IL CORRIDOIO DELLA PAURAIl titolo italiano gioca con i termini macchina e corsia, e io, prima di aprire il libro, ci sono cascato, ho pensato a qualcosa che avesse a che fare con le corse automobilistiche.In realtà, la macchina è quella per l’elettroshock. E la corsia, o reparto (in originale ward), è quella di un ospedale psichiatrico.Di conseguenza anche il mio titolo gioca un pochino, citando un magnifico film del 1963, stesso anno di pubblicazione di questo racconto (racconto lungo o novella...

POTENTIAL SPOILER ALERTS!My 17th Willeford book. There aren't too many left to read now. The remaining ones are rare and very very expensive.I adored The Machine in Ward Eleven. It consists of six short stories. They may best be described as strange. Willeford experiments with different formats - one sided conversation, a letter, a police interview and entries from a journal. The central themes are intervention in an individual’s life by the man and madness. The first story is The Machine in War...

I've been a Willeford fan for years. I believe it was a review by Alberto (or perhaps Col) that brought this collection of short stories to my attention.Three of the stories in this collection feature variations on the same character. The others are the kind of "twist ending" stories popularized by The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents tv series and anthologies of the early 1960's.The 1st story, "The Machine In Ward Eleven" originally appeared in Playboy Magazine in 1961."Selected Inci...

Willeford's early writings always remind me of how wryly funny he could be and how ludicrous the directions he was willing to take his stories before he started delivering more polished thoroughly plotted works in his later career. But it's always important to look at the roots.

I liked this book of Willeford short stories. I liked it. I didn't love it as much as did some of his novels. It's a must if you consider yourself a Willeford fan. That is if you've seen the movie, The Woman Chaser, read all the Hoke Mosleys, including the manuscript of Grimhaven, and have scoured used book stories for impossible-to-find paperbacks of his then you have to read this. But, if all that is true, then you've already have read this. Sorry. Never mind.

Short story collection from one of my favorite noir authors. Willeford is all over the map here, trying his hand at psychological horror, absurdist fable, and the occasional Twilight Zone piece. In Willeford's own words: "I had a hunch that madness was a predominant theme and normal condition for Americans living in the second half of this century."

psycho/sci fi? Creepy, crazy Kosinsky meets, well, Willeford.

La macchina in Corsia Undici di Charles Willeford (Adelphi) è un breve racconto che lascia addosso una sensazione di inquietudine difficile da scacciare. Comprato alla Fiera del libro di Genova, mi ha convito la quarta di copertina: “Il terrore attraverso l’elettroshock, come nessuno ha mai osato raccontarlo.Un classico dimenticato della narrativa nera. Anche questa volta non mi sono trovata davanti quello che mi aspettavo. Blake è ricoverato in quello che sembra un manicomio, le sue conversazio...

That was a fun read. Willeford was a favorite and inspiration of my father's (Blaster Al Ackerman) and I can totally see the affinity after reading these. The uneasy sense that the stories all wound in on themselves and the dark humor throughout reminded me of Borges. The completely untrustworthy narrators and subtle brutality reminded me of Will Self.

#17 from willeford for me. the machine in ward eleven, charles willeford, paperback, isbn 1568582102...copyright 1961 charles willeford...141 printed pages...and 13 glorious blank pages before the back cover. verily. insert your index here. something to do w/the way they bind books as the scuttlebutt has it.contentsi the machine in ward eleven 7ii selected incidents 36iii a letter to a.a. (almost anybody) 55iv jake's journal 67v "just like on television--" 110vi the alectryomancer 122 to 141heh!...

This wasn't the Willeford style that I had enjoyed in books like "Honey Gal" and "Whip Hand". My favorite stories were "The Alectrymancer' and "A Letter to A.A." and would have given 3 stars. So 2 with 3 stars and 4 with 2 stars average out to 2.33 stars !!

Love that Willeford bite outside of the crime genre.

interessante e molto molto umano, vedere le cose dagli occhi del protagonista è accattivante

At first I thought maybe all the stories were going to tie back to JC Blake, because both of the first stories are both about him, and I know that Willeford played around with POV shifts in other stories, but it's just the first two that connect, and the others are stand alones. As a whole, this collection is a lot tighter than The Second Half of the Double Feature. I've been reading his earlier stuff lately (Pick Up, Burnt Orange Heresy, Cockfighter, etc.), and this is definitely more of the il...

I am a big fan of Willeford. I hunted this title down, found it on Ebay, and tore into it. The book, which is very slim, coming in at just over 140 pages, is comprised of six related stories. The titular story is the best in the bunch. While they are all related, some more so than others, they are not all as strong as the first one, and I do not believe they can stand on their own, except for the first story, and the last one in the book. The book was written well over fifty years ago, and I fee...

Pulp madnessI hesitate to call this a "redux" of another Pulp category, but it does continue Willeford's excellent work in "Pick Up."I say this in the sense that in that earlier novel, the hero is also (self)committed to a (nearly)psycho ward. The difference here is a stylistic (and internal logical) consistency where the patient isn't entirely aware of all the details. He says as much, and yet as the teller of the tale, where does that put us to judge the facts on the face of the telling?Droll....

Read the first story. It was okay. Not sure that I feel inspired to continue. It was about a man in a psychiatric ward. It's unclear who he is, but he has memories of being a television director. A woman who says she's his wife comes to visit him every 30 days.Slowly, one gets the impression that he's in the ward by choice. Then, he's threatened with electroshock therapy, and the story briefly gains some momentum.

Short stories, observances, add up to an unusual insight into Willeford, the young soldier of fortune.

Simply not a good book. I have loved every other Willeford book I have read. There is just nothing in this one. Avoid it.