"The Sea Was Wet as Wet Could Be" (1967)

Gahan Wilson was known more for being a cartoonist than a writer, though he always traveled in fantasy and horror circles, even as a cartoonist, at which he was unique, instantly recognizable, and often great. Sometimes a good horror story is less inspired and more efficient. This one is both, and also has great extremes, rooted self-consciously in Lewis Carroll, that strange literary figure. While I am more ambivalent about Carroll’s work—reading him has always been slightly disappointing for me—Wilson clearly spent some time inhabiting it. The story is remarkable, disconcerting and unearthly. At the same time it’s also somehow very ‘60s. This drunken seaside picnic scene could be equally a sun-drenched Pepsi commercial. The best contrast in a story full of great ones might be the mysterious charisma of the two unlikely figures trudging the beach, a kind of Mutt and Jeff dressed for a Lewis Carroll masquerade. The sodden morning-after jaded ad executives and their blowsy fashionable women out of a Fellini picture—another nice ‘60s touch—simply fall in love with these two, the Walrus and the Carpenter, and will follow them anywhere. It’s chilling in its hilarious casualness. The notes of cruelty, such as the saw the Carpenter carries, are so subtle you think it might be your imagination. Other revelations of violence are shocking and grotesque and too real. The ghost of Janet Leigh in Psycho haunts this story. Wilson also might have been pulling vibrations out of the air in other ways—or perhaps John Lennon had a subscription to Playboy where this story first appeared in May 1967—because the Walrus in this story has obvious affinities with the slightly sinister Walrus in the Beatles song. The story feels like a drug trip gone wrong, more like “Helter Skelter” in that way. It would be interesting to know more about what the Beatles knew or thought about Wilson—certainly it’s likely Lennon admired him as a cartoonist, if indeed he were not emulating Wilson in certain ways. The story also has the kind of ‘60s-style downbeat ending seen in pictures like Easy Rider and Night of the Living Dead. You could almost reverse-engineer “The Sea Was Wet as Wet Could Be” out of everything we know about the ‘60s. A great one. And now that I think about it, you could probably do something equally remarkable with Dr. Seuss if you put your mind to it.

The Playboy Book of Horror and the Supernatural, ed. Ray Russell (out of print)
The Weird, ed. Ann & Jeff VanderMeer
Listen to story online.