From Amazon.com
Paul Di Filippo returns in fine protean form with his story collection
Little Doors. "Billy" satirizes both the Reagan presidency and the American anyone-can-make-it myth, as a boy born literally without a brain grows up to become president of the United States. "Rare Firsts" places a fantastic temptation before a failing rare-book dealer. A deceased milquetoast may yet save the day in the amusing nightmare-noir of "The Short Ashy Afterlife of Hiram P. Dottle." The melancholy "Slumberland" reveals the later adventures of the old man who once dreamed his way through the Sunday comic strip "Little Nemo in Slumberland." And "Return to Cockaigne" turns high fantasy inside out, in what can only inadequately be described as a collision of Candyland, C.S. Lewis's Narnia, James Branch Cabell's Poictesme, and LSD.
The promotional printing of Little Doors promises "seventeen new stories that represent his best work to date": this is not true. The anthology contains 16 stories and one poem. Also, the copyright page indicates that every work has been previously published, and some of the stories date back a decade or more, to a time when Di Filippo was a less skilled and versatile stylist. However, the early stories do display the wild imagination for which he is justly praised, and the later stories demonstrate his full creative powers, from the impressive surrealism of "The Death of Salvador Dali" to the jabberwacked-out magic realism of "Jack Neck and the Worry Bird" to the eerie e.e. cummings tribute "Mehitabel in Hell." --Cynthia Ward
From Publishers Weekly
Every one of the 17 idiosyncratic short fantasies in this superior collection from Nebula and Philip K. Dick finalist Di Filippo (Ribofunk, etc.) is immaculately told. The writing, however, verges on the self-consciously clever and is slightly condescending, as if Mr. Peabody were patiently explaining the workings of the Wayback machine to his pet boy Sherman. And if you don't grok the Wayback machine as a cultural metaphor, you may miss out on just how good (and often hilarious) the stories are for the right audience: baby boomer Di Filippo is very much of his generation. Furthermore, the author tends to confirm what we already know. In the title story we learn, again, of the dark power of the imagination; we are willingly led by the literally brainless in "Billy"; "The Grange" and "Our House" show that despite our veneer of civilization, we are still primal; insanity can be cruel ("Moloch") or amusing ("The Horror Writer"). Accomplished diversions into style take as subjects high fantasy ("Return to Cockaigne"), Don Marquis ("Mehitabel in Hell") and surrealism ("The Death of Salvador Dali"). Only a few tales-like "Sleep Is Where You Find It" (co-written with Marc Laidlaw), in which legendary photographer Weegee wrestles with the meanings of life and death, and "Rare Firsts," a story about a book lover-display real depth. Still, this is a collection worth reading, even if lacking profundity.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
