Mon 7 Mar 2022
A 1001 Midnights Review: RAOLD DAHL – Someone Like You.
Posted by Steve under 1001 Midnights , Reviews[3] Comments
by Marcia Muller
RAOLD DAHL – Someone Like You. Alfred A. Knopf, hardcover, 1953. Dell #F139, paperback, 1961. Reprinted many times.
Roald Dahl’s short stories have been called-among other things — bizarre, comic, horrific, clever, and playful. Dahl depicts a world where things are a little — or sometimes a lot — skewed from the world we know, and the events he chronicles often produce wrenching horror in his reader. But he has also been known to inject a comic twist into his stories, and he toys with the reader, teasing the story line along like a mischievous child until he has us completely fooled.
Perhaps his most famous story is “Lamb to the Slaughter.” It begins on a deceptively quiet note, with Mary Maloney waiting in her cozy parlor for her husband to come home from work. Mary is a devoted housewife, six months pregnant, and she takes excellent care of her policeman husband, but tonight she has neglected to take anything out of the freezer. And when she does, after her husband makes a startling announcement, a leg of lamb seems quite appropriate …..
“Taste” likewise deals with food. Mike Schofield, a London epicure, is giving a dinner party to which he has invited a famous gourmet. Mike is proud of his wine cellar and anxious to trip up his guest on his knowledge of fine but obscure vintages. In fact, he is so sure of his ability to do so that he makes a most dangerous wager.
These first two stories are examples of Dahl’s lighter work. On the more serious side is “Man from the South,” which concerns a different, more deadly wager. In “The Soldier,” Dahl makes a subtle statement about the aftermath of war. And readers and writers alike will be both amused and shaken at the implications of “The Great Automatic Grammatisator.”
This collection shows Dahl at his best. Other volumes of his varied and multifaceted short stories include Kiss, Kiss (1960), The Best of Roald Dahl ( 1978), and Tales of the Unexpected (1979). In addition, he has written two novels: Sometime Never: A Fable for Supermen (1948) and My Uncle Oswald (1979).
———
Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007. Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.
March 7th, 2022 at 9:35 pm
Dahl is perhaps problematic today, not the nicest person it seems, but if you can separate the art from the artist (I can and do), he, John Kier Cross, and John Collier wrote some of the cleverest and entertaining darkly humorous stories of their time.
“Lamb to the Slaughter” and “Man From the South” were both memorably adapted for ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS, the latter for both the original and as part of the pilot for the revived series.
He was, of course, a highly successful children’s author to most notably of CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, better known as WILLY WONKA.
March 7th, 2022 at 11:48 pm
If anyone would like to see eight seasons of Raold Dahl on the “small” screen, TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED is currently streaming on IMDb.TV. The shows have commercials, but they’re very well done. and well worth your while.
“Lamb to he Slaughter” is episode 4 of season one.
March 8th, 2022 at 5:04 pm
Dahl’s short stories are terrific.
They lend themselves very slickly to TV adaptions, from what I have seen. Certainly, there are some good ones which wound up on ‘Tales of the Unexpected’.
The one I recall most is a story where an acoustical engineer invents a machine which detects and makes audible, the ‘voices’ of vegetables. Trees groaning when struck by an axe, for example. This idea appeals to me.
I’m less keen on the style he adopts when penning, ‘nicer fare’. Isn’t there something called, “James and the Giant Peach”? Too saccharine-sounding for me. Maybe I’m mistaken about it.