Synopses & Reviews
True stories of totally undeserved suffering.
Spectacularly depressing.
Nobody gets their just desserts.
Crushing defeats.
No happy endings.
Abject misery.
Pointless, endless grief.
Sin, suffering, redemption. That’s the movie, that’s the front page news, that’s the story of popular culture — of American culture. A ray of hope. A comeuppance. An all-for-the-best. Makes it easier to deal with the world’s suffering — to know that there’s a reason behind it, that it’ll always work out in the end, that people get what they deserve.
The fact: sometimes people suffer for no reason. No sin, no redemption — just suffering, suffering, suffering.
Tales of Woe compiles today’s most awful narratives of human wretchedness. This is not Hollywood catharsis (someone overcomes something and the viewer is uplifted), this is Greek Catharsis: you watch people suffer horribly, and then feel better about your own life. Tales of Woe tells stories of murder, accident, depravity, cruelty, and senseless unhappiness: and all true.
- A popular potion: distilled from the body parts of albinos.
- Boyfriend and girlfriend: consumed by the desire of a hungry bear.
- A beautiful young girl: the gruesome pictures on computer screens worldwide.
- A Unicef hero: no longer missing.
No lessons of temperance or moderation. No saving grace. No divine intervention. No salvation.
Review
"John Reed excels in the realm of strange." San Francisco Examiner
Review
“Tales of Woe is a macabre compilation of 25 true stories of misfortune, pain and suffering presented in their naked, stark reality without resolution or justice.... Tales of Woe violently strips the silver lining off of tragedy and presents it as it is most often experienced — without hope.” New York Press
Review
"Fictionaut loves it LOVES IT...True stories without any redeeming character whatsoever — just bleak, bleak, unremitting, and undeserved." Fictionaut
Review
"These stories are especially horrifying since all of them are true. No happy endings, no redemption, just bad things happening to good people for no reason. Reed, like the ancient Greeks, brings catharsis to the reader through observation of others' suffering so that we may feel better about our own lives (and relatively trivial burdens)." Largeheartedboy
Review
"John Reed, author of Snowball's Chance and All the World's a Grave, now turns his attention to nonfiction, principally that of the tabloid kind. Tales of Woe is a collection of creepy vignettes matched with color comic portraits. Nearly every black page in the book features drawings that depict the horror, oh the horror, of our times: the morbid Mexican cult figure Santa Muerte imagined topless, a pasty Sarah Palin in a pin-up with a sea lion, a snapshot of a car crash as a "crime scene centerfold." The artwork falls somewhere between funny and just gross, an apt pairing for Reed's tongue-in-cheek news."
Jesse Tangen-Mills, Rain Taxi (Read the entire )
Synopsis
True stories of totally undeserved suffering. Spectacularly depressing. Nobody gets their just deserts. Crushing defeats. No happy endings. Abject misery. Pointless, endless grief.
No lessons of temperance or moderation. No saving grace. No divine intervention. No salvation.
Sin, suffering, redemption. That's the movie, that's the front page news, that's the story of popular culture--of American culture. A ray of hope. A comeuppance. An all-for-the-best. Makes it easier to deal with the world's misery--to know that there's a reason behind it, that it'll always work out in the end, that people get what they deserve. The fact: sometimes people suffer for no reason. No sin, no redemption--just suffering, suffering, suffering. Tales of Woe compiles today's most awful narratives of human wretchedness. This is not Hollywood catharsis (someone overcomes something and the viewer is uplifted), this is the katharsis of Ancient Greece: you watch people suffer horribly, and then feel better about your own life. Tales of Woe tells stories of murder, accident, depravity, cruelty, and senseless unhappiness: and all true.
The Tales: strange, unexpected, morbidly enticing. Told straight--with elegance, restraint, and simplicity. The design: a one-of-kind white text on black paper, fluidly readable, and coupled with fifty pages of full-color art.
About the Author
John Reed is the author of the novels, A Still Small Voice (Delacorte Press), The Whole (MTV / Simon & Schuster), the SPD bestseller, Snowball's Chance (Roof), All The World's A Grave: A New Play by William Shakespeare (Penguin/Plume), and Tales of Woe (MTV Press). He possesses an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University; and is the Books Editor of the Brooklyn Rail. Reed has been published in Open City, Artnet, Paper Magazine, Popmatters, New York Press, Brooklyn Rail, Timeout New York, Artforum, Bomb Magazine, Playboy, Art in America, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal. He is currently a member of the board of directors for the National Book Critics Circle.