| Title | : | The Debutante and Other Stories |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 099571620X |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780995716209 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 168 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1939 |
In this first complete edition of Leonora Carrington’s short stories, written throughout her life from her early years in Surrealist Paris to her late period in Dirty War-era Mexico City, the world is by turns subversive, funny, sly, wise and disarming.
The Debutante and Other Stories Reviews
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A collection of outstanding surreal short-stories. I'll focus here on the title story: The Debutante.
As this story makes clear, Leonora Carrington loathed being part of the stuffy English society into which she was born.
I particularly enjoy Leonora's identifying with a hyena, an animal associated with what it means to be an outlaw, a rebel, an outsider. And those surreal elements bestowing a delicious tang: learning the hyena's language, concocting a plan whereby the hyena will take her place at the ball, dressing the hyena up in her gown, high-heeled shoes and gloves. And then the master stroke: agreeing with the hyena to call maid Marie so the hyena can eat Marie and use her face.
Such a splendid plan to foil her mother's attempt to turn her into a respectable young lady. But then amid bats flying about, the climax, surreal in the extreme. Read and enjoy.
THE DEBUTANTE
When I was a debutante I often went to the zoological garden. I went so often that I was better acquainted with animals than with the young girls of my age. It was to escape from the world that I found myself each day at the zoo. The beast I knew best was a young hyena. She knew me too. She was extremely intelligent; I taught her French and in return she taught me her language. We spent many pleasant hours in this way.
For the first of May my mother had arranged a ball in my honor. For entire nights I suffered: I had always detested balls, above all those given in my own honor.
On the morning of May first, 1934, very early, I went to visit the hyena. “What a mess of shit,” I told her. “I must go to my ball this evening.”
“You’re lucky,” she said. “I would go happily. I do not know how to dance, but after all, I could engage in conversation.”
“There will be many things to eat,” said I. “I have seen wagons loaded entirely with food coming up to the house.”
“And you complain!” replied the hyena with disgust. “As for me, I eat only once a day, and what rubbish they stick me with!”
I had a bold idea; I almost laughed. “You have only to go in my place.”
“We do not look enough alike, otherwise I would gladly go,” said the hyena, a little sad. “Listen,” said I, “in the evening light one does not see very well. If you were disguised a little, no one would notice in the crowd. Besides, we are almost the same size. You are my only friend; I implore you.”
She reflected upon this sentiment. I knew that she wanted to accept. “It is done,” she said suddenly.
It was very early; not many keepers were about. Quickly I opened the cage and in a moment we were in the street. I took a taxi; at the house, everyone was in bed. In my room, I brought out the gown I was supposed to wear that evening. It was a little long, and the hyena walked with difficulty in my high-heeled shoes. I found some gloves to disguise her hands which were too hairy to resemble mine. When the sunlight entered, she strolled around the room several times—walking more or less correctly. We were so very occupied that my mother, who came to tell me good morning, almost opened the door before the hyena could hide herself under my bed. “There is a bad odor in the room,” said my mother, opening the window. “Before this evening you must take a perfumed bath with my new salts.”
“Agreed,” said I. She did not stay long; I believe the odor was too strong for her. “Do not be late for breakfast,” she said, as she left the room.
The greatest difficulty was to find a disguise for the hyena’s face. For hours and hours we sought an answer: she rejected all of my proposals. At last she said, “I think I know a solution. You have a maid?”
“Yes,” I said, perplexed.
“Well, that’s it. You will ring for the maid and when she enters we will throw ourselves upon her and remove her face. I will wear her face this evening in place of my own.”
“That’s not practical,” I said to her.
“She will probably die when she has no more face; someone will surely find the corpse and we will go to prison.”
“I am hungry enough to eat her,” replied the hyena.
“And the bones?”
“Those too,” she said.
“Then it’s settled?”
“Only if you agree to kill her before removing her face. It would be too uncomfortable otherwise.”
