The Wavering Knife

by Brian Evenson

Brian Evenson's fifth story collection constructs a human landscape as unearthly as it is mundane. Replete with the brutality, primordial waste, and savage blankness familiar to readers of his earlier works, Evenson's Kafkaesque allegories entice the mind while stubbornly disordering it. In the title story an obsessive consciousness folds back on itself, creating a vertiginous mélange of Poe and Borges, both horrific and metaphysical. Here, as in "Moran's Mexico," and "Greenhouse," the solitary nature of reading and writing leads characters beyond human limits, making the act of putting words to paper a monstrous violation opening onto madness. In "White Square" the representation of humans by dimly colored shapes confirms our feeling that something lies behind these words, while seeming to mock us with the futility of seeking it. Evenson's enigmatic names-Thurm, Bein, Hatcher, Burlun-placeable landscapes, and barren rooms all combine to create a semblance of conceptual abstraction, as though the material universe had come to exist inside someone's head.

Small wonder that Evenson's work has attracted so much attention among philosophers, literary critics, and other speculative intelligences, for it continuously projects a tantalizing absence, as though there were some key or code that, if only we knew it, would illuminate everything. However, the blade of discernment wavers, and we are left to our own groping interpretations.

Genres: Short Stories, Horror, Fiction, New Weird, Collections

205 pages, Paperback

First published March 15, 2004

About the author

Brian Evenson is an American academic and writer of both literary fiction and popular fiction, some of the latter being published under B. K. Evenson.

Reviews

[Forrest · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish I had written this book. Dark, methodical, these stories wiggle their way into your brain and stay there for a long, long time like little cerebro-literary worms.

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though the first couple of stories in this collection didn't wholly win me over, their humor and dark tendencies set enough hooks in my flesh to keep reading. The collection opens up after that into a world of rural religious zealots dwelling in moral ambiguity (you can almost see the Trump signs in the background), obsessed narrators, twisted psychological dramas, bizarre vignettes of violence, and torture tales that recall Kafka's 'In the Penal Colony' but ratcheted up about tenfold. The title story was one of my favorites, reminiscent of Thomas Bernhard as it follows a scholar studying a philosopher's papers under stultifying conditions. Evenson moves into metafictional territory with 'Moran's Mexico: A Refutation by C. Stelzmann,' a fascinating excursion into the questionable translation of a travel guide, complete with amusingly dry footnotes provided by the translator. Near the other end of what is a fairly wide spectrum here, 'One Over Twelve' pitches the reader headfirst into a drug-induced hallucinatory nightmare, and is by far one of the darkest, bleakest stories I have ever read. Evenson's writing feels strongly steeped in the dark tonic of his progenitors, engendering a wholly new imagination set loose into the wild fields to run amok. I'm fully on board with him at this point, and will be reading more soon.

[Benoit Lelièvre · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am unsure how to quantify my appreciation of this book.

THE WAVERING KNIFE is a short story collection, so there were stories that were intriguing and mind-bending in a way only Brian Evenson is capable of. There was no bad story to speak of here, but there are some I didn't understand. Stories like MORAN'S MEXICO : A REFUTATION, BY C. STELZMANN or BODY for example. But some of these stories, man. They're special. WHITE SQUARE is as much of a challenge to the reader than it is to its protagonist and you find SOME of the answers somewhere else in the book, so you have to remain patient and alert. THE INTRICACIES OF POST-SHOOTING ETIQUETTE is both hilarious and eerily humane. VIRTUAL is probably my favorite story of the entire book, which is about faith and obsession.

Loved the book. It defeated me at times, but I loved it nonetheless.

[Ray Nessly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read 2017 edited Aug 2022
I'm about halfway through another Evenson collection, The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell, the sixth book of his I've read. Thought I'd clean up and recycle this review, for context, and to help spread the word about a unique, genre-busting writer.
..............
Having read Brian Evenson's 2016 novella, 'The Warren' and his latest story collection, 'A Collapse of Horses", and being totally floored by both, I next went to his 2004 collection, 'The Wavering Knife.' The verdict? This is another must-read, oozing with black humor, intelligence, and reveals Evenson's willingness to troll the murky depths of humanity for stories that at times recall masters of horror such as Poe, and other times (reminds me, anyway) of "literary, southern gothic" writers, especially William Gay, crossed with a modern day 'Twilight Zone.'

