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One Dead Tree
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One Dead Tree
by David Menear
DevilHousePress, an imprint of AngelHousePress
ISBN: OneDeadTree
7×8.5, 28pp, $10.00 (CAD)
published, June 2014, Limited Edition
DevilHousePress is a new imprint of AngelHousePress — an Ottawa-based micro-press founded and published by poet and writer, Amanda Earl, in 2007 — that publishes transgressive literary works in the form of short story collections, novellas, novel excerpts, flash fiction, one-act plays and creative nonfiction in limited edition chapbooks. The DevilHousePress imprint’s inaugural publication is David Menear’s chapbook, One Dead Tree, consisting of eight individual works of short fiction, flash fiction, and prose poem/flash fiction hybrids.
The title piece, “One Dead Tree”, combines elements of flash fiction and the prose poem about a Montreal bar, ‘The Crossroads’, situated between wealthy Westmount and the “largely lower-middle-class district of Notre-Dame-De-Grace (NDG)”. It conveys the work’s central allegory in which ‘one dead tree’ works as a blatant metaphor “where if you sit on the patio with a beer and a cigarette” it looms “directly in front of you” as a “dark omen of what lies within [the bar].” (p.1, Menear)
The short fictions “River Water” and “Picasso in Prison” are linked stories from the point of view of a preadolescent boy named Davey, concerning his divorced mother, and her married alcoholic lover Bob who winds up killing his wife in a drunken rage. These two stories focus primarily on coming-of-age male sexuality of a boy desperate for male role models, any male role models, even a violent, drunken one.
The “Devil’s Dirty Laundry” is a work of short, fabulist fiction in which fantasy and reality mix. “Ruined by the tender cruel tragedy of a child’s innocence suffocated.” (p.11, Menear)
“Fern Leaves Unfurling in the Dark-Green Shade” is a story told from the point of view of an apartment building superintendent in “a ‘government assisted’ low-income high-rise rental accommodation deep in the largely unpopulated hinterland of suburban Toronto” (p.14, Menear) where he discovers various discarded hardcore porn magazines “thrown away down the chute into the building’s garbage room where I…heave it up into the inferno of the furnace where an appetite for chocolate or creepiness is converted and disguised as black and grey ash.” (p.13, Menear)
It’s weird, alarming, chilling and it’s troubling…Turn a few crumply pages on and its a possibly pretty girl on a wooden bench in a barn with her mouth wrapped around a massive horse cock. Her mouth is forced wide open deformed like she’s having some serious dental work done. She’s looking at me all gleeful and proud. We don’t see the face of the horse. The next page she’s splattered with cum. It covers her face and she’s rubbing it all around her huge tits. Again, she smiles back at me lustily licking her lips. Jesus.
(p.13, Menear)
“My Kick in the Nuts from Karma” is a story about obsessional love and desire and the ultimate infidelity to which it sometimes leads. The male protagonist “hooks his girlfriend up with yet another job, with yet another friend working for the summer up north at a theatre camp for messed-up native kids.” (p.19, Menear). When he goes to visit, he could “read her face right away that something was wrong.” (p.19, Menear)
‘It was only a couple of guys!’ ‘Tom?’ ‘No, The students. I only let one guy actually fuck me. I just sort of sucked the other two off.’ ‘Sort of?’ I knew this day would come, and that I had it coming for what I had done to Laura all those years ago. This is my kick in the nuts from karma.
(p.19, Menear)
“Flatline” is a flash fiction in which Menear’s broken characters find solace in each others addictions (his, sex addiction; hers, drug addiction) and fleeting acceptance and tenderness on a cold, frozen night in Montreal’s Westmount.
“Cookie Tin” explores the sexuality of the aging sixtysomething male, wondering “how did he go so swiftly and suddenly from the hippy ‘free love’ of the 60’s to paying for sex in his 60’s?” (p.23, Menear)
In these tight, sexy fictions that make up One Dead Tree, David Menear’s stories and characters uncover hitherto unexplored aspects of the Canadian urban experience. Kudos to Amanda Earl for bringing these transgressive stories to print under the DevilHouse imprint. UG
One Dead Tree
by David Menear
DevilHousePress, an imprint of AngelHousePress
ISBN: OneDeadTree
7×8.5, 28pp, $10.00 (CAD)
published, June 2014, Limited Edition
DevilHousePress is a new imprint of AngelHousePress — an Ottawa-based micro-press founded and published by poet and writer, Amanda Earl, in 2007 — that publishes transgressive literary works in the form of short story collections, novellas, novel excerpts, flash fiction, one-act plays and creative nonfiction in limited edition chapbooks. The DevilHousePress imprint’s inaugural publication is David Menear’s chapbook, One Dead Tree, consisting of eight individual works of short fiction, flash fiction, and prose poem/flash fiction hybrids.
