Mark Twain - "Baker's Bluejay Yarn"

(the bluejay)

"It looks like a hole, it's located like a hole - blamed if I don't believe it is a hole!"

Nicholas Delbanco

"... by the age of four one has experienced nearly everything one needs as a writer of fiction: love, pain, loss, boredom, rage, guilt, fear of death."

[John Gardner - "The Art of Fiction"]

Pulp Music's Tales of the Bizarre - "Surf's Up, Death Island"

Crazy surf radio play. Listen to the whole thing! What the hell...?!

[update, years later]
The "voice actor" must be Matt Berry , the crazy business man from the IT crowd.

Goldfrapp - "Tales of Us"

Much quieter than the glam-electro albums of yore, maudlin violins, soft voices...

• "Annabel" - dreamy
• "Stranger" - truly channels Ennio Morricone, as the Quietus wrote.

gnostic and hermetic texts

• The Cloud of Unknowing
• The Book of Breathings

Michel Foucault - "Death as the destruction..."

"Death as the destruction of all things no longer had meaning when life was revealed to be a fatuous sequence of empty words, the hollow jingle of a jester’s cap and bells.”

Tarantella

Found through searches of swamp blues and gothic americana.

• "Bonus Track #1" - cabaretesque
• "Elder Tree" - Ennio Morricone guitars
• "Esqueletos" - slow swinging guitars with East European accents.