Episode 145: Waiting for the Miracle: On Vanessa Onwuemezi's "Dark Neighbourhood"

In this episode, Phil and JF discuss Vanessa Onwuemezi's, "Dark Neighbourhood," a tale of scintillant darkness from her debut collection of the same name. This strangest of strange stories is set in a vast encampment of destitute yet hopeful people whose lives consist entirely of waiting for their turn to step through the iron gates of the Beyond. Living off the dregs of civilization, they seem the last of our kind. They are the ones who, having made it to the front of the line, have the dubious honour of contemplating directly the mystery that awaits us all. Unlike anything we've covered on the show, "Dark Neighbourhood" is a chilling and moving story that elicits interpretation as elegantly as it resists it.

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REFERENCES

Show Notes.docx

Vanessa Omwuemezi, Dark Neighbourhood
Peter Breugel, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus
Weird Studies, Episode 140 on “Spirited Away”
Karl Marx, Capital
Phil Ford, Dig
Murray Bookchin, Post-Scarcity Anarchism
Weird Studies, Episode 98 on “Taboo”
Michael Wadleigh (dir.), Woodstock
Samuel R. Delaney, Dahlgren
Leonard Cohen, “Waiting for the Miracle
Martin Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd
One red paperclip, story of guy who traded a paper clip for a house
Weird Studies, Episode 101 on Tanizaki
James Hillman, The Dream and the Underworld
George Steiner, Real Presences
H. P. Lovecraft, “Nyarlothotep”
Alexander Wendt and Raymond Duvall, “Sovereignty and the UFO”
Weird Studies, Episode 144 on Hellraiser
Weird Studies, Episode 29 on Lovecraft