Some Phantom/No Time Flat: Two Novellas

by Stephen Beachy

These paired novellas show a master writer developing some of his most emotional, vital explorations of America yet. In Some Phantom an unnamed woman arrives in a strange city, fleeing a violent relationship. She begins to explore the city and its inhabitants and takes a job teaching disturbed children, but she finds her own mental stability becoming more and more precarious. A marriage of The Turn of the Screw and Carnival of Souls, Some Phantom poses questions about the line between memory and madness, fantasy and abuse.

These questions are further elaborated in No Time Flat, which follows Wade, a boy living a somewhat isolated existence with his elderly parents on the American plains. Wade makes his way through a childhood marked by playground shootings and mysterious strangers before becoming a wanderer himself, inhabiting a sparse landscape of fleeting connections, lost children, and unformulated crimes.

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Stephen Beachy is a writer. He was born in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1965. His first novel, The Whistling Song, was published by W. W. Norton with cover illustrations by Curt Kirkwood in 1991 and his second, Distortion, by Harrington Park Press, in 2000. Two novellas, Some Phantom and No Time Flat were published in 2006, from Suspect Thoughts Press. His fiction has been published in BOMB, Chicago Review, Blithe House Quarterly, SHADE, and various anthologies. He has written literary criticism for the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

In October, 2005, he published an article in New York Magazine, exposing the writer JT LeRoy as the concoction of a woman named Laura Albert, with the help of her family members.

Beachy teaches in the MFA Program at the University of San Francisco.

Beachy is also a second cousin of biologist Philip Beachy and historian Robert Beachy.

Reviews

[Alika · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two novellas for the price of one! I continue to be impressed with Stephen's line-by-line prose, which is surprising and amazing to say the least. I really liked the style, subject matter, and themes involved in the books, especially in "Some Phantom." References to "Carnival of Souls" and comic books and other movies, bright light being seen as painful and creepy, awkwardness of human interactions... There is a level of complexity here that cannot be summed up neatly. It's the type of stuff you could ponder for years after reading it.

[Craven · Rating 5 out of 5]

These two novellas are creepy as hell. Full of delusion and psychosexuality, abused, dispossessed, sadistic and above all eerily American these characters rip through the Heartland, cutting off our faces and showing us what we look like. While it just might be impossible for anyone, even Beachy himself to top The Whistling Song, he doesn't disappoint.

[Shozo Hirono · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing is very elegant and intelligent, but the random, episodic structure of both these novellas made them less engaging than other works of similar quality. I'm curious about Beachy's other works though, because he displays a lot of talent. I also liked the witty references to various movies in both works.

[Alvin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stephen Beachy is a treasure and this book is a gem.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

See my brief thoughts here: http://danielshankcruz.com/2013/05/01...