Each of the 19 stories is worthwhile, and I marked no less than ten favorites:

'The Intricacies of Post-Shooting Etiquette'—This tale of guilt, paranoia and imagined revenge made me think of 'The Tell-Tale Heart').
'Müller'—a man's obsession with his grandfather and teeth.
'Moran's Mexico: A Refutation by C. Stelzmann'—an often-hilarious swipe at clueless scholar/critics (it helps, at one point, if you're familiar with the song 'Streets of Laredo').
'The Wavering Knife'—another obsessive, this time an inattentive-at-best 'caretaker' who makes Baby Jane and the fan/nurse in 'Misery' look like your mother.
Jesus is the reason-for-the-season and he's also the excuse for mischief-making in "The Prophets" and "Barcode Jesus".
'The Gravediggers'—this one especially reminded me of William Gay. Above all, Gay's novel, Twilight. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
And my three, favorite, wow-stories:
'Installation—hard to describe. Brilliant use of imagined photographs.
'House Rules': Let's just say, the first rule of House Rules is: don't talk about House Rules. Okay?!
Finally, 'Virtual', which reminded me of the poor parents in BearHeart™, one of the stories in 'A Collapse of Horses', which come to think of it, itself had elements of 'Tell-Tale Heart,' didn't it? I better re-read that one. And it will be a pleasure to do so. In fact, every Evenson book I've read has left me with the desire to re-read it, and to seek out more of his work.

[Alta]

The Wavering Knife by Brian Evenson

Among the writers we read there are some who entertain us, some we can appreciate but don’t feel any particular affinity with, some we intensely dislike, and some we admire so much we’d like to be them. And then, there is a small category that transcends all the categories above: the writers we are simply in awe of. I had such a feeling when I read Th. Mann, or Maurice Blanchot. And now—reading Brian Evenson’s The Wavering Knife.

I should say that I didn’t “like” all the stories in this collection—in fact, I disliked some of them because of their violence and cruelty (though this violence makes me think of Georges Bataille, since in many of the stories it’s directed against the first-person narrator—that is, against the author’s alter ego—and is, therefore, a very different kind of violence that the one in, say, Hollywood movies). One could say that the dismembering of the narrator’s body—a leitmotif in many of these stories—is akin to the falling apart of language and its meaning (sorry for the cliché, but it’s hard to put into a language that doesn’t sound ridiculous the experience of reading these stories). Or, one could say exactly the opposite: that in order for language to be born, the writer has to experience a kind of death: “language being the only thing worth living, or dying, over” (from “One Over Twelve”).

Evenson’s descriptions of the various mutilations of the body are, for me, among the most authentic expressions I’ve ever come across of the attempt to capture a lost sacredness of language (again, the word “sacredness” should be taken here in the sense given to it by Bataille or Blanchot). Another author in whose work I felt a similar authenticity is the poet Ghérasim Luca—not by accident are both Luca and Evenson praised by Gilles Deleuze. Evenson doesn’t have Luca’s stammered language—on the contrary, he is a master of the proper word (i.e., of the perfect word in the right place) but there is a pain coming through the page, which can only originate in the author’s body, and which seals the text with an authenticity that refuses to accept any kind of (mimetic) “representation” of the experience.

But there are also stories in this collection that are extremely funny—a dark humor, to be sure—such as “The Intricacies of Post-Shooting Etiquette.” In this story, the characters’ names and “relationships” have a Beckettian absurdness; in other stories this absurdness goes even farther, as the “relationships” are stripped of causality and psychology, and the settings are reduced to their essential elements. It is also interesting that this book is written (for the most part) in two voices: one, infused with Beckettian detachment; and another one, very different, impersonating a Christian, alcoholic, government-hater fundamentalist who, obviously, “doesn’t express the author’s point of view.”

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

"44) Brian Evenson —- The Wavering Knife (contains “Barcode Jesus,” one of the finest American short stories of the last sixty years)" --Samuel R. Delany, his 50 literary pillars
http://bigother.com/2012/07/30/for-bi...

