Stranger on the Loose

infobox Book |
name = Stranger on the Loose


author = D. Harlan Wilson
cover_artist = Simon Duric
country = USA
language = English
series =
genre = Irrealism, Bizarro, Postmodernism
publisher = Eraserhead Press
release_date = 2003
media_type = Print
pages = 228
isbn = ISBN 0-9729598-3-1
preceded_by = The Kafka Effekt
followed_by = Pseudo-City

"Stranger on the Loose" (2003) is the second book by American author D. Harlan Wilson. It contains twenty-seven irreal short stories and flash fiction as well as a novella, "Igsnay Bürdd the Animal Trainer." Pieces in this collection originally appeared in magazines and journals such as "Eclectica Magazine", "The Dream People", "Locus Novus, 3 A.M. Magazine, Jack Magazine, Diagram, Riverbabble" and "Redsine". The book is illustrated by British storyboard artist Simon Duric.

Cover description

In this collection of stories, D. Harlan Wilson deconditions the boundaries of reality with the same offbeat methodology that energized his first book, "The Kafka Effekt". "Stranger on the Loose" is an absurdist account of urban and suburban social dynamics, and of the effects that contemporary image-culture has on the (in)human condition. These stories operate on a plane of existence that resists, and in many cases breaks, the laws of causality. Parrots teach college courses. Flâneurs impersonate bowling pins. Bodybuilders sneak into people’s homes and strike poses at their leisure. Passive-aggressive glaciers and miniature elephant-humans antagonize the seedy streets of Suburbia. Apes disguised as scientists reincarnate Walt Disney, who discovers that he is a Chinese box full of disguised Walt Disneys ... Wilson’s imagination is a rare specimen. The acorns of his fiction are planted in the soil of normalcy, but what grows out of that soil is a dark, witty, otherworldly jungle.

Table of contents

*Restaurant
*The Groundhog that Didn't Know He Was a Man
*Cops & Bodybuilders
*Glacier
*Yak on a Hot Tin Roof
*Digging for Adults
*Before the Board of Directors
*Deer in the City
*Community
*The Impulsive Man
*The Voiceover Man
*Professor Dyspeptical's Parrot
*Pityriasis Park
*My Barbarian
*When a Man Walks into a Room
*Elephant Invasion
*Ten Flâneurs
*The Ostensibly Immortal Piece of Bread
*Stranger on the Loose
*Shriek
*Evolution and Its Vicissitudes
*Disney Reanimated
*"Fie," Said Her Knight in Shining Armor
*On Filmnoirmaking
*The Back of the Man's Hand
*A Barber's Tale
*Avalanche of My Self
*Igsnay Bürdd the Animal Trainer

External links

* [http://www.dharlanwilson.com Official D. Harlan Wilson Website]
* [http://www.horrorseek.com/horror/darkfire/july04_review.html Review by Karonda Barker] at HorrorSeek.com
* [http://thediagram.com/5_2/rev_wilson.html Review by Keith Pile] at TheDiagram.com
* [http://www.lib.msu.edu/vincent/writers/spring04/011604.htm Audio Interview with Wilson] from Michigan State University Writers Series