The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy: and Other Stories

by Tim Burton

Overview

From breathtaking stop-action animation to bittersweet modern fairy tales, filmmaker Tim Burton has become known for his unique visual brilliance — witty and macabre at once. Now he gives birth to a cast of gruesomely sympathetic children — misunderstood outcasts who struggle to find love and belonging in their cruel, cruel worlds. His lovingly lurid illustrations evoke both the sweetness and the tragedy of these dark yet simple beings — hopeful, hapless heroes who appeal to the ugly outsider in all of us, and let us laugh at a world we have long left behind (mostly anyway).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780688156817
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	10/28/1997
Pages:	128
Sales rank:	16,351
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.50(h) x 0.25(d)

About the Author

Tim Burton is the creative genius behind Batman, Beetlejuice, Ed Wood, Edward Scissorhands, Mars Attacks!, Pee Wee's Big Adventure, and The Nightmare Before Christmas, among others. He began his career at Disney, where his first project was a six-minute tribute to Vincent Price. His second film, the twenty-seven-minute Frankenweenie, was deemed unsuitable for children and never released in theaters. He lives in New York and Los Angeles.

Read an Excerpt

Stick Boy and Match Girl in Love

Stick Boy liked Match Girl,
He liked her a lot.
He liked her cute figure,
he thought she was hot.

But could a flame ever burn
for a match and a stick?
It did quite literally;
he burned up pretty quick.

Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy. Copyright © by Tim Burton. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

Table of Contents

	Stick Boy and Match Girl in Love	1
	Robot Boy	5
	Staring Girl	11
	The Boy With Nails in His Eyes	23
	The Girl With Many Eyes	25
	Stain Boy	26
	The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy	29
	Voodoo Girl	51
	Stain Boy's Special Christmas	55
	The Girl Who Turned Into a Bed	59
	Roy, the Toxic Boy	63
	James	71
	Stick Boy's Festive Season	73
	Brie Boy	74
	Mummy Boy	77
	Junk Girl	89
	The Pin Cushion Queen	93
	Melonhead	94
	Sue	97
	Jimmy, the Hideous Penguin Boy	101
	Char Boy	103
	Anchor Baby	105
	Oyster Boy Steps Out	113

Editorial Reviews

The Barnes & Noble Review
Tim Burton has always kept himself enough in the shadows of public scrutiny, avoiding the limelight like a bashful vampire, to remain a genuinely enigmatic figure in the world of entertainment. As the director and/or creator of some of the most unusually stylized films of the last decade or so -- "Edward Scissorhands," "Beetlejuice," and the original "Batman," to name a few -- he is the quintessential cult auteur. Now he's produced his first work of fiction. "The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories", a collection of delectably macabre little tales in verse with accompanying drawings, is funny, sad, and as you would expect, more than a little bit twisted.

For the protagonists of these stories, Burton has spawned an array of fantastically misbegotten, partly human children, each one tragic and sweet, gruesome and heroic in his own way. Like Edward Scissorhands, who so gracefully and eerily embodied the tragedy of misunderstood youth, these poor little misfits appeal to the awkward, anxiety-ridden outsider in all of us. Take Voodoo Girl, for instance, whose plight is a sad one:

Her skin is white cloth, and she's all sewn apart and she has many colored pins sticking out of her heart. She has a beautiful set of hypno-disk eyes the ones that she uses to hypnotize guys.

The accompanying illustration is of a "Nightmare Before Christmas"-esque voodoo doll impaled all over by pins, with blazing eyes and red lipstick. It's both revolting and comical. And though as the story goes on, Voodoo Girl can woo all the boys she wants, the end has anunhappy and metaphor-laden twist:

But she knows she has a curse on her, a curse she cannot win. For if someone gets too close to her, the pins stick farther in.

There's also Roy, the Toxic Boy, mortally allergic to fresh air (his favorite toy is a can of aerosol spray); Mummy Boy (with his mummy dog), mistaken at a birthday party for a piñata; and a host of others. They could easily be Edward's mutant little brothers and sisters, and though they're horrible, they're also silly and sympathetic.

One of the great things about watching Burton's films is that they are so visually striking and atmospherically unusual that they give you the distinct sense that you're seeing things through the eyes of someone with a thoroughly unique perspective. He has a knack for re-creating the world as something that reflects whatever story he's telling. "The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy" has a similar effect. It's a sparse, smallish black hardcover that looks disquietingly like someone's diary. This is somehow appropriate, because the delicate drawings and poems inside seem extremely personal. To open the book is to step into a strange fantasy land. It's very much the same experience as watching one of Burton's movies.

Like all of Burton's creations, these stories are wildly original; they're also pretty grotesque -- several of them enough so as to be truly unsettling (the climax of the title story is one of the most outrageous and hideous things ever to happen in a cartoon). It might take a rarefied (some would say warped) sense of humor to appreciate it, but this is brilliantly dark storytelling in a simple, uncluttered form. If you liked any of Tim Burton's movies, you'll like this book. It's guaranteed to make you smirk and cringe.--Olli Chanoff