[Roy Kesey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This "review" first appeared in issue 6.2 of The Cincinnati Review. It's maybe the most fun I've had thinking about a book.




Regarding Fleshknives


1.
This is the paragraph in which I overlay the subject of this review―the finest book I have read in the past twelve months, Brian Evenson’s The Wavering Knife, and, yes, less review of than documentation of experience with or through―with doilies crocheted by other-than-fictionists. By historians, say. Or musicologists. Or phenomenologists: Husserl or Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty or Ricoeur, or Evenson’s own beloved Lingis.

*

missing v. empty v. insufficient v. perverted v. hidden v. forgotten/suppressed v. ex-
e.g.
girl ‘n’ doll tableaux
e.g.
lady who saws her own head most of the way off

*

3.
Out running very early this morning, I saw a woman and her toddler standing on their front porch. The woman lifted the front of her knee-length skirt as I ran by―too far up for some things, not far enough for others―and said to me, called out to me, “A fox is running around out here.” I slowed. Her expression was not one of schizophrenia or comehitherness but of simple human worry and fear. I thanked her for the forewarning. The toddler toddled and laughed. This neighborhood, frankly, confuses me.

*

II.
No, this doesn’t sound like him at all, or shouldn’t, isn’t meant to.

*

7.
Thought Experiment A:
Beginning at the precise moment in which a given reviewer comes to consider twelve given stories the best twelve stories of a given collection, work backwards three years or ten thousand miles, whichever comes first. Then stop, and describe what you see.

*

8.1
Speaking of Linnaeus, one way in which the stories of The Wavering Knife can nearly be classified is as follows:
a. Satire (Religious, Academic, Artistic, Social, Other)
b. Allegory (Human, Subhuman, Suprahuman, Other)
c. Other (With Dismemberment and Laughter, Without Dismemberment or Laughter, With Laughter but not Dismemberment, With Dismemberment but not Laughter)

*

1.1
“The body, says Brother Johanssen, “is not simple flesh staunching blood and slung over bones, but a way of slipping and spilling through the world.” Johanssen is correct in this, but it is not yet clear whose interests he has at heart.

*

4.
The world is a stomach and Evenson is a fist. In this sense and others it is unsurprising that in 2005 The Wavering Knife won the International Horror Guild Award for best story collection. Other things could also be said. For example, the first story in the book is part of the question to which most of the rest of the book is part of the answer.

*

4’.
This is the paragraph in which I grind hopefully only a lens, and then look through it at the best stories in The Wavering Knife: “The Ex-Father,” “Moran’s Mexico: A Refutation, by C. Steltzmann,” “The Wavering Knife,” “Calling the Hour,” “Virtual,” “One Over Twelve,” “House Rules,” “The Progenitor,” “The Gravediggers,” “Body,” “The Installation,” and “Garker’s Aestheticals.”

*

7.1
Times and distances matter.

*

7.2
And/But there are many kinds of distance and time.

*

XVII.
This is the paragraph where I compare and contrast Evenson’s work to the work of other writers who write or wrote within similar traditions. Let us begin with the letter B: Ballard, Bataille, Beckett, Bernhard, Borges, Bowles, Burroughs.

*

- possibly unreliable German possibly describes Mexico
- possibly unreliable Moran possibly translates or departs from said possible description
- possibly unreliable German’s possible grandson possibly objects to said possible translation or departure
- possibly unreliable translator possibly translates said possible objection
- (u)nfortunate American’s feet dangle in air

*

XVIII.
There is also Blanchot, to the extent that epigraphs can be trusted, which is not a very great extent, though they are fun in many ways.

*

8.
The Wavering Knife was the finest book I read in the past twelve months, but it was published by FC2 in 2004. Put one way, my system for choosing which books to read in any given year mimics as caterpillars mimic bark or vipers or bird feces the way paint companies decide which shades to align on any given card in any given fan deck, and shades but not their names are ageless. Put another way, my system for choosing which books to read in any given year is half-Linnaean, half-bourbon, half-chance.

*

8.2.
Yes, I know, overly ample and yet insufficient.

*

8.3
(‘Cotswold’ a darker taupe than ‘Kangaroo’ but a lighter taupe than ‘Weimaraner’, etc.)

