Two stories from the 1995 Orb anthology, I Am Legend, NY, 317 pages

Buried Talents, 1987, pages 171-178

The Great Gatsby in 8 pages?

A carnival booth as an allegory on modern American life?

Yes, and it is more than that. When the ‘tall lean’ man in the ‘wrinkled, black suit’ with a face ‘the color of drying leather’ walks into a carnival on a hot day without a drop of perspiration beading on him, he spies a carney running a ping-pong ball and fish bowl booth. What then transpires—written in real time with masterful key strokes—lets us know virtually everything we need to know of the world. But the carney is not quite sure, not absolutely certain that he should be believing what he is seeing…

Buried Talents is a brilliantly dark masterpiece etched in the harsh light of day; a ruthlessly expansive use of a carnival booth as social metaphor. The most impressive aspect of the story was the absence of a name.

The Near Departed, 1987, pages 179-181

Just as the central figure in Buried Talents is a lean ghostly type, overdressed in the summer heat, and yet still free of perspiration, so is this small man who enters a mortician’s office to make arrangements. Matheson’s attention to pacing, his storytelling cadence, elevates this piece above the three sentence anecdote it might have been in lesser hands.