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Quasi
Compared to Maggie Nelson's "Bluets." Wilson's Koewing's QUASI is part memoir, part fiction and part something else entirely. Greg Tebbano called the sum of its parts "the realm of quasi."
Praise for QUASI:
"I don't know if Koewing is real or an entity that shows up at the campfire after three glasses of bourbon. But either way, his stories will move inside of you like air and water." - Scott Laudati
“Koewing paints in sunset shades of nostalgia. What could have been is always right there under the surface of what was. It’s a feeling that will escort you through this collection, from his childhood in rural South Carolina to the realm of Quasi, where the uncanny mingles with the possibility of a reimagined past.” -Greg Tebbano
“QUASI is a powerful dance between startling reality and a distant and dreamy otherworld. Wilson Koewing can take your head off with one piece, break your heart with the next, all the while offering characters both broken beyond repair and, in subtle contrast, strong and good- hearted. It's a book of black and white in some ways, but in the end, Koewing is a rainbow against a dark sky. Completely unique in the world.” - Sheldon Lee Compton
"Wilson is a wordsmith, no question. His fearlessness and blood and guts approach to writing makes these stories sing, cry and linger long after they have been read...a writer to watch out for and one I will follow." - Kevin Richard White
Praise for QUASI:
"I don't know if Koewing is real or an entity that shows up at the campfire after three glasses of bourbon. But either way, his stories will move inside of you like air and water." - Scott Laudati
“Koewing paints in sunset shades of nostalgia. What could have been is always right there under the surface of what was. It’s a feeling that will escort you through this collection, from his childhood in rural South Carolina to the realm of Quasi, where the uncanny mingles with the possibility of a reimagined past.” -Greg Tebbano
“QUASI is a powerful dance between startling reality and a distant and dreamy otherworld. Wilson Koewing can take your head off with one piece, break your heart with the next, all the while offering characters both broken beyond repair and, in subtle contrast, strong and good- hearted. It's a book of black and white in some ways, but in the end, Koewing is a rainbow against a dark sky. Completely unique in the world.” - Sheldon Lee Compton
"Wilson is a wordsmith, no question. His fearlessness and blood and guts approach to writing makes these stories sing, cry and linger long after they have been read...a writer to watch out for and one I will follow." - Kevin Richard White
129 pages, Paperback
Published October 19, 2023
5 people want to read
About the author
Wilson Koewing
7 books27 followersWilson Koewing is a writer from South Carolina. His work has appeared in Wigleaf, Hobart, Maudlin House, X-R-A-Y, New World Writing, Pembroke Magazine, Gargoyle, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts and many others. His essay "Woodstown" was named a notable American essay of 2020 by Best American Essays. His debut short story collection JADED is available from Mint Hill Books/Main Street Rag Press. His chapbook SHRINK WRAPS AND ODDITIES is available from Bottlecap Press.
His full length hybrid collection QUASI is forthcoming from Anxiety Press. He lives in San Anselmo, California.
His full length hybrid collection QUASI is forthcoming from Anxiety Press. He lives in San Anselmo, California.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 30, 2024
i think this deserves a well-thought out review because any attention on independent literature is good. QUASI is a thin collection of loosely connected autofiction stories. the description on this website compares it to Knausgård but the only thing that this book has in common with Knausgård's "My Struggle" series is genre.
i had to download a separate app to read this book which was a little annoying. i knew of the author through twitter but don't have a really strong opinion on him. i had read some of his poetry and didn't enjoy it. within the first sixteen pages, Koewing uses a specific turn of phrase twice in the same story, wherein something (doctor's appointments, baseball) "becomes life." i found that funny. i enjoyed Koewing's laconic telling of how watching his childhood dog grow old and decrepit felt and how we end up resenting the chronically ill, whether it's a dog with mange or a grandpa with dementia.
the writing has an awkward and stilted quality to it. Koewing's writing varies from sounding casual (a good quality) to clinical, sometimes in the same sentence. dialogue is thankfully rare.
"Teachers even seemed taken with his charm and newfound power."
"It was concluded that she fell. The circumstances were mysterious, but no investigation was done into foul play."
"She had green planet eyes."
"She left my friend and the town we grew up in for the big city and found a new boyfriend whose need for possession led to physical abuse."
""Paul, you are a fucking whale!!"
"Watch your language," my dad said. "These are somebody else's kids. What's wrong with you, besides the obvious?""