*

8.4 & 9.
“Fan deck” reminds me of “fantail,” not the bird or the fish or the other bird but the part of a given deck from which snipers shoot pirates. Neither pirates nor snipers are present as such in The Wavering Knife but they are in some senses there in spirit, and I read always to be implicated; to be judged and found wanting; to be loved.

*

9.1
Artists: implicated and judged and found wanting and loved in “One Over Twelve” and “The Installation,” among other stories. Scholars (including yes [perhaps especially] book reviewers): implicated/judged/found wanting/loved in the title story, among others. Those who do anything else for a living or are unemployed or retired or too young to work even with their parents’ permission: i/j/fw/l in the rest of the stories, especially “The Ex-Father,” Virtual,” “House Rules,” and “Body.”

*

10. & XXI.
“The Restriction: when I am inattentive, when I resist, when I follow Skarmus’ advice rather than that of the good brother, when I fail in my talks and motions. The mask is tightened almost to suffocation, the flaps zipped down to block my ears, eyes, nose, the hands chained and dragged up above the head. The back of the rubber suit is loosened, parted, a range of sensations scattered over it or into it by devices I cannot perceive. At some point sweat begins to crease my back, or perhaps welts and blood. / It all revolves around not knowing.” Not-Knowing: the Barthelmean dictum repurposed here, and Barthelme, another B.

*

11. & 16. & 22.
This is the paragraph where I discuss Evenson’s ex-Mormonism and its relevance/lack of relevance to The Wavering Knife. This is the paragraph where I compare The Wavering Knife to Evenson's ten other books. This is the paragraph where I gather all four ends of the two broken threads and tie a single knot.

*

13.
“Like religion, language does violence to the immanent world by forcing the objects of that world to be understood in terms of generalities, by stripping them of their specificities and categorizing them. And this sort of violence is in everything.” This is what Evenson once said to Ben Marcus, and he, Evenson, was and is correct in this, and yet most of us fail each day to remain utterly silent or kill ourselves. This is the conundrum.

*

10.1 & XXIII.
(Millhauser does not start with a B but deserves mention as well at certain points―tonal distancing as masque, idea as character, constantly turning screw. Evenson is Millhauser for cutters: a slippery shoddy analogy, but perhaps a useful point on the curve.)

*

5.
This is the On the Other Hand paragraph, where I list the story or stories that I perceive to be inadequate to their own purposes so as to establish myself as stern but just, as hard-nosed and clear-eyed, in order to clarify once and for fucking all who wears the fucking pants in this fucking document.

*

6. On the other other hand, this book, as its cover declares, is not altogether not half-Cornell box and half-Kunstkamera, and your eye too will wander and love where it will.

*

15.
Just now, two F-16s came shrieking through the air above my roof on their way back to Hancock Field. They do this almost daily. Beauty, violence, etc.; their speed and line, their great bullying volume.

*

All right then, one. The great gobsmacking miracle that is “Body.” That we should come not just to understand but to sympathize with and root for the narrator: this raping/murdering/corpse-fucking/dismembering narrator. That we should wish only the best for him not because he is brilliant and we grudgingly admire his brilliance (he is not brilliant) and not because we seek a solution to our own mind-body problem (though we do) but because he wishes only and wholly to be only and wholly himself―true to himself, that is, and within our culture what higher virtue is there than this?; also, the narrator is unique and uniqueness is important and good. That we should take his side against that of Brother Johanssen who wishes to cure him by breaking and remaking him, through ritual and ritualized suffering. That we should take also the narrator’s side against that of Skarmus who wishes to confuse him with lies and half-truths and unlikely truths. That we should side against the narrator only at moments in which he appears to want to be broken and remade (to be corrected, purified, reborn, normalized) in the hope (our hope, not his) that against his will and in the name of our happiness he might remain only and wholly himself.

Ah but then the end of Section I, Brother Johanssen’s retreat to a more moderate position, his decision to seek a less complete cure, and now the question: what if our narrator would in fact be happier thus partially broken, partially remade?

That we should then be lyrically unsure―divided deeply, painfully against ourselves―as to whether or not to root against Brother Johanssen as he gouges out one of the narrator’s eyes, leads the narrator into the Resurrection (fourth of four stations) and attempts to transfer the narrator’s raping/murdering/corpse-fucking/dismembering impulse away from human bodies and onto something else entirely: that we should hope for and fear revelation so desperately.

