Birds and Birthdays Author:Christopher Barzak Remedios Varo, Leonora Carrington, Dorothea Tanning: three of the most interesting painters to flourish in male-dominated Surrealism. This is Christopher Barzak's tribute to them, three stories and an essay that enter into a humane surrealism which turns away from the unconscious and toward magic. Sometimes the stories themselves seem to be pain... more »tings. Sometimes painter and writer may be characters, regarding each other through a painful otherness, talking in shared secrets. Barzak's stories are huge with the spacious strangeness of worlds where there is always more room for a woman to escape her tormenters, or outgrow an older self. Here we find a bird-maker and a star-catcher whose shared history spills over into the birds and the stars themselves; a girl who outgrows her clothes, her house, and finally her town--and leaves to find her body a new home; a landlord, whose marriage, motherhood, separation, sexual exploration, and excursions into self-portraiture all take place within a single apartment building. In ''Remembering the body: Reconstructing the Female in Surrealism,'' Barzak comments on the images that inspired these stories and discusses his own position as a writer among painters--and gender politics within the Surrealist movement.« less