“Good; it’s all right with me.” I rang for Marie, the maid, with a certain nervousness. I would not have done it if I did not detest dances so much. When Marie entered I turned to the wall so as not to see. I admit that it was done quickly. A brief cry and it was over. While the hyena ate, I looked out the window. A few minutes later, she said: “I cannot eat anymore; the two feet are left, but if you have a little bag I will eat them later in the day.”
“You will find in the wardrobe a bag embroidered with fleurs de lys. Remove the handkerchiefs inside it and take it.” She did as I indicated.
At last she said: “Turn around now and look, because I am beautiful!” Before the mirror, the hyena admired herself in Marie’s face. She had eaten very carefully all around the face so that what was left was just what was needed. “Surely, it’s properly done,” said I.
Toward evening, when the hyena was all dressed, she declared: “I am in a very good mood. I have the impression that I will be a great success this evening.” When the music below had been heard for some time, I said to her: “Go now, and remember not to place yourself at my mother’s side: she will surely know that it is not I. Otherwise I know no one. Good luck.” I embraced her as we parted but she smelled very strong.
Night had fallen. Exhausted by the emotions of the day, I took a book and sat down by the open window. I remember that I was reading Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift. It was perhaps an hour later that the first sign of misfortune announced itself. A bat entered through the window, emitting little cries. I am terribly afraid of bats, I hid behind a chair, my teeth chattering. Scarcely was I on my knees when the beating of the wings was drowned out by a great commotion at my door. My mother entered, pale with rage. “We were coming to seat ourselves at the table,” she said, “when the thing who was in your place rose and cried: ‘I smell a little strong, eh? Well, as for me, I do not eat cake.’ With these words she removed her face and ate it. A great leap and she disappeared out the window.” -
I love really, really short short stories. Especially ones in which you might randomly meet a horse, make friends with him, and bear his children. Or perhaps he'd make you dinner.
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Otro cuento muy corto pero grande por todo lo que significa, bizarrísimo. Una niña va al zoológico y conoce una hiena, al mismo tiempo, esta niña se ve obligada a asistir a un baile por lo que está en continúa rebelión con madre: tiene que asistir al baile sí o sí, es lo que marca la buena sociedad con sus presiones y etiquetas para una señorita. El final es apoteósico.
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Que cuento más surrealista, donde Carrington al parecer pretendía retratar su inconformidad a las fiestas de sociedad, convenciendo a su amiga "hiena" para que la sustituya en el baile, la hiena tomara el rostro de su sirvienta e irá y tomara su lugar, para de esta manera ella pueda pasar su vida sin presiones y reglas que le parecen absurdas. Haha
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Una niña va a un zoo y conoce una hiena. En la misma época se organiza un baile en nombre de la protagonista. La niña le pide a la hiena que la sustituya porque odia los bailes. La narración se vuelve sórdida en apenas dos líneas, y adquiere un tono que habría satisfecho todas las estéticas del Edward Gorey de los años 50-60.
La conclusión, a mi parecer, maravillosa. -
I love Leonora Carrington's short stories, they're so wonderfully weird. I love all the animal imagery and how strange the stories are. The Debutante is definitely one of my favourites.
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Combine Angela Carter’s fairy tales with Alice in Wonderland and add a gracious dose of mind-enhancing drugs to receive a taste of Leonora Carrington’s surrealist nonsense stories. Her work is chock full of living vegetables, girls who turn into horses, and carnivorous rabbits. Grandmothers are umbrellas, the Milky Way consists of skeletons and camels are created out of sand. It’s delightful, voluptuous, and positively insane.
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3.5 αστεράκια
Συλλογή υπερρεαλιστικών διηγημάτων, τα οποία βρήκα πολύ διασκεδαστικά -αρκετά μακάβρια πολλά από αυτά, χωρίς όμως να δημιουργούν αηδία ή αποστροφή. Μου άρεσαν πολύ το ότι μέσα στις αλλόκοτες ιστορίες κατάφερε να ενσωματώσει πολύ ξεκάθαρα νοήματα και αλήθειες και το ειρωνικό της ύφος. Δεν ήμουν ποτέ ένθερμη οπαδός του υπερρεαλισμού, αλλά πραγματικά τη χάρηκα αυτή τη συλλογή. -
Λογοτεχνία σε οίστρο
https://pepperlines.blogspot.com/2022... -
Hypnagogic short stories from the famous 20th century surrealist. The ones I enjoyed the most were anchored by recognisable forms, hat-tipping conventionality while indulging in bizarre dreamy riffs, populated in the main by horses, boars, birds and royalty. The ones I ended up skimming were untethered from the start, swapping narrative structure for chain-of-thought rambles: “It happened that one day the skeleton drew some hazelnuts that walked about on little legs across mountains, that spit frogs out of mouth, eye, ear, nose, and other openings and holes.” (‘The Skeleton’s Holiday’).
