Vinterpizza in Arvidsjaur only delivers after dark. This is not a problem in winter, but in summer the days can last almost twenty-four hours, so it's only open briefly, when most people are asleep. Local residents tell Vinterpizza's owner that if he were open during daylight he could sell more pizza. Sometimes they bring their teenage children, suggesting that they could work the day shift.
Vinterpizza employs two regular delivery drivers who are never seen outside of work hours. Even on the coldest night, even when invited, these men won't enter a house, will not cross a threshold.
But the pizzas are excellent. You can get all the standard ones, including a wonderful kebabpizza, but you should order the Vinterpizza Specialitet. The toppings include apple and smoked reindeer meat, with a handful of berries at the center. Ginger, cinnamon and cayenne provide warmth. The cheese is good, but the owner won't say what it is, insisting that it is 'affärshemlighet'.
You might think they would do little trade in those short summer nights, but the drivers make large deliveries. Sometimes you might call at 1am to be told that they cannot deliver to you. There is a lay-by a short way from town and pizzas are often dropped off there. The residents of Arvidsjaur have no idea how many people pass through their town at night, heading north.
Background
I have now finished Happy the Dunk, the final piece for True Clown Stories. I sent it to Dan and he is happy with it, so things are moving along. There's one paragraph in this new story that I like a lot, but I worry has gone too far for a respectable publisher. Also, having checked Google, it seems I am the first person to use the phrase "I will Gacy you".
The last thing I need to do is sequence the stories, which I’ll be doing over the weekend. Meanwhile, I am thinking about writing more in the world of Swedish Pizza, which the Vinterpizza story comes from.
This piece is just 250 words, which is definitely back into the realm of microfiction. I've done a slightly poor job of living up to this newsletter's title, but I'm thinking of writing more shorter pieces. I’m going away without my laptop at the weekend, so let’s see what I come up with in a few days of longhand notes.
Recommendations
Swedish Pizza is a novella made up of horror stories. Vinterpizza is a cosy story, more dread than outrage. But I want the whole collection to look at different aspects of 'horror', which had me thinking about splatterpunk.
This was an 1980s form of horror that was expressly intended to be transgressive, and which I probably read too young. In retrospect, splatterpunk was more effective as a posture than a literary movement. The great works it co-opted would have happened anyway, and a lot of pieces were more transgressive than they were literature. Flicking through the 1990 collection Splatterpunks: Extreme Horror, some of the stories are pathetic edgelording. There's little say about work that merely seeks to be extreme.
In the course of coming up with ideas for Swedish pizza I sometimes wander to wikipedia, which contains some disturbing and strange lists (I wish Borges could have seen wikipedia). Some of these are more disturbing than the stories in the splatterpunks book. The list of autocannibalism incidents is a horror story in itself. Even the title is perfect - 'incidents' makes the whole thing sound bland, acceptable. Surely it should be 'outrages' or 'atrocities'?
JG Ballard wrote about the concept of ‘invisible literature’: "scientific journals, technical manuals, pharmaceutical company brochures, think-tank internal documents, PR company position papers". He saw these things as "potent compost for the imagination" and several of his new wave SF stories played with mundane forms. Maybe that wikipedia page can be considered a sort of invisible literature.
One of my favourite short stories is JG Ballard's The Index, where he shows what can be done with a non-literary form. Since the arrival of the Internet, there are so many possible formats that could be used for fiction, but I've found little post-Internet writing as fascinating as Ballard's index. Where are the anthologies of listicle fiction?
I remember getting the Semiotext(e) SF edition back, what, about 35 years ago, and reading Ballard's short story "Jane Fonda's Augmentation Mammoplasty" and thinking "WTF? Is that ALLOWED?"
Going to have to re-read the Dunk story... am now concerned about my reputation as a reputable publisher 😁
Congarulations on your novella, James. I enjoyed the story, I agree there's something about the pizza service and especially the mystery cheese topping that is a bit eerie. I read the Ballad story in index form that you linked to - I may have read it before a long time ago. I like how he teases you with suggestions of stories - like meeting Lee Harvey Oswald and being invited to Dallas for instance - and how the indexer is the last entry and then, "disappears" (so who wrote this??). Also enjoyed your review on Splatter punk. I find your takes on forgotten or rather dusty parts of pop culture of our lifetime - the nineties in particular - always interesting!