""You're never going to change me, brother," I said, gasping for air."
after a certain point, the first part becomes, for a time, a travelogue. Koewing visits Belize, Costa Rica, Prague, Iceland, Amsterdam, Ireland, alludes to Hawaii, the Caribbean. he is always somewhere other than America but nothing about these places seems to change him other than a few failed romances.
part two, Quasi, is filled with vignettes; he verges into the fantastical. he visits a dead deer on the side of the highway for days until a man appears and, through a remote control, brings it back to life. it threatens to become good at times ("Truck Stop" is great) but there's still something missing. he waxes poetic on Acadiana in twee terms: beautiful Cajun women, crawdads, liquor. he imagines alligators laughing at him when he unblocks a woman he met in New Orleans.
you get the sense that the protagonist (this is autofiction: he is Wilson Koewing presented to us by Wilson Koewing, cool, a hopeless romantic, perceptive, a world traveler) is unchanged by whatever it is he goes through. he circles the drain. he seems to have little in the way of emotion other than sexual lust and a kind of ambient sadness that never rises to the level of misery. he attends a riot, sees a boy's eyes melt, hears him scream, and he thinks: I can fall in love here.
there are a few themes that run throughout the collection, these being sex and death. so many of the people in Koewing's life die; he is worried that he hasn't made love during a weekend in Tuscany. where does he get the money to travel? he crashes a moped into a wall. he rents a villa. where does the money come from?
the best piece in this book is "Woodstown," which is good in spite of the really horribly written dialogue. i read this fairly quickly in one afternoon at work.
i had to download a separate app to read this book which was a little annoying. i knew of the author through twitter but don't have a really strong opinion on him. i had read some of his poetry and didn't enjoy it. within the first sixteen pages, Koewing uses a specific turn of phrase twice in the same story, wherein something (doctor's appointments, baseball) "becomes life." i found that funny. i enjoyed Koewing's laconic telling of how watching his childhood dog grow old and decrepit felt and how we end up resenting the chronically ill, whether it's a dog with mange or a grandpa with dementia.
the writing has an awkward and stilted quality to it. Koewing's writing varies from sounding casual (a good quality) to clinical, sometimes in the same sentence. dialogue is thankfully rare.
"Teachers even seemed taken with his charm and newfound power."
"It was concluded that she fell. The circumstances were mysterious, but no investigation was done into foul play."
"She had green planet eyes."
"She left my friend and the town we grew up in for the big city and found a new boyfriend whose need for possession led to physical abuse."
""Paul, you are a fucking whale!!"
"Watch your language," my dad said. "These are somebody else's kids. What's wrong with you, besides the obvious?""
""You're never going to change me, brother," I said, gasping for air."
after a certain point, the first part becomes, for a time, a travelogue. Koewing visits Belize, Costa Rica, Prague, Iceland, Amsterdam, Ireland, alludes to Hawaii, the Caribbean. he is always somewhere other than America but nothing about these places seems to change him other than a few failed romances.
part two, Quasi, is filled with vignettes; he verges into the fantastical. he visits a dead deer on the side of the highway for days until a man appears and, through a remote control, brings it back to life. it threatens to become good at times ("Truck Stop" is great) but there's still something missing. he waxes poetic on Acadiana in twee terms: beautiful Cajun women, crawdads, liquor. he imagines alligators laughing at him when he unblocks a woman he met in New Orleans.
you get the sense that the protagonist (this is autofiction: he is Wilson Koewing presented to us by Wilson Koewing, cool, a hopeless romantic, perceptive, a world traveler) is unchanged by whatever it is he goes through. he circles the drain. he seems to have little in the way of emotion other than sexual lust and a kind of ambient sadness that never rises to the level of misery. he attends a riot, sees a boy's eyes melt, hears him scream, and he thinks: I can fall in love here.
there are a few themes that run throughout the collection, these being sex and death. so many of the people in Koewing's life die; he is worried that he hasn't made love during a weekend in Tuscany. where does he get the money to travel? he crashes a moped into a wall. he rents a villa. where does the money come from?
the best piece in this book is "Woodstown," which is good in spite of the really horribly written dialogue. i read this fairly quickly in one afternoon at work.
March 20, 2025
I’m on a Wilson Koewing kick this year, and with good reason. Books like Quasi are right in my wheelhouse, shining a spotlight on topics everyone’s been through, showcasing moments that simultaneously bring joy and pain into our lives.
Who doesn’t have a crazy uncle that makes us laugh? Who hasn’t loved and lost? Who doesn’t have bittersweet memories wrapped up in a certain place, song, or meal? Koewing’s evocative writing will make you feel it all, both from his perspective and what it brings up in you.
Who doesn’t have a crazy uncle that makes us laugh? Who hasn’t loved and lost? Who doesn’t have bittersweet memories wrapped up in a certain place, song, or meal? Koewing’s evocative writing will make you feel it all, both from his perspective and what it brings up in you.