*

19.
Thought Experiment B:
What if at some later point a fox had run through my back yard? What then?

*

20.
The tension, always, between collection as individual things gathered and collection as single thing.

*

24.
Horror tropes as moral-aesthetic strategies: these variations on savagery, whispers Evenson, they are so to speak the rooms of the house to which the taxi driver is taking us. And this is our own fault, as we are the ones who gave her the address. The house is not very far away now. The taxi will not stop between here and there. We can open the taxi door, of course, can jump and tuck and roll. But it’s not going to be fun, whispers Evenson. It’s going to fucking hurt.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book contains what I consider the creepiest damn story I have ever read. No matter how many times I return to it, "The Wavering Knife" genuinely spooks me. It is masterful, disturbing, and eerie; probably the best example of literary horror since "The Yellow Wallpaper." I also loved "Moran's Mexico" just for its glancing moments of real derangement. "One Over Twelve" makes the hallucination scene in Trainspotting look like a kids' movie. And hell if I can actually understand it, but "The Progenitor" is decidedly unsettling even if I don't have a clue what the fuck is going on.

I did love this book, but I've grown accustomed to the taste of Evenson's writing and this collection didn't rattle the earth for me the way Altmann's Tongue did. I feel like Evenson is on point when he's in first person, writing from these frigid, logical, and unhinged personas - a terrifying story told in the plainest way. The discrepancy is brilliant. The country-fied gravediggers, the lyrical somersaults, the men drinking beer and rambling about God - these are all a probably necessary reprieve from the more horrifying stories, but I found myself putting the book down.

Can't wait to read more.

[Graham P · Rating 4 out of 5]

Along with Dan Chaon and George Saunders, Brian Evenson rounds out the contemporary trio of short-story authors treading the genre lines between horror, comedy and the literary. Compared to Chaon and Saunders though, Evenson overpowers the reader with stories heavy with bleakness, no matter how suggestive they read at times; and his scenarios where characters pass over into landscapes (both cerebral and tangible) and barely come back the same are as uniquely bizarre as they are carefully constructed. These are stories of the straight-jacket, the daydream that unknowingly turns into a nightmare, and the idle, everyday moment suddenly gone ripe with supernatural dread. These are stories where the ghosts come in many guises, whether inside a psyche ward, a halfway house on the borderlands of dream and reality, or in the minds of somebody who is a psychopath but will try their best to make the reader feel otherwise.

The reader can see Flannery O'Connor's crude gothic sensibility in 'Barcode Jesus', where a Wal-Mart becomes the target of a jobless wino's righteous Godly wrath. Kafka is clearly an influence in tales like 'White Square', a police procedural veiled in the fog of one suspect's madness. Evenson mocks and celebrates Borges in a tale like 'Moran's Mexico', a mad inquiry about a fictitious travelogue and the double-edged lies it exposes about its author.

But the real high points of the book are 'The Prophets', a backwoods allegory to Lovecraft's 'Re-Animator', only with a far more hilarious result. And the selection, 'Virtual', is a truly haunting piece that rivals the best in the last century of horror. At times, the story of a father pretending his life is 'normal' is strangely humorous and depressing, but as it devolves into the commonplace, we realize that things are not as they seem, and in this ambiguous world, Brian Evenson is a master.

[Marc Nash · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first story in this collection blew me away it was so imaginative, conceptual and metaphorical. But then none of the ensuing tales hit that high mark. The second last called "The Installation" came closest, a husband and his dying wife collaborate on making a work of art out oh her condition. And yes there's a lot about insurgent bodies, bodies in distress and captivity in this book. But none quite gripped or amazed me. There's a couple of tales that recalled Bolano's literary games, while there were several stories about extreme Christian cults, end of days or trying to convert the heathen Walmart. I found these uninvolving, perhaps being British I just found these too removed from what I was prepared to credit.

I will give Evenson another go, but I felt a bit let down by this after a superb start.

