Customer Reviews

Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues: True Stories of the Unsavory, Unwise, Unorthodox and Unusual from the magazine "Morbid Curiosity"

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I had never heard of the magazine Morbid Curiousity prior to seeing this book as an offering through the Vine program at Amazon. As I consider myself both morbid as well as extremely curious, it seemed like a good fit based on the brief synopsis I read.
This is one of those instances where my instincts were spot on. By page 2 of the editor`s preface titled "Morbid Curiousity Changed My Life" I was hooked and ready to explore the world of morbid.
While there were truly many stories that were minimally gross and revolting, predictably enough the stories that affected me the most were the ones that echoed my own experiences such as having surgery and experiencing sensation, mourning a loved one, enjoying a good day at a creepy cemetery or encounters with the spirit world. This collection ran the gamut. While there were plenty of creepy stories, there were stories that were funny or sad also.
As this book was a composite of many persons experiences with the morbid/dark side, it presented a unique perspective to what individuals perceive as perverse.
It is a good read and should keep the reader involved.

I never read the magazine, but I found this collection to be very interesting. Each story chronicles an unlikely (hopefully) or unusual event in someone's life. Apparently these things happen, just not to the majority of us. On events, happenings and circumstances that we could only imagine, these people write. What was it like to hit & likely kill someone? What is a satanic ritual service like? How does one go about killing a good friend? From modern day vampires to life as a medical human guinea pig, this collection allows you to peer into the strange events that you think would only exist in fiction.

Note: I skipped two stories that had to do with animals. I'm sensitive that way...

Featuring first-person nonfiction essays that celebrated the absurd, the unusual, the morbid, and the grotesque, MORBID CURIOSITY was a magazine that was published once a year from 1997 to 2007. MORBID CURIOSITY CURES THE BLUES is a collection of forty essays, handpicked by editor and publisher Loren Rhodes, from the magazine's ten-year run. The essays are arranged in five categories--childhood, travel, money and employment, death and the afterlife, and a catchall category--and range in tone from the gruesomely humorous to the truly horrific.

As a lover of things that are morbid, bizarre, or horrifying, I found it nearly impossible to put down this book before I'd read it from cover to cover. As with any anthology, there are a few stories that don't quite hit the mark, but the bulk of them are sure to entertain and engage anybody who is interested in real-life tales of the unusual and the bizarre. Among my favorite of the essays contained within are "The Barbie Wrecking Yard," a man's recollection of how his female cousin used Barbie and G.I. Joe dolls to both awaken his sexuality and haunt his dreams; "Souvenir of Hell," the story of a disturbing tour through what remains of Auschwitz; and "Blood Gags," one man's memoir about faking "bloody" hardcore S&M videos in the 1980s.

If you like true stories about truly unusual people or the genuinely bizarre side of modern life--or even if you just have a morbid curiosity about such things--you'll enjoy MORBID CURIOSITY CURES THE BLUES. And if you're like me, you'll wish you'd known about MORBID CURIOSITY magazine when it was still in print...and you'll start hunting down the back issues.

Odd how things are. I, like the editor and creator of the magazine Morbid Curiosity, was raised a country girl in Michigan with a family of farmers. I used to have to drive an hour to the Big City, which isn't really that big of city, just to go to cool record and bookstores. A few of these had Morbid Curiosity on their shelves. As a gothling, I was attracted to the concept. A lot of late 80's/early 90's magazines were linked to this idea of morbid true story telling (Johnny Marr from the Smiths had a similar zine in Murder Can Be Fun). I ate it up, especially at a pre-Internet time where my small town living tried to hold me back from anything morose, primitive or obscure. Upon reading this volume in the present, parts sound outdated due to the internet, now you can buy betel nuts online instead of traveling to Asia to do so (though now older and wiser, I think that modern primitives that go to other countries to sample herbs in other to travel to alternate realities of the mind are just as bad as tourist who stay in hotels, if not worse). The true excess of morbid images and stories via the Web almost destroys the pure idea of this magazine which was to be a forum for those who wanted to share experiences that were dark or horrible to them, to either exorcise them or share...of course the Internet makes this easy, but the quality of someone throwing something on a blog quickly can be compromised over someone slaving over a typewriter, making sure the story reads excellently.