‘White Rabbits’ is in the former style, set in New York and concerning a narrator who is asked to provide rotten meat for her silver skinned neighbour. Intrigued, she lets some meat rot on her balcony then takes it over, to discover that the apartment is home to 100 carnivorous rabbits in need of food. A man is there too, in the shadows: the neighbour’s husband who also has silver skin. They ask the narrator to move in with them and stay forever. When she flees, it is revealed that they are lepers, and as the woman waves goodbye her fingers drop to the ground “like shooting stars”. It’s almost like a traditional horror story, but all the components have been tipped into a box and given a vigorous shake. -
29%
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This is how I want to write. Inspirational, quirky, surrealist stories.
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Cuento corto “la debutante” de Leonora Carrington, cuantas veces hemos deseado ser otra persona o un animal y hacer lo inverosímil y lo que fluya en nuestra mente ! Leonora lo hizo y nos dejó un legado a toda la humanidad en la belleza de su obra para dar testimonio que el toque de inspiración que se enlaza con la lo locura, los genios, las musas, la mente atrevida y que lo logra atrapar para dejar este legado al mundo.
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thanks filmmaker elizabeth hobbs by way of melbourne animated film fest 23 for introducing me to leonora carrington finding this collection has changed my life for the better
for fans of
olga tokarzczuk
terry pratchett
deforge comics, ron rege comics
janet frame’s mona minum specifically
the latin american magical realist tradition broadly
lewis carroll
shows produced by pendleton ward
horses -
had a big gap between starting and finishing this but I loved it
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Now this was delicious. What a great break from reality.
It’s a rare pleasure to encounter a person with so little concern for human affairs, yet such a talent for analysing them. Carrington’s surrealism works as a vessel for her questioning of what it means to be human, or more accurately, what it’s like to unquestionably inhabit the self. The stories read like archetypes, they speak to a deep part of the self and to collective knowledge, the kind embedded in culture and tradition. She makes mush of authority, especially as it relates to the human-enforced kind, and zoomorphism is in all its forms a positive. Although it wasn’t her style of painting, certain scenes would make excellent Renaissance paintings. A person as interesting as, if not more than, her work.
Personal pick: Jemima and the Wolf.
And a quote that surprisingly echoes early lockdown:
Our civilisation thereupon rapidly advanced towards a Golden Age in which pleasurable silence has made every street a garden and every home a centre for peaceful, if not always intellectual, thought. -
Horrible, en el mejor de los sentidos.
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SOME SCATTERED THOUGHTS
This book was only published a few years ago and it seems it's the only collection of Carrington's short stories in English. It's hard to believe that it's only now that her work is being published in this way. I similarly only came across her more famous novel "The Hearing Trumpet" a few years ago by accident; the cover art caught my eye (penguin modern classics doing their thing).
Carrington was a surrealist but I feel like that term can't really adequately describe her work here. There are wild, striking and absurd images throughout these stories but they have so much heart in them unlike some other surrealist art which can display juxtaposition for purely shocking means or in a rather austere sense. (I'm probably wrong about surrealism there but anyway). There's maybe not a clear meaning in any of these stories but they thrive which such a vital energy and opaque inner logic that it's hard not to just enjoy the ride. It helps that the perspective of the main character is often reacting with fear and curiosity to the absurd situations they find themselves in. Dream logic reigns here and nature itself becomes civilised by its own rules that are unsympathetic or uninterested in human concerns. The characters find the natural world, full of beasts and weird herbs and spirits, to be operating on levels beyond their comprehension, and this in comparison to human civilisation (which is often portrayed as pedantic and useless and confusing, but lacking the vital aspect of the natural world). Almost every human character is plagued by some sense of terror, boredom, sickness, worry, madness etc. Both worlds are portrayed as brutal.
