The Uncanny Gastronomic: Strange Tales of the Edible Weird by Stubbs Zara-Louise

Author:Stubbs, Zara-Louise [Stubbs, Zara-Louise]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: vampires, aliens, dark fairy tales, body horror, Gothic horror, twisted short stories, food writing
Publisher: British Library Publishing
Published: 2023-07-27T06:00:00+00:00

1910

The Price of Wiggins’s Orgy

Algernon Blackwood

Algernon Blackwood (1869–1951) was—and remains, posthumously—a prolific figure in literary circles. As a journalist, broadcaster, and fiction writer, his interest in the supernatural reached across both written and oral art forms. Blackwood’s status as a connoisseur of the literary strange was immortalized upon his return to England when he published his first collection The Empty House (1906) and subsequently he began to write full-time. Readers may note the influence of his previous occupations on his work; having worked as a farmer in Canada, in a hotel, and as a reporter in New York. Blackwood’s fiction is infused with images of the natural, the strangeness at the heart of the rural, secret sects, and the subversion of the known.

Perhaps combining (and critiquing) his experience of the agricultural and service industries, in “The Price of Wiggins’s Orgy” Blackwood positions the restaurant as a strange expanse on which to stage the juxtaposition between frivolity and austerity, of sensory overwhelm, of the curious exposure one might feel whilst dining alone. Whilst Blackwood is known primarily as a writer of ghost stories and mysteries, “The Price of Wiggins’s Orgy” (first appearing in Blackwood’s 1910 collection, The Lost Valley and Other Stories) is a realist tale that considers the routes of wealth, exclusivity and the peaks of excess with grotesque effect. Whilst lacking spirits, wendigos, or horned gods, “The Price of Wiggins’s Orgy” depicts perhaps a more tangible horror that lurks closer to home. Blackwood’s dining room is one of whispered dangers and creeping risks, unnavigable etiquettes, and unexpected role reversals that show the fiendish nature of the food industry.

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