I loved this magazine in the past and I am happy to own this book, since most of the copies I had were gobbled up by my friends, who had similar interests in all things dark and bizarre. I don't think the magazine was meant to shock, more than soothe. That is why I like it. Inside this volume of the best articles of the magazine are stories about terrible childhoods, visiting Holocaust camps with the hopes of understanding and stories of self-discovery through the strength of both the human body and mind, to travel to places hardly seen and to emerge with knowledge of those areas in life people don't want to touch, like their own inner mortality and death as well as the evil that men do. A lot of the articles have life changed the writers and it shows. I highly recommend this book, even for people who get most of their morbidity off the Internet. There is something to be said for holding this volume of almost forgotten lore and feeling the paper pages, perhaps by candlelight and getting the full feel of what darkness is, comforted by people who feel the way you do about life.

I have to confess that I enjoyed this book for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it made me feel profoundly, deeply normal. I can't tell you if that's because some of the stories made my peculiarities seem really benign, or if it was recognizing that other people are just as strange in the same ways as I am. No matter, it's a comforting volume, or was for me.

What surprised me, though, was how incredibly human and even humane these stories are. This isn't shock journalism, these are stories about people who find themselves doing things most people can't even imagine doing. They do them, not for the hell of it, not because it seems cool or perverse or wicked, but because they need the money, or because they find that there is something compelling them, some need to understand a thing which remains so incomprehensible to most people that they avoid thinking about it at all. The visit to the Holocaust Museum at Auschwitz is a fine example of the latter, and it's a well-written and thoughtful examination of one man's confrontation with a past that remains so painful, so horrific that some people refuse to believe it could have happened.

Honestly, if you're looking for some kind of perverse sexual thrill here, don't bother. These pieces will provoke you to use a wholly different organ. If you want to give some serious thought to the human condition, this is a wonderful resource.

Any anthology will have stories that are better than others, and the same is true for "Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues". While I liked some more, I'm happy to say there are no "bad" ones in this bunch. Each and every one is worth a read. "Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues" is a great collection of stories from the "Morbid Curiosity" magazine, and contains a good introduction by Loren Rhoads. It gives you a good idea of what the magazine tried to do when it was being published.

My two favorites were "Slippery Little Devil" by T.M.Gray, an absolutely chilling story about anesthesia awareness. It's both horrifying and sad. Another good one is "The Keeper of the Shop", by Jill Tracy. It's a sweet and sad little story about friendships and meanings found in seemingly insignificant objects.

It would be interesting to see another collection of stories from the "Morbid Curiosity" magazine. :)

If you drew a venn diagram (those overlapping circles charts) with one circle labeled "sex," another "torture" and another labeled "Amsterdam," the convergence of those spheres results in _Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues_. Of course, that's not all it's about. That's just ONE of the stories. You'd also need circles labeled "sanitarium," "hallucinogens," "murder," "puberty," "Nazis," "Halloween," "medical experiments," "anesthesia," "spiritual medium" and "UFOs." All the circles don't overlap of course. (If they did, you'd have a best seller...or a Tarantino movie.)

Each story is written by a different author, 41 stories in all. Almost all of them are very well written: aesthetically impactful, good vocabulary, and the stories are intriguing and interesting. For the most part, each story made me want to read more. A couple I thought were pretty weak. All the stories are supposed to be true, and all but one read as true to me.

