Dead Carnival

by Mark Wallace

Fiction. In this novel, by poet and essayist Mark Wallace, a scientist creates gilled human monstrosities that are also avatars of the possibility of imaginative transcendence. Experimentation in language and in the laboratory produce equally vertiginous results. "In these worlds, ideas and narratives flurry madly and wink out like sparks, the dead walk, and the monstrous is never far away. Part Lovecraft, part de Sade, part B-horror movie, part philosophy, DEAD CARNIVAL is a schizophrenic and uniquely American Novel of Ideas"—Brian Evenson "Mark Wallace writes like John Hawkes dreaming of Paul Bowles having a gothic nightmare"—Ron Sukenick.

308 pages, Paperback

First published November 15, 2004

About the author

Mark Wallace was born in 1962 in Princeton, New Jersey and grew up in the Washington, D.C. area. Between the ages of 8 and 17, with his father and brother he drove across the United States to Southern California on camping trips every summer, once going by way of Mexico City and once by way of Lake Banff, and he has spent time in all 48 of US mainland states.

The numerous bad jobs he has worked since the age of 15 are distinguished not by working class physical labor but by the low paid tedium of the contemporary world’s bureaucratic nightmare.

He received his Ph.D. from the State University at Buffalo with his dissertation The Gothic Universe in the Fiction of Paul Bowles and William Burroughs. He worked at Buffalo as a student assistant to Charles Bernstein on "The Wednesdays At Four Plus" reading series.