[Kaushik Viswanath · Rating 3 out of 5]

Evenson's stories are superbly constructed, but I felt this collection grow a little repetitive. When you grow accustomed to the grotesque, it ceases to be shocking. There's a lot more going on here, of course, but towards the end of the collection I started to find it tiresome. The characters are pretty much al religious nuts or regular nuts.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

(this review originally appeared in Art Voice)

Brian Evenson observes violence. He is the man behind the counter selling pins to boys who will push them through butterfly brains. But it's not so much "Does the butterfly die?" Or, "Why does the butterfly die?" Or even, "How does the butterfly die?" Evenson is all about dissecting the painstakingly generic transactions that brought the pin to the butterfly brain. He is also about why, in the end, the boy and the butterfly are exactly the same. Or the possibility that neither pin, butterfly or boy ever actually existed.

Or said a different way: Brian Evenson writes with the cool intellectual acceptance of the darkness and absurdity inherent in humanness as well as anyone since Franz Kafka.

But then again, he is more Poe than Kafka. Witness the title story, The Wavering Knife. In this one, a narrator is obsessively studying the papers of deceased writer/philosopher Eva Gengli. He is allowed access to these papers in exchange for taking care of Gengli's decrepit executor, referred to throughout the story as the benefactor. As the narrator's obsession with Gengli deepens, the executor's condition worsens (nobody breaks apart a human body like Evenson), until both are physically and mentally ruined. The dark tone, the creepy first person narrator, the parallel of an old man's physical decay with his supposed caretaker's mental undoing. The Wavering Knife is nothing if not an update of Poe's classic The Tell-Tale Heart. Which is not to say that Evenson is derivative. While the psychological terrain may be familiar, Evenson's attack, the calculating violence of his language and imagery, feels jarringly new. Brian Evenson is an American master of the macabre in the making.

[Krok Zero · Rating 2 out of 5]

The typeface in this book is the ugliest shit I've ever seen. Yes, that impeded my enjoyment. I did like about six of these nineteen stories, but that's not a very good ratio. I got a pretty heavy Paul Auster vibe off this guy (granted I've only read the New York Trilogy but I feel like that's enough to get an Auster vibe off another author) in that these aren't really stories, they're more like ideas of stories. I'm reminded of what Dave Kehr said about A Woman is a Woman: "Godard's idea of a musical is just that--an idea of a musical." If that's your thing, have at it. I wasn't in the mood.

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

some incredible, some mediocre stories in here. very macabre. the occasional mockery of southernness and religious fundamentalism is a bit tired, but the more surreal stories ("The Ex-Father" esp.) are rocking.
True story: I was reading this on the Metro in DC when a woman barfed all over me; my copy has the vomit stains to prove it.

[Aria · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is something about Evenson's style that is captivating and disorienting. At first I was ambivalent about it, but this is the fourth collection of his that I've picked up so there must be something that keeps me coming back. I found The Wavering Knife to have a nice stylistic diversity compared to some of the other collections and would be a good introduction to his short stories.

[Leif · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brian Evenson is one of my favorite authors. If you have liked any of his other books, you will probably be interested. If you have not read any of his books, start with "A Collapse of Horses", one of the best dark fiction collections I have come across.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Wavering Knife contains a selection of early stories by Brian Evenson, all of which are worth reading, and two of which are essential works from the author's canon.

The first of these, "Virtual", is a remarkably convincing tale of solipsistic dislocation and evasive reality, where a husband believes his wife has miscarried their firstborn, in direct contrast to the wife's own belief that the child was born healthy and is growing steadily (and perhaps a little too fast, in defiance of physiological norms). This is exactly the type of tale that Evenson handles so well, where core human beliefs and social rites are sundered, and isolated protagonists are left to desperately sort through the shards trying to reassemble some version of reality (which goal will of course remain out-of-reach).

The second notable story from this collection is "One Over Twelve", a blisteringly authentic interior portrait of a deep drug experience, wherein reality is mutable and seemingly responsive to the whims of the self. Evenson perfectly captures the simultaneous feelings of power and terror that accompany such a journey.

[Qualle · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5*; typical evenson

[Taylor Bush · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent collection of short stories dealing with themes of obsession, horror and other miscellaneous oddities, tied together by Brian Evenson's malignant preoccupation with the theme of human distortion. Just like the title suggests, Brian Evenson loves creating a wavering effect between the grit of humanity and the illusions that often come to define us. He gives us chaos, and characters thrown into that chaos on some kind of quest to uncover the truth. Characters become art, objects or uncontrollable menaces you can't quite define. A character's humanity is stripped away, and it is in that absence that the true value of humanity is properly realized.