June 11, 2024
Wilson Koewing’s Quasi is an unassuming little book that deceptively contains within it wide vistas, plentiful beach-scapes, many chance encounters with alluring women, and a full heart’s worth of authentic life experiences. The inherent truth of the stories in the book, even if they be somewhat tinged with fiction at times, is undeniable.
Authenticity is prized among writers doing a certain kind of life-writing. To accurately and without fear capture and reflect what we do as human beings when we step out our front door is the important task. Some only write about their interiors, their inner worlds, and this is a high goal itself. But Koewing takes you in this book to your long-postponed appointment with the outer world, met at its own place and time, where it lives.
He may not particularly like to have you along on his rambling adventures in the flesh, but by reading Quasi you will be his companion as he boards planes to European cities, hoofs it between the drinking holes of New Orleans, goes on somewhat embittered road-trips up the East Coast with troubled family members, and hauls Airstreams to camping grounds where he sets up solo campsites that are either forlorn or wondrously peaceful. As someone who doesn’t get out as much as I used to this book was a fun travelogue of vicarious voyeurism.
But it isn’t just that. The things Koewing writes about have depth and soul to them. You can travel all around the world and meet pretty girls but there’s something that searches inside and finds no home. Koewing is a gifted noticer of details and teller of stories, and the emotional dimension of what he sees never leaves the writing. The first section of the book deals with tales of his family and these will blow you out of the water with their frankness, shock, and sorrow. The centerpiece of this first section, and perhaps the whole book, is called “Woodstown,” and has to do with Koewing’s relationship with his turbulent, unpredictable, and scary Uncle Dean. I can’t recount all the details of the family life that Koewing does in the book, you must read it yourself, but Wilson and Dean take a car ride from Florida to Princeton, New Jersey. It’s riveting. Koewing doesn’t waste a lot of time on extraneous commentary and just gives you the direct info throughout the book but it achieves a special poignancy here in the beginning when he’s telling you about the personal wreckage that has beset his family.
This is the kind of book that you read and it makes you ask yourself the question: “Am I experiencing all of life that I could be?” To be confronted with the options of life, the decisions and freedom, and to turn your back and stay cloistered in your safe house is cowardly. Quasi is opposed to all that. It’s a viewpoint that allows you to look at the world and feel a thrill at reaching out and plucking the fruit from the vine, even as you know there’s going to be some sadness and loss once all that’s left is the core.
Authenticity is prized among writers doing a certain kind of life-writing. To accurately and without fear capture and reflect what we do as human beings when we step out our front door is the important task. Some only write about their interiors, their inner worlds, and this is a high goal itself. But Koewing takes you in this book to your long-postponed appointment with the outer world, met at its own place and time, where it lives.
He may not particularly like to have you along on his rambling adventures in the flesh, but by reading Quasi you will be his companion as he boards planes to European cities, hoofs it between the drinking holes of New Orleans, goes on somewhat embittered road-trips up the East Coast with troubled family members, and hauls Airstreams to camping grounds where he sets up solo campsites that are either forlorn or wondrously peaceful. As someone who doesn’t get out as much as I used to this book was a fun travelogue of vicarious voyeurism.
But it isn’t just that. The things Koewing writes about have depth and soul to them. You can travel all around the world and meet pretty girls but there’s something that searches inside and finds no home. Koewing is a gifted noticer of details and teller of stories, and the emotional dimension of what he sees never leaves the writing. The first section of the book deals with tales of his family and these will blow you out of the water with their frankness, shock, and sorrow. The centerpiece of this first section, and perhaps the whole book, is called “Woodstown,” and has to do with Koewing’s relationship with his turbulent, unpredictable, and scary Uncle Dean. I can’t recount all the details of the family life that Koewing does in the book, you must read it yourself, but Wilson and Dean take a car ride from Florida to Princeton, New Jersey. It’s riveting. Koewing doesn’t waste a lot of time on extraneous commentary and just gives you the direct info throughout the book but it achieves a special poignancy here in the beginning when he’s telling you about the personal wreckage that has beset his family.
This is the kind of book that you read and it makes you ask yourself the question: “Am I experiencing all of life that I could be?” To be confronted with the options of life, the decisions and freedom, and to turn your back and stay cloistered in your safe house is cowardly. Quasi is opposed to all that. It’s a viewpoint that allows you to look at the world and feel a thrill at reaching out and plucking the fruit from the vine, even as you know there’s going to be some sadness and loss once all that’s left is the core.
July 6, 2024
I have long enjoyed Wilson's smooth-as-a-baby's bottom prose, and Quasi would be a great introduction to his style. Might it also give the reader a sneak peek into our author-globetrotter's true spy game? Unemployed, he says! Visiting family, he says! Well if you are looking for clues, there are a lot of proper nouns in here to chew on. Agent Wilson, what exactly were you doing at that 'bachelor party' in Tamarindo in 2021?
