{"id":75,"date":"2014-09-01T18:15:01","date_gmt":"2014-09-01T18:15:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the-perfect-library.zonkdev.uk\/?p=75"},"modified":"2014-09-09T18:54:05","modified_gmt":"2014-09-09T18:54:05","slug":"kiss-kiss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/the-perfect-library.org\/?p=75","title":{"rendered":"Kiss Kiss"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\"Kiss<\/a>Roald Dahl, 1960. Cover by Derek Birdsall, 1970.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Kiss Kiss<\/em>\u00a0is a collection of eleven short stories, first published in book format in 1960. In most of the stories the horror is subtle and the deaths or other unpleasant outcomes can only be inferred.<\/p>\n

I won\u2019t try\u00a0to give a synopsis of the plot of any of the stories. That, according to the Urban Dictionary, would be a massive spoiler. The UD also reveals that \u201cspoiler\u201d has become a verb which can be used in two ways: 1)\u00a0to ruin any piece of entertainment by revealing information about the plot<\/em>\u00a0eg \u201cplease don’t spoiler the last episode of\u00a0Breaking Bad<\/em>\u00a0for me!\u201d ; 2)\u00a0to protect entertainment being ruined by obscuring such information\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0eg \u201cI spoilered my post about yesterday\u2019s\u00a0\u00a0Archers<\/em>\u00a0Omnibus<\/em>\u00a0because I know you haven\u2019t heard it yet\u201d. In Urbanspeak I have verbized the word and spolilered this article to protect those who have not yet read Dahl\u2019s stories.<\/p>\n

Dahl was a master storyteller, expert at peeling back the skin of life to reveal the hidden, the inappropriate and, above all, the unexpected. Many of the stories from\u00a0Kiss Kiss –\u00a0<\/em>along with stories from Dahl\u2019s other collections,\u00a0Tales of the Unexpected<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Someone Like You<\/em>\u00a0– were dramatized and appeared as early episodes of the Anglia TV series,\u00a0Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected,\u00a0<\/em>first aired in 1979. Despite its low budget the series featured guest appearances from British film and stage stars including John Gielgud, John Mills, Joan Collins and Derek Jacobi. Dahl introduced all of his own stories, giving short monologues explaining what inspired him to write them. However, fewer and fewer of Dahl\u2019s stories appeared and the show was cancelled in 1988, after the ninth series, following criticism that the episodes were beginning to decline in quality.<\/p>\n

For many people who grew up in the UK in the early 80\u2019s the title\u00a0Tales of the Unexpected<\/em>\u00a0evokes the opening titles: a Bond-film pastiche of tarot cards, a revolver and – we assume – a naked woman dancing behind flickering flames.\u00a0The titles were accompanied by Ron Grainger\u2019s sinister fairground theme music which, as You Tube user David Byrne puts it, \u201cstill scares the shit out of me!\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1980, comedian Peter Cook\u00a0starred in a TV spoof entitled\u00a0Tales of the Much as We Expected<\/em>. Cook, as Dahl, explained why he dropped the “n” in Ronald and the sketch ends with the fireplace spreading over the screen.<\/p>\n

The cover of the 1970 Penguin edition of\u00a0Kiss Kiss<\/em>\u00a0was designed by John Birdsall about whom one design critic wrote, \u201cjust the type on his Penguin covers of the 1960s and 70s, for example, is brilliantly graphic, with or without illustration\u201d. The cover of\u00a0Kiss Kiss<\/em>\u00a0is no exception and it became the inspiration for the doodles on many a school exercise book in the early 70\u2019s.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Roald Dahl, 1960. Cover by Derek Birdsall, 1970. Kiss Kiss\u00a0is a collection of eleven short stories, first published in book format in 1960. In most of the stories the horror is subtle and the deaths or other unpleasant outcomes can only be inferred. I won\u2019t try\u00a0to give a synopsis of the plot of any of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-short-stories"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/the-perfect-library.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/the-perfect-library.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/the-perfect-library.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/the-perfect-library.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/the-perfect-library.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=75"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/the-perfect-library.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82,"href":"http:\/\/the-perfect-library.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions\/82"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/the-perfect-library.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=75"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/the-perfect-library.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=75"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/the-perfect-library.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=75"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}