Throughout these stories you will find a beloved wife's death turned into an art installation ("The Installation"), disembodied narrators ("One Over Twelve" and "Body"), an imaginary baby ("Virtual"), quests for religious salvation ("The Prophets" and "Barcode Jesus"), the deadly imitation of art and life and its effect on the psyche ("The Wavering Knife" and "Moran's Mexico") and attempts to seek the truth behind rules and promises ("Promisekeepers" and "House Rules"). Evenson churns humanity through the meat processor of fantasy, distorting what it means to be human not merely for the sake of grisly imagery, but as a means for making sense of why we love, lie, rule, kill, procreate, worship, inspire and live.

My favorite pieces in this collection are "Virtual", "The Wavering Knife", "One Over Twelve", "Moran's Mexico", "House Rules" and my all-time favorite "The Installation". Most of the stories are riveting. The shorter ones tend to be pretty oblique on first read ("Garker's Aestheticals", "The Progenitor", "Stockwell", "Calling the Hour"), but upon subsequent read-throughs yield alot of literary heft. Most of the stories contain the themes outlined above. The only strike against this collection would be that a couple pieces ("Promisekeepers" and "The Gravediggers") feel like dark comedy sketches and are a little out of place amidst the heavyhitters here.

Brian Evenson is a fantastic writer and this collection is an excellent example of that!

[Jack Wolfe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Evenson made his name with his short fiction, but until I completed "The Wavering Knife," I'd only encountered him in long form: the (great) novels "The Open Curtain" and "Immobility," and the (great) novella "The Brotherhood of Mutilation." And while nothing in this collection hit me as hard as "Brotherhood" (that would be saying a lot, because "Brotherhood" is one of the most haunting things I've ever read), you can see here why Evenson seems to prefer this mode, which allows him a level of creative freedom he takes full advantage of. He goes all over the place here-- you got character studies and you got worldbuilding and you got ironic plots; you got noir and you got "the weird" and you got relatively (RELATIVELY) straightforward relationship stories; you got elements of Poe, Kafka, Borges, and O'Connor-- but he stays true to the Evensonian vision, which is... uh... dark. He's got maybe eight or nine motifs he comes back to over and over again, someone keeping them all fresh and terrifying: knives, disability and paralysis, amnesia, religious zealotry, the... err... defilement of corpses, competing narratives, names like "Hatcher" and "Gahern" and "Laverl," locked doors. Can't say I "got" everything here, as some of it is pretty goddamn far out. But the following tales were all 10 out of 10s: "The Ex Father," "The Intricacies of Post-Shooting Etiquette," "Promisekeepers," "Virtual," "One Over Twelve," "House Rules," "The Gravediggers."

[Schuyler · Rating 3 out of 5]

What a strange, dark, original, little collection. Surreal at times, all-too-real at others (see what I did there?). I don't remember exactly where I first came across Evenson's name but he comes with much acclaim. Everyone seems to agree that the story 'Promise Keepers' is far and away the best (and one of the most disturbing) of the collection. It's also pretty darn funny.

Some other noteworthy stories are 'White Squares', 'The Intricacies of Post-Shooting Etiqutte', 'Virtual', 'Barcode Jesus', and 'House Rules'. Evenson seems to be big on 'ideas' (which I know is vague and stupid of me to say) though sometimes his execution seems to fall a little short...and sometimes they're just so bizarre that I just don't know what in tarnation is going on. I mean, what the hell was 'The Progenitor' about?

One guy remarked how the font sucked and while this might seem shallow, I'm gonna have to go ahead and agree with him. The font was oddly distracting and I can't help but wonder how simple things like that (bad font choice) get that far down the editorial line to the point of publishing the bad font choice.

[Dylan Suher · Rating 4 out of 5]

"And then, as if suddenly, their mother was dead by her own hand, the two young girls inherited by the ex-husband, their father, the ex-father."

