Midnight Graffiti

Product Information

I used to read a lot of anthologies, and since I ride the train daily, I figured maybe I should resume this habit, seeing as that 15-50-page stories are perfect for my rides to and from work, and for my crappy lunch break, where I have nothing better to do than sit on a cold metal bench, alone, smoking and reading (occasionally interrupted by shoving some food down my gullet).

Among those I found to be particularly unreadable: "The Domino Man," "Salvation," and most of all, "Rant" by Nancy A. In 2003, he received the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.Further, Horsting attempts to flatter each author with an introductory bio, but just comes off overly congratulatory and all too chummy. Or Dan Simmons' "The River Styx Runs Upstream," a story of resurrection -- with a ghastly difference. The author uses the time-honored crutch of borrowing established characters (the inhabitants of Oz) and endlessly perverting their well-intentioned natures, only to have them caught up in a boneheaded nuclear catastrophe. Several were interesting in portraying the point of view of part of society: Rainy Season, Say Hello Mister Quigley, Emerald City Blues, Rant.

Michael Straczynski does a pretty good job clearing the relavtively low bar which has been set, with “Say Hello, Mister Quigley”, which doesn’t really break any new ground with the creepy-doll-comes-to-life-and-menaces-somebody plot, but at least managed to hold my interest. Bad Guy Hats: I liked the idea behind this, but there was too much graphic violence for me to enjoy it. Stephen King's "Rainy Season" is passable, but classic King filler; Neil Gaiman impresses as always - perhaps more so alongside some of the less experienced authors included in this collection. Many of King's other horror novels have been adapted into movies, including The Shining, Firestarter, Pet Semetary, Cujo, Misery, The Stand, and The Tommyknockers. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.

Could I possibly be any more slick, digging the ‘cutting edge’ of contemporary fare while my foolish, conformist peers wasted their time scrutinizing some 100-year old, irrelevant piece of shit? The stories range in intensity from the sheer grit of "Bad Guy Hats" to the quirky "Bob the Dinosaur Goes to Disneyland. I think of them at least once a week on the norm and more than that if I am writing something of my own, and looking for the vibes I picked up from those stories to share now, with my readers. I don't think that the Anthology Experiment went over too well; back to reading something slightly more worthwhile, maybe some letters to the editor from back-issues of Club, if I can manage to pry the pages apart somehow.

I hunkered down in the uncomfortable confines of the stairwell in my usual train-car to distance myself from the bustling cretins of the world and whipped the relic known as ‘Midnight Graffiti’ out. That said, I think it is important to bear in mind that some people can find stories that are designed to be pleasant, unpleasant.

I highly recommend this book especially for people like myself who just got into reading and wanted to find some different authors, this is a quick way to get a snapshot of their various writing styles and genre. This was a wonderful collection of short stories mainly for the sheer variety of genres, styles, and moods. If you never had the chance to read it back in the day, this book collects some of the best stories to appear between its covers. Like many early/mid 90’s anthologies (see ‘Shock Rock’, ‘Prime Evil’, and ‘Night Screams’ from my small sample alone), the ever-present Stephen King has a seldom-published contribution in ‘Midnight Graffiti’, and editors Jessica Horsting and James Van Hise unwisely decide to shoot their wad immediately out of the starting gate by opening it up with “Rainy Season”. Then the last couple of stories reassured me that yes, I’m in the right genre (along with a few other reviews that echoed my thoughts).

Schow's "Bad Guy Hats," a detailed study of intraspecific predator-prey relationships and social ecology that will have you scrutinizing even the kindest-seeming of people with suspicion for years to come. NANCY COLLINS demystifies the messiah reborn, an avenging angel of the suburbs with a strange and savage appetite.

Midnight Graffiti (Warner Books, Oct 1992) is an engaging anthology from the now-defunct magazine of the same name from the late '80s. Sadly, of the nineteen stories collected herein, these are the only five I’d even care to bother with again. It turns out that the cover illustration is actually by some total fraud named Martin Cannon, just some unfortunate slob without an original style of his own, proving he’s capable of producing something as derivative as possible of the style of Giger, sans talent. Under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, King has written the books The Running Man, The Regulators, Thinner, The Long Walk, Roadwork, Rage, and It. His award-winning short story "The River Styx Runs Upstream" is easily one of my favorite short stories, ever.