The stories are organized into these sections:
- Childhood's End: Growing Up Morbid
- Far From Home: Morbid Curiosity on the Road
- Gainful Employment: The Morbid Things People Do for Money
- Curious Behavior: The Morbid Catchall Category
- Medical Adventures: Morbid Medicine
- Beyond Death: Exploring Behind the Curtain
- Epitaph: The Final Word on Morbid Curiosity

You know, come to think of it there is very little sex in this book, only mentioned or alluded to a couple times. It really does live up to its quite accurate subtitle though: "True Stories of the Unsavory, Unwise, Unorthodox, and Unusual." Some of the stories, particularly in the "Beyond Death" section I found revolting, but still fascinating (morbid curiosity!).

Be warned, it starts a little slow. I didn't really get sucked in until maybe the 4th story. Some at the beginning about childhood I just found more depressing than unusual. Still, they were well written.

I think I'll want to read this again.

While the stories were interesting, they weren't quite what I expected. I expected bizarre stories, things people had done that were beyond the veil of weirdness - I mean, really gruesome stuff, or the type of stuff that pushes the limits, you know? But the stories weren't really like that - they were stories about, perhaps, unusual things that people have done - grave robbing, exploring the WWII death camps and musing about them, taking part in a Black Mass (and a fairly tame one from the account) - but nothing really OUT THERE. So, I guess I was a little disappointed.

Nonetheless, the stories presented are interesting, if for no other reason than for the variety of ideas presented, and therefore should be of interest to many people. Be sure to take a look at it, anyway. Maybe you'll like it better than I did!

In a decade, you expect a magazine to collect a good sampling of work, both great and not so great. This collection of 40 stories from "Morbid Curiosity" is indeed an excellent selection of the various authors and taboo subjects they covered.

The stories are organized into six categories based on subject. After a majority of the stories either the author or the editor includes a short essay about one or two points raised in the story. This combination of real life encounters and experienced grounded in historical, legal and other facts was very interesting to me. Of course you could just read the stories.

The stories are creepy but that kind of eeriness that you can't look away from. They include personal medical trauma, creative jobs, nightmarish relatives, stressful journeys and drug induced adventures. Some have an erotic touch to them but most are just enticing in their horror. All reveal something true about the human condition.

I enjoyed this collection a great deal and I'm sorry that the magazine is no longer around to continue to thrill us and teach us.

MORBID CURIOSITY CURES THE BLUES is a collection of non-fiction stories and artwork from MORBID CURIOSITY
magazine. Edited by Loren Rhoads, who also edited this collection, MORBID CURIOSITY was devoted to true
accounts of the grotesque and unusual submitted by contributors from the USA and around the globe. These
sometimes funny, often harrowing stories were illustrated with appropriately bizarre drawings. MC began
publishing in 1997 and ended its run in 2006. Being something of a Seeker of the Strange myself, I was a
bit surprised that I had never even heard of this magazine before. Alas: some things just escape my radar.

The stories collected here represent the best and most popular submissions from MC's run. Madness, assisted
suicide, creative uses for Barbie Dolls and G.I. Joes, arcane hallucinogenic drugs, and death, death and
more death await the curious reader as a crouching wolf spider awaits its unsuspecting bug lunch. It goes
without saying that some of these essays travel pretty far into the realm of Too Much Information, and one
is left wondering why these writers would reveal to the public such aspects of their lives as ought to have
remained permanently under wraps. Squeamish and sensitive readers are hereby advised to proceed with caution.
Nevertheless, as Loren Rhoads points out in her closing essay, "There's nothing like a little horror to make
you glad to be alive." Words by which to live, if you happen to ask me.

So...is MORBID CURIOSITY CURES THE BLUES recommended to the casual reader- even the casual reader of horror?
Probably not: it's too grounded in excruciating reality. But...if you're someone who makes lengthy visual
examinations of roadkill, or wants very much to observe an autopsy, or to add human body parts to your
knick-knack collection, or to chew your fill of infamous betel nuts in Southeast Asia...then, have at it,
devoted, for this book is tailor-made for you.