Another part of Carrington's brand of "Surrealism" - which seemed to be discordant with the austere surrealism I'm vaguely familiar with - is her use of humour. I found great delight and laughter in some of the absurd images and juxtapositions one or two of which seemed almost proto-Pythonesque. (There is actually a bit about white flesh-eating rabbits...)
There's a lavishness in both worlds as well; the humans have grand banquets in large mansions, and the animals dress in fanciful outfits of living and dead organic materials. One or two of these bits reminded me of Joyce's gigantism in the Cyclops chapter. Carrington's descriptions are sometimes lavish and sometimes plain; but almost always enticing and to the point. There's very little fluff here; every little detail seems to paint the picture a little more; and not necessarily always for clarity's sake; but always to make the image more appealing or mysterious.
These stories have a great impact and you kind of sympathise with the characters even though they are experiencing weird and nonsensical situations, but they are underscored by a strange sense of logic, as in a dream. Really engaging. -
I felt like living in a twisted fairytale while reading Leonora Carrington’s book The Debutante and Other Stories ‒ a gothic Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; the imagery and visuality sets the scene of the short stories at the borderland of adult and children’s universes, or, to be more precise, universes that we usually narrate for these divided audiences.
The introduction (written by Sheila Heti) speaks about drops or pebbles of a world that has an existence beyond Carrington’s stories; we surely would like to know it in detail, but we always get only a part of it.
The texts seem fragmentary and insisting on horror elements at first, but as we dive deeper into the book, we can notice some other patterns that go beyond these diverted narrative effects.
Surrealism created insightful scenes through dreamlike juxtapositions. Carrington’s short stories juxtapose narratives of innocence and initiation, animal and human and vegetal world, and quite clearly worlds of rituals ‒ sacred and domestic and profane ones.
The voice is quite unusual in these texts ‒ many of them carry a humorous effect because of the voice that has no reaction while describing weird juxtapositions, so all things seem to make sense according to an inner logic. Sometimes the characters feel fear and many times curiosity and attraction ‒ they seem to follow all these, and the outcome is not always positive in a rational sense. Carrington’s worlds seem to have many layers, and it is up to the characters how many of these layers they can bear and acknowledge.
Carrington’s texts interact with her paintings mainly through their ritual level, and in their interactions and hybridizations of human worlds with animal and ghost-like levels of existence.
The first reaction of the reader might be a reaction of surprise and shock, but the dark dimensions of the stories explore human fear and anxiety much deeper than gothic fiction and present-day horror ‒ they are interested in building whole worlds out of these fears in order to explore them in detail. -
"I went on dancing in my grotesque disguise, but not before I told him: 'I am lonely and miserable but I am wearing my last skin. Since you are almost face to face with the gods do not abandon me.' In human language, this is called love'" (114).
Carrington's stories are as sticky as honey. She never capitulates to the reader; her aim is not to make sense but, rather, to cast a spell. Leonora creates worlds within less than five pages and allows them to come crashing down as she wills, with wit and without mercy. Full of unexpected twists and arresting images, Carrington's folkloric vignettes are fitting counterparts to her iconic (and often disturbing) Surrealist paintings. Written originally in Spanish and French, several of her short stories are presented in this edition in English for the first time.
If I had to attempt to describe her idiosyncratic fiction to friends... well, her tales are a fusion of the eccentric whimsy of Italo Calvino combined with the haunting brutality of Shirley Jackson and distorted fairytale whims of Angela Carter.
I love the observation in the afterword by Marina Warner that Carrington subverts traditional hierarchies. In her literature, humans become a lesser aspect of a complex organic universe: "people in Carrington's paintings gain in stature and, by implication, in wisdom, the closer they come to the creaturely" (148). Fascinatingly, this transformation is viewed as transcendence.
