Book Review: The Melancholy of Anatomy

The Melancholy of Anatomy by Shelley Jackson

The Melancholy of Anatomy is a collection of "Stories." The book divides the stories according to category: Choleric, Melancholic, Phlegmatic, and Sanguine. These obviously correspond to the four humors of Greco-Roman medicine, being yellow bile, black bile, phlegm, and blood, respectively. They also correspond to the Four Temperaments theory of modern psychology.

The stories contained within are:

• Blood

Choleric

• Egg
• Sperm
• Foetus

Melancholic

• Cancer
• Nerve
• Dildo

Phlegmatic

• Phlegm
• Hair
• Sleep

Sanguine

• Blood
• Milk
• Fat

I guess I've met one of my year's goals now. Getting pinged on google searches for dildo (probably around the 320, 670, 456th result).

The Melancholy of Anatomy concerns itself with elements of the body, but not in the traditional sense. Instead, these elements have been externalized. They are foreign elements which show up unexpectedly. This creates a diaspora of the in/out in all of the stories. All of this analysis makes the work sound more heady than it really is. Instead, Jackson of the school of postmodernism, has a playful hold of language and has ludic fun with our expectations and misconceptions. Well worth a read.

Short Pick: Foetus

A Novel Idea I

Well, maybe not a novel but a short story. Here goes:

It's a detective murder mystery. Dead bodies start showing up around, I don't know... town, the country. Maybe it's something that has caused the FBI to be alerted. That sort of scale. Anyway, there seems to be no leads. Nothing connects the victims--except all victims have a patch of skin of missing from their corpses. Now these aren't the same patches on every victim. No, they come in different shapes and locations but they're generally of a rectangular nature.

So, eventually (I don't know, page 3) the killer gets interrupted and has to flee the scene of their crime post-haste. In the process, they leave behind the patch of skin and surprise, surprise it has a tattoo inked into it: a word (the word is not especially important in itself, just the idea of it being a word, but it could be made into a metaphor for the story-at-large, blah, blah, blah, meaning, meaning, blah).

Anyway, some quality sleuthing and quick googling later, and it turns out all the victims are participants in Shelley Jackson's short story Skin. The text itself is dying, disappearing. Oh my, now even our fictions are fleeting. Anyways, the detectives contact Jackson, but no more clues are forthcoming.

Take a break for more detective work, etc.

Since the nature of the project, the detectives don't have access to the short story or its list of participants or there's too many or something convenient like that. But one more google search later and there's someone tattooed close by. So the detectives just plan to keep an eye on this person: surveillance time! Witty stakeout dialogue!

The detectives are involved in a chase with the killer, possibly involving rooftops, and voilà, they pin the killer down. Anyway, one old man Wiggles unmasking later and the killer is revealed to be: shock of shocks, Shelley Jackson.

Ms. Jackson then delivers the story's parting words.

"I'm not the Shelley Jackson who wrote Patchwork Girl.

I'm not that Shelley Jackson."

So consider that released into the ether. Have with it, ether.