The book is divided into three sections, True, Quasi, and A Story, that seem to be respectively CNF, near CNF, and a longer shorter piece of fiction. I give this read 4 stars because I was not bowled over by the short story, though it is well-crafted and tonally appropriate. I think I just wanted more of that sweet CNF.
The True section was my favorite, it was chill like riding a large river down, the only time the boat drags bottom and we swing rail-on to the current is when Uncle Dean makes an appearance, and makes things not tense exactly, just no longer leisurely. As Aunt Dean might say, Interesting, because Uncle Dean is borderline dangerous.
Is this what Wilson's life was like? It must be, because it is labelled True.
Taking a chunk at random we read: 'I loved toy dinosaurs, too. One afternoon, Dad tilled a section of the yard for a flowerbed. I flooded it with the hose and played with my dinosaurs in the muddy water. The brontosaurus' long neck rose above the water. The pterodactyl swooped down and glided above the tiny waves I imagined were tidal. The triceratops didn't think much of the affair' ('Ninety-One in Dog Years', page 17).
Wilson loves dinosaurs? *I* love dinosaurs! And it could lull you to sleep, in the pleasantest kind of way.
The Quasi section is also interesting. I enjoyed it very much conceptually once I realized what was going on, and in fact the creepiest piece in that section, 'Dowdy Lake' might be my favorite in the collection. I will only say that there are creatures in Quasi.
And unlike my own tomes, it is a single-sitting read, so you have the luxury to sit back, quaff it, and almost immediately digest it. Recommended.
The book is divided into three sections, True, Quasi, and A Story, that seem to be respectively CNF, near CNF, and a longer shorter piece of fiction. I give this read 4 stars because I was not bowled over by the short story, though it is well-crafted and tonally appropriate. I think I just wanted more of that sweet CNF.
The True section was my favorite, it was chill like riding a large river down, the only time the boat drags bottom and we swing rail-on to the current is when Uncle Dean makes an appearance, and makes things not tense exactly, just no longer leisurely. As Aunt Dean might say, Interesting, because Uncle Dean is borderline dangerous.
Is this what Wilson's life was like? It must be, because it is labelled True.
Taking a chunk at random we read: 'I loved toy dinosaurs, too. One afternoon, Dad tilled a section of the yard for a flowerbed. I flooded it with the hose and played with my dinosaurs in the muddy water. The brontosaurus' long neck rose above the water. The pterodactyl swooped down and glided above the tiny waves I imagined were tidal. The triceratops didn't think much of the affair' ('Ninety-One in Dog Years', page 17).
Wilson loves dinosaurs? *I* love dinosaurs! And it could lull you to sleep, in the pleasantest kind of way.
The Quasi section is also interesting. I enjoyed it very much conceptually once I realized what was going on, and in fact the creepiest piece in that section, 'Dowdy Lake' might be my favorite in the collection. I will only say that there are creatures in Quasi.
And unlike my own tomes, it is a single-sitting read, so you have the luxury to sit back, quaff it, and almost immediately digest it. Recommended.
February 23, 2025
There are few books I've read at a slower pace than I did Wilson Koewing's Quasi. And that's not because I didn't love it - because I did. The thing is... after reading one story in this collection (even its one-page stories), I often put the book down for the day. Why? Because I was left feeling totally satisfied.
Koewing's writing is rich, yet concise, and his words and stories reflect a deep and sincere passion. Quasi is a magical spell, and its enchantment left me feeling really damn good. Crazy thing is... Quasi is all about Koewing's real life, or so I've heard.
Seek this one out, folks. You won't regret it.
Favorite story: Woodstown. RIP Uncle Dean.
Koewing's writing is rich, yet concise, and his words and stories reflect a deep and sincere passion. Quasi is a magical spell, and its enchantment left me feeling really damn good. Crazy thing is... Quasi is all about Koewing's real life, or so I've heard.
Seek this one out, folks. You won't regret it.
Favorite story: Woodstown. RIP Uncle Dean.
December 16, 2023
Wilson Koewing is a very special writer. In this new short story collection, “Quasi”, (as in his earlier one “Jaded”), he blurs the lines between fiction and non-fiction so effectively that the reader can’t help wondering if all the events described somehow happened to him in real life. The language is conversational, intimate, and puts us straight in the head of the narrator. It isn’t always a comfortable place to be. The guy isn’t always likable. The writing is superb, each story is a capsule in time and geography. The collection should be enjoyed in short sips or little bites, some sweet, some savory. Highly recommended.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews