Courtesy of Dorothy, A Publishing Project
The Complete Stories of Leonora Carrington (Dorothy, A Publishing Project, 2017)
The Complete Stories of Leonora Carrington commemorates Carrington’s 100th birthday, which she very nearly saw—she died in 2011. Though she didn’t quite become a centenarian, in 94 years she experienced at least a century’s worth of adventure. Born into a wealthy British family, she got kicked out of one boarding school after another; ran away with Max Ernst as a teenager and joined the circle of Surrealists as an artist, not a girlfriend, refusing to be anyone’s muse; and (barely) survived being institutionalized in Spain during World War II. (Her father sent her Irish nanny to rescue her—in a submarine.) After moving to Mexico City, Carrington transcended the label of Surrealist, making paintings and sculptures that were too visionary and weird to be contained within the confines of any –ism. And so it is with her stories, many of which appear for the first time here, some translated from Spanish and French. In “The Debutante,” a wellborn young woman dreads attending a society ball. She begs her best friend, the hyena at the zoo, to attend in her stead. The dress mostly fits; they cover the hyena’s hairy arms with evening gloves. But…the face! So the hyena pounces on the maid and dons her face (but can’t eat her up in one sitting—the feet get stowed for later in a linen bag petit-pointed with fleurs-de-lis). This all makes the narrator’s mother very, very cross (the hyena, for one thing, stinks up the place). Though it moves like a fairy tale, “The Debutante” feels too true and modern to be one; the narrator runs through these facts in a matter-of-fact, even bored tone, which makes it feel both more real and more unreal, not to mention hilarious, deliciously creepy, sad, frightening, and totally unforgettable. And that je ne sais quoi (maybe we can call it “Carringtonian?”) is on fierce display through the entirety of this book, whose every powerful little story seems to have been brewed up with Abramelin oil, cosmic dust, and TNT.
