Strange Wine by Harlan Ellison

This collection of short stories I picked up at a wonderful little store in Santa Monica, CA called Every Picture Tells A Story. This is captivating store for children of all ages. It’s full of large watercolor paintings of favorite bedtime story characters, prints of Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendek, a contemporary print from the cartoon Boondocks, and many books from a variety of genres. That afternoon I was drawn to a large coffee table book of Ray Harryhausen’s work called An Animated Life. However, for the price of that one book, I ended up purchasing 4 books, one of which was Harlan Ellison’s collection called Strange Wine. It’s definitely a book that bends towards horror with a little mix of fantasy, extremely entertaining with stories that could appeal to a wide audience of people. I have to say that the shear fact that the author has another collection of stories called Angry Candy pleases me no end. The image that appears in my head of an enraged Hershey bar just entreats me to smile widely.

Prior to this collection, I had actually read Ellison’s screenplay for the Isaac Asimov tomb I, Robot. A wonderful adaptation of the imagery and humanity Asimov intended for his masterpiece (instead of that travesty with Will Smith). Ellison is also associated with my all time favorite comic book creator and author, Neil Gaiman. Ellison wrote and introduction to one of Gaiman’s Sandman series and I believe Gaiman has returned the favor. Brilliant minds both of them with creativity to create and populate worlds beyond my imagination. Luckily, since I cannot think them up, I can always grab a book by these authors and read about them.

Strange Wine is wonderful because the stories are so diverse and still manage to have the same creepy anticipatory feel that horror or mystery work should (in my opinion) have. The short story entitled Mom is definitely one of my favorites since it deals with a man’s relationship with his VERY Jewish, VERY annoying, as well as VERY dead mother. This one gave me nightmares for a week since I am Jewish and can relate to his plight making this work of fiction far too close for comfort. THE Diagnosis of Dr. D'arqueAngel was another fascinatingly addictive read in which a doctor injects her patients with small amounts of death so that they will build up a tolerance and henceforth live longer. This addresses both the fear of growing older and of the unstoppable force of death which we are all vulnerable to. The writing raises it to horrific level that makes us consider death not such a bad thing afterall. By far my favorite short in this collection is Lonely Women are the Vessels of Time, the characters are fleshed out and relatable. I will definitely be picking up another collection from Ellison in the near future.