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 The Triumph of the Spider Monkey
by Joyce Carol Oates
Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow Press, 1976
89 pages
Excerpt
It sliced up more people than they have records for, how's that for a tease? You think that the State's records show everything?—every slash? There were more brides than I remember. The Machete was, is, two and a half feet long, purchased at an Army-Navy Surplus Store in town here, a blade of steel, a sturdy man-sized handle, nothing like that thing the Prosecution has under its control. That blade is dull. If it is stained, the stains are rust and not blood. You can't bring the Spider Monkey's powers into the Hall of Justice; you can't even see the Machete except by moonlight.
Epigraph
 slowly we are overrunning the earth
spidermonkeys twittering climbing leaping leering
on broken banjos
the Jukebox of the 40's could not cage us in
stunned, the arm of the mechanism pauses
paralyzed
when the Spider Monkeys inside
open soul-doors to us spidermonkeys skinned alive
the magic of My Passage on Earth
will be just another headline
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Reviews
- Booklist, March1, 1977, p992
- Kliatt Paperback Book Guide, Spring 1977, p7
- Library Journal, April 1, 1977, p834
- Choice, May 1977, p377
- Sewanee Review, Fall 1977, p693
Other Editions
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Page address:
http://jco.usfca.edu/works/novels/spider.html
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