"'Pardon me for taking your needle, pardon me for threading the needle with your body, pardon me for love, pardon me for I am what I am, and I do not know what this means'" (138). -
The Debutante and Other Stories is an alchemy of potions, with strange fragrances ready to be uncorked with every tale. Each tale is full of translucent filmy subjects who float in a world we are not entirely familiar with. It might just be off the edge of the world we know on the outskirts. The subjects are curiously feral and frequently furry. I think my favourites in the collection are Jemima And The Wolf and The Debutante. Both have a sense of naughtiness and misbehavior about them. Girls behaving in ways that are unexpected and wild.
The stories are also strange because they often don't feel like they have an ending but simply spirit themselves away, determined not to be pinned down. Surreal and haunting and utterly unconventional. It makes me think of paper cut out doll chains, fragile and playful and the kind of characters from early Tim Burton movies. Beautifully bizarre and completely original. Definitely worth reading. -
An astonishing collection of short stories that defies precise description. It is probably most accurate to call them surrealist horror; like modern Grimm's Fairy Tales — but the blood and monsters (for what is a talking animal but a monster, and what is a person who behaves like an animal the same) set in the England and Mexico of Carrington's lifetime have a different purpose than the monsters in a Stephen King novel or collection — Carrington's creatures are all metaphors for something else, something not at all horrifying — an opportunity, a window into a certain type of madness that is rebellion against the orthodox.
There are few stories that "miss" — most are interesting — some are truly brilliant. I think it's reasonable to read this alongside Lovecraft and other collections of horror and "the macabre." And I strongly encourage fans of horror to do so. -
Este cuento es muy sencillo de leer, pero no por eso simple. Me encanta que esta lleno de simbolismos y que conociendo la biografía de la autora, podemos encontrarlo hasta autobiográfico. Surrealista como solo Leonora puede ser, existe una pintura que representa este cuento, y aunque creo elegirla como pintora, me fascina que se haya atrevido a inspeccionar otras formas de expresar su firma surrealista. Si tienes oportunidad de leer de su vida, lo recomiendo al 100%, una mujer muy avanzada para su época, que solo quería encontrar su libertad, a veces jugando a estar loca para justificar esa honestidad.
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Was quite pleased and surprised to find that Carrington, Leonor Fini and Remedios Varo have written as well as painted. I found this okay, the things I liked best were what reminded me of her paintings, unusual looking characters, some images crowded with strange details. The stories are funny sometimes, there's a nice disregard for convention but much of it didn't stick for me or make any lasting impression. I wish they had the thicker atmosphere of her paintings.
I'll read Hearing Trumpet someday and Stone Door if I can find it. -
Perfect, little self-contained fairytales. Abounds in her own symbology and archetypal imagery, almost profound but always undercut by her dark but gentle sense of humour. Really beautiful, her writing reminds me a lot of Angela Carter, in its rawness as well as its sensuousness. I know I’ll be thinking over, reflecting and revisiting these stories for along time to come, like all good fairytales each story has a lot to digest and unravel.
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I feel this book is sort of the equivalent of the person from high school who goes around bragging about 'how random' they are. But on the other hand I also think it would be delightful to read aloud to say, a 10 year old. Which is to say, I didn't get much out of it, but they are distinctly charming in their own way.
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Just a wonderful time. There's this surreal quality to Carrington that is different to the quality of many other surrealists, in ways it would take way too long to explain. Appropriately, the only thing that feels like reading her stories is looking at her paintings. She was a treasure and I'm glad to have hazily walked through her dream worlds.
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What did i read?
Sometimes I feel like books are just weird for the sake of being weird but I still find myself trying to find a deeper meaning in something that perhaps wasn’t meant as anything more than a funny little story.
If that was the goal I guess it was achieved but that doesn’t make the book any more enjoyable to me. Apparently not my cup of tea. -
Noty girls, corpses, carnivorous rabbits, vampires, black swans, green princesses, man-pigs, talking horses and so many more mythical/mystical creautures...
Reading this collection of stories feels like following the white rabbit down the rabbit hole
in persuit of mischief and mayhem
