes of books to SUNY at Buffalo’s Special Collections. Diane says that didn’t make much of a dent!
I believe I have both in their original editions…”Midnight Lady” was first in Bill Pronzini’s train-themed anthology MIDNIGHT SPECIALS, on of the first I encountered with a similar remit as the Robert Arthur and Harold Q. Masur “Hitchcock” anthologies. https://socialistjazz.blogspot.com/2011/10/ffb-house-of-nightmare-kathleen-lines.html
Todd, I have a hardcover edition of MIDNIGHT LADY, too. I somehow missed the ARKHAM HOUSE edition of IN THE STONE HOUSE.
Wow, it was August when I noted receipt of the new edition…time is flying or even hurtling: https://socialistjazz.blogspot.com/2021/08/wandering-stars-edited-by-jack-dann.html
Todd, Time flies around here, too!
This looks very good. I have not tried any of Malzberg’s stories, so I will look out for this.
Tracy, this STARK HOUSE volume would be a good place to start with Malzberg!