Having just completed real-time reviewing the fiction anthology DADAOISM (Chômu Press 2012), I have distilled my own symbol from the gestalt of its contents.
I now have the residual Autumn years of my life – however few or many – to decide which is the greatest anthology of all:
DADAOISM
Or
the VanderMeers’ massive ‘The WEIRD’ that I obsessedly real-time reviewed during November 2011: Inter alia, I said then: “The best Weird fiction can touch and tantalise you strangely, darkly, poignantly, humorously, grotesquely or with deathly finality, but, also, mellowly and fruitfully, because, from the very experience of reading it at all, one never quite reaches the winter beyond the autumn in the way that you once reached the autumn beyond the summer.”
Declaration: I have a half-a-page piece in DADAOISM that I wrote in the 1980s.
And in ‘The WEIRD’ there is a story that I originally published.
Having said that, I genuinely believe these two books compete objectively for the best anthology ever!
Someone not connected with DADAOISM has just mentioned to me ‘The Torch of Chaos and Doubt” in Taoism or Daoism. Regarding the book’s gestalt, I alone either missed its whole point or managed to grasp it.
…and my cover word ORCzone – ORC is embedded centrally in TORCH!
Other contenders for best anthology ever: Cinnabar’s Gnosis (Ex Occidente) or AGAIN DANGEROUS VISIONS…
Having started investigating this further, I feel there is more mileage in greater investigation towards unravelling the gestalt of DADAOISM the book, re poiesis and Socratic Dialogues etc etc. Are there forces at work here that none of us yet understand?
More info in comments here on-going: https://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/2012/05/21/dadaoisms-torch/