Customer Reviews

Black Water: The Book of Fantastic Literature

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I have a very old, bent copy of this incredible anthology that's falling apart because I've read it through six times. What's so great about it is that editor Alberto Manguel understands that the term, "fantastic," does not preclude the sublime. Entries here range from slow creepers like Julio Cortazar's unsettling "House Taken Over" and Horacio Quiroga's "The Feather Pillow," to more classically fantastic fare such as Poe's "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" and Ray Bradbury's "The Playground." What's more, Manguel does not limit his sources to North and South American fiction. The multinational anthology includes entries from France, Germany, Italy, Denmark and Japan. The more than 70 entries are also a great sampling of over a century of world literature. A comparable sequel, "Blackwater 2," followed, but it's this one that will leave you chilled, stunned and pensive after every selection.

Alberto Manguel - anthologist extraordinaire - put together this definitive collection of fabulist fiction almost twenty years ago, and it's yet to be surpassed. It covers an immense range of themes and an eclectic international mix of writers. Moreover, it's one of the few anthologies in which almost every story appeals. What appeals less, however, is Manguel's immensely irritating habit of revealing key elements of most of the stories in his pithy introductions. Such editorial spoiling is always annoying, but it's especially frustrating when applied to 'fantastic' fiction because so much of its effect depends on mystery, surprise endings, and the wonderful disorientation of not knowing precisely what is going on. Here, story after story is derailed by Manguel telling us up front that it's a 'time travel story' or a 'ghost story', or how it ends, or that it achieves its effect in a particular way. My recommendation is that you read the introductions only after you've read each story - and do read them, because apart from spoilers, they quite often reveal savvy observations, unusual connections, and interesting biographical notes. Dates of composition for each story (where known) would have been a helpful addition. You can in some cases deduce these from the copyright acknowledgements at the front of the book, but not always. Manguel's preface to the volume is illuminating: it strikes just the right balance between personal memoir, academic apparatus and useful information.

Where to begin?

This anthology was one I obtained in my 20's and have dipped into ever since. Certain themes resonate. The serendipity of chance encounters leads to uncanny places. Visions and dreams enthrall the person who entertains them. And love takes the most unexpected forms. An imaginary painting captivates art critics in ways that a real one never could ("Autumn Mountain"). An artist paints himself into a scene that enables him to escape even in death ("How Wang Fo Was Saved" by Marguerite Yourcenar). A woman cancels the laws of nature through her disbelief ("Certain Distant Suns" by Greenberg). An errand to rescue an artwork become a trap leading to exile ("The Visit To the Museum" by Nabokov). A specter from beyond returns to wreak vengeance on the one who profited from his demise ("A Visitor From Down Under"). Here is a vignette: The Dream (from the One Thousand and One Arabian Nights)

There was a man of Baghdad who possessed great wealth and many possessions. But his estate changed and his wealth passed away until at length he was reduced to sustaining himself by laborious exertion. And he slept one night, overwhelmed and oppressed, and in his dream saw one who said to him, Arise and repair to Cairo, for verily thy fortune lies there. So he awoke and journeyed to Cairo, and when he arrived there night overtook him and he slept in a mosque.

Now as God, Whose Name be exalted, would have it, certain robbers broke into a house adjacent to the mosque and the inhabitants raising cries, the robbers slipped over the wall into the mosque and escaped. Then the constabulary entered the mosque and found the man of Baghdad there, and seizing him, beat him with their truncheons until he was nearly dead, and then put him in a cell. And after three days the constable summoned him and asked, From whence are thou? And he answered, From Baghdad. And he asked him, What affair was it that brought thee to Cairo? And he answered, I saw a person in a dream who told me to go to Cairo, for my fortune was there. And I now see what that fortune was, namely the beating I received at the hand of the constables.

Then the head constable laughed so that his grinders showed, and he said, Oh thou of little sense, know this, that I for three nights had a dream in which I was told that if I went to Baghdad and went to such-and-such a street and came to a certain house and went into the back garden there and dug beneath a fountain that I would find a great treasure. And I did not go. But thou has traveled from city to city all on account of confused dreams.

Then he gave him some money and said, Take this and return to thy city.

Now, the house that the constable described in his dream was the house of the man of Baghdad. So when he returned to his home, he went into the garden and dug beneath the fountain, and found abundant wealth. And so God sustained him, and it was regarded as a marvelous coincidence.