The Third Bear Carnival!

If you’re a fan of Jeff Vandermeer then you might want to head over to ‘The Mumpsimus’ and check this out.

From Matt Staggs’ email...

If you haven't seen it already, I thought that I would take an opportunity to direct you a current event occurring literary critic Matthew Cheney's website, The Mumpsimus.

Independently of any effort from the author or publisher, a community of readers, writers, artists and fans have launched a critique and celebration of award-winning fantasist Jeff VanderMeer's newest fiction collection, The Third Bear. They're calling it the Third Bear Carnival, and Cheney's The Mumpsimus is the launching point for it all.

Each participant has taken one fiction selection from The Third Bear and written - or even drawn - a response to it. These responses range from light hearted and playful to sober literary criticism. The Third Bear Carnival has just begun, and over the next few days more writers will be contributing to this unique effort.

Visit the Third Bear Carnival here: http://mumpsimus.blogspot.com/2010/07/third-bear-carnival.html

And here’s a little bit about the book itself...

Compared by critics to Borges, Nabokov, and Kafka, inventive contemporary fantasist Jeff VanderMeer continues to amaze with this surreal, innovative, and absurdist gathering of award-winning short fiction. Exotic beasts and improbable travellers roam restlessly through these darkly diverting and finely-honed tales.

Highlights include "The Situation," in which a beleaguered office worker creates a child-swallowing manta-ray to be used for educational purposes (once described as Dilbert meets Gormenghast); "Three Days in a Border Town," where a sharpshooter seeks the truth about her husband in an elusive floating City beyond a far-future horizon; "Errata," following an oddly-familiar writer who has marshalled a penguin, a shaman, and two pearl-handled pistols with which to plot the end of the world. Also included are two stories original to this collection, including "The Quickening," in which a lonely child is torn between familial obligation and a wounded talking rabbit.

Chimerical and hypnotic, VanderMeer leads readers through the postmodern into a new literature of the imagination.

‘Dlibert meets Gormenghast’? Sounds like my office... I enjoy Vandermeer’s work so will be checking this out when I get a chance, same deal with what’s happening over at ‘The Mumpsimus’ :o)