The precision and brilliance of craft of that sentence (particularly, "as if suddenly") is typical of Evenson's work as a whole. Reading an Evenson story is like being temporarily blinded by darkness, grasping an object between thumb and forefinger, and rolling it over your fingers until the shape of the thing you are holding slowly becomes clear. I prefer the Beckettian embodied metaphysics and the Poe Gothic to the Borgesian text-play, but that's largely a matter of taste; he does all three with inestimable skill. He also has a very good grasp of the intense egotism that lies at the heart of the Tea Party Christian Right, and nails that brand of hypocrisy particularly well.

[Gigi · Rating 4 out of 5]

A mostly very strong collection. For me, Evenson loses something when he goes too heavily into outright horror writing-- spooky religious fundamentalism being the major transgressor. With his background, I get it, but it's just not for me. There is a fair amount of that here, and by the end I would think Oh boy, here we go again when a story would begin with Father So and So or Brother What's His Name. He's at his best when the stories ride the line between mundane and totally bizarre, these aspects bleeding into each other to create an uncanny excellence. The first seven stories: White Square, The Ex Father, Intricacies..., Promisekeepers, Muller, Moran's Mexico, and the Wavering Knife are all incredible. Virtual and House Rules are the middle-stories highlights. In the end, Gravediggers and The Installation return the collection to the heights of its beginning. Good stuff.

[Tara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think Evenson is quite brilliant. I only gave the book 4 stars but perhaps I will return to this collection and try again at a later date. I think some of the darkness and violence and uncertainty in these stories unnerved me at a bit. Yet they are very well written, unusual, original, and interesting. I loved the Intricacies of Post-Shooting Etiquette and Promisekeepers. I think there was a lightness of tone and a sense of humor in these stories that helped with the sombre nature of the subject matter. I hope to read The Open Curtain soon.

[G. Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best collections I've ever read. Evenson's strengths and range are showcased here. This is certainly a less accessible collection than Fugue State, so if that's your first exposure be warned. But there is a brilliant mix here of satire, meta-whimsy, twisted visions, bizarre surrealism, brutality, minimalism, Lovecraftian fantasyscapes, and overdoses of the human condition that should satisfy even the more jaded readers of fringe lit. "House Rules" will break your brain. "The Intricacies of Post-Shooting Etiquette" will break your heart. "Body" will break your soul.

[Ryan Bradford · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would love to have Brian Evanson's brain. There are few other writers who can move from dense, complex experimentalism to accessible/funny/dark/genre writing so effortlessly.

However, it's difficult to read a lot of these stories without seeing some semblance of spite toward the LDS Church/religion. And perhaps that's unfair. Not that it's a bad thing, but it makes for a painful read. Even as fucked up/hilarious it is to having a story about digging up former LDS president Ezra T. Benson, there's real pain and dejection underneath.

[Bridget Brewer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This motherfucker is bringing genre up out of the literary basement where it's been relegated for too many years, and into the "high" fiction parlor where it belongs. I especially love this collection of his - his toying with format/structure is really intriguing from a writer's perspective, and each piece - though linked by horror - finds new ways to make you cry. "The Ex-Father" is a piece of genius. I've never read anyone with the balls to end a story that way. Read him now. Don't waste any more time.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn’t find this collection as strong and captivating as Collapse of Horses. It seems to draw some early, experimental pieces that make for an overall less cohesive collection. Still, when the stories are good, they are very good. Imaginative and macabre, often grotesque, with a wicked humour that leavens the darkness. I think what makes Evenson so readable, even when not fully comprehensible, is the core of truth behind the human motivations that drive the stories, even when those characters are quite twisted and damaged indeed.

[Joe Scipione · Rating 4 out of 5]

Strong 4/5!

Evenson is a master of the short story. This collection is no different. His use of words is so perfect. Rarely does he leave an extra word in a sentence. Every word serves its purpose. His imagination is incredible and you will start off each story having no idea where it will end up. The clues he leaves letting you know something is wrong pull you along and make you anxious with every turn of the page.

[Annie · Rating 2 out of 5]

i'm torn between two and three stars. after reading 2/3 of the book in one day, putting it down for over a month, and then finishing it up just now i can say that the stories are more interesting and (oddly) less jarring when read only a couple at a time. not sure i would read anything else by him but it made for good book group discush.