Terror of Earth: X Fables (Sun & Moon Classics, No 136)

Rating:
Summary: DR. LA FARGE IS THE MAN
Review: Dr. La Farge is my teacher. He's the man! His book is excellent. But he's mean to me and thinks I'm egotistical and only talk about myself. He also taughted me grammar!

Rating:
Summary: A colorful, literate, and imaginative collection
Review: Tom La Farge, who wrote the unconventional two-volume fantasy "The Crimson Bears," has retold a series of French fables and fabliaux, mostly based on the work of Marie de France, in "Terror of Earth." La Farge's retellings -- sometimes antique in manner, sometimes slyly postmodern -- are notable for their striking imagery (a fisherman spying upon his own cuckolding notices that the seducer's hand makes his wife's breast "leap like a flexible pearl") The title story, my own favorite, deftly plays off the old story of the kite that fouled the jay's nest; it brings together a cacophony of birds' voices ("My most beloathed darling, I fly to you as to the corpse on which I am compelled by my ghoulish nature to feed," writes the vulture to his beloved), and can be fairly said to do for the Parliament of Birds rather what Pamela Zoline once did for "Sheep."

Rating:
Summary: A colorful, literate, and imaginative collection
Review: Tom La Farge, who wrote the unconventional two-volume fantasy "The Crimson Bears," has retold a series of French fables and fabliaux, mostly based on the work of Marie de France, in "Terror of Earth." La Farge's retellings -- sometimes antique in manner, sometimes slyly postmodern -- are notable for their striking imagery (a fisherman spying upon his own cuckolding notices that the seducer's hand makes his wife's breast "leap like a flexible pearl") The title story, my own favorite, deftly plays off the old story of the kite that fouled the jay's nest; it brings together a cacophony of birds' voices ("My most beloathed darling, I fly to you as to the corpse on which I am compelled by my ghoulish nature to feed," writes the vulture to his beloved), and can be fairly said to do for the Parliament of Birds rather what Pamela Zoline once did for "Sheep."