The title piece, “One Dead Tree”, combines elements of flash fiction and the prose poem about a Montreal bar, ‘The Crossroads’, situated between wealthy Westmount and the “largely lower-middle-class district of Notre-Dame-De-Grace (NDG)”. It conveys the work’s central allegory in which ‘one dead tree’ works as a blatant metaphor “where if you sit on the patio with a beer and a cigarette” it looms “directly in front of you” as a “dark omen of what lies within [the bar].” (p.1, Menear)
The short fictions “River Water” and “Picasso in Prison” are linked stories from the point of view of a preadolescent boy named Davey, concerning his divorced mother, and her married alcoholic lover Bob who winds up killing his wife in a drunken rage. These two stories focus primarily on coming-of-age male sexuality of a boy desperate for male role models, any male role models, even a violent, drunken one.
The “Devil’s Dirty Laundry” is a work of short, fabulist fiction in which fantasy and reality mix. “Ruined by the tender cruel tragedy of a child’s innocence suffocated.” (p.11, Menear)
“Fern Leaves Unfurling in the Dark-Green Shade” is a story told from the point of view of an apartment building superintendent in “a ‘government assisted’ low-income high-rise rental accommodation deep in the largely unpopulated hinterland of suburban Toronto” (p.14, Menear) where he discovers various discarded hardcore porn magazines “thrown away down the chute into the building’s garbage room where I…heave it up into the inferno of the furnace where an appetite for chocolate or creepiness is converted and disguised as black and grey ash.” (p.13, Menear)
It’s weird, alarming, chilling and it’s troubling…Turn a few crumply pages on and its a possibly pretty girl on a wooden bench in a barn with her mouth wrapped around a massive horse cock. Her mouth is forced wide open deformed like she’s having some serious dental work done. She’s looking at me all gleeful and proud. We don’t see the face of the horse. The next page she’s splattered with cum. It covers her face and she’s rubbing it all around her huge tits. Again, she smiles back at me lustily licking her lips. Jesus.
(p.13, Menear)
“My Kick in the Nuts from Karma” is a story about obsessional love and desire and the ultimate infidelity to which it sometimes leads. The male protagonist “hooks his girlfriend up with yet another job, with yet another friend working for the summer up north at a theatre camp for messed-up native kids.” (p.19, Menear). When he goes to visit, he could “read her face right away that something was wrong.” (p.19, Menear)
‘It was only a couple of guys!’ ‘Tom?’ ‘No, The students. I only let one guy actually fuck me. I just sort of sucked the other two off.’ ‘Sort of?’ I knew this day would come, and that I had it coming for what I had done to Laura all those years ago. This is my kick in the nuts from karma.
(p.19, Menear)
“Flatline” is a flash fiction in which Menear’s broken characters find solace in each others addictions (his, sex addiction; hers, drug addiction) and fleeting acceptance and tenderness on a cold, frozen night in Montreal’s Westmount.
“Cookie Tin” explores the sexuality of the aging sixtysomething male, wondering “how did he go so swiftly and suddenly from the hippy ‘free love’ of the 60’s to paying for sex in his 60’s?” (p.23, Menear)
In these tight, sexy fictions that make up One Dead Tree, David Menear’s stories and characters uncover hitherto unexplored aspects of the Canadian urban experience. Kudos to Amanda Earl for bringing these transgressive stories to print under the DevilHouse imprint. UG
30 pages, Paperback
First published June 6, 2014
3 people want to read
About the author
David Menear
5 books10 followersMenear is most often described as an edgy, urgent, gritty and sometimes ‘transgressive’ short story writer with a soft heart and a sense of humour. You find him at that place where Salinger meets Cormac McCarthy for tea and cookies.
Most Anticipated - 49th Shelf
2019 ReLit Awards finalist - Shortlisted in the short fiction category
2020 ReLit Awards finalist - Shortlisted in the short fiction category
“Your command of language is mesmerizing and I mean this as high praise when I say you write like a poet. I can see your craft choices happening at the sentence and even syllabic level, I notice the way you use sound and rhythm and I applaud that.”
Margo LaPierre, Acclaimed Poet, Author and Editor
"David Menear is one hell of a writer. We at HOOD, among the filth and infuriated beauty around us, laud him for his cutting edge and knifey work. He is a fearless, limit-crushing purveyor of high art pulp...A truly gifted writer" -Lynn Crosbie
David has spent most of his life between Toronto and Montreal, but has also lived in London, U.K. & Divonne, France. He studied art in NYC at SVA. Currently, he is back in Toronto at ‘The Beach’, writing hard and playing tennis with terrifying enthusiasm and mediocrity.
Menear is most often described as an edgy, urgent, gritty and sometimes ‘transgressive’ short story writer with a soft heart and a sense of humour. You find him at that place where Salinger meets Cormac McCarthy for tea and cookies.
David has been published in a great many publications and anthologies including Freefall, Carte Blanche, Exile, Urban Graffiti and The Danforth Review.
His recently published collection Swallows Playing Chicken was a 2019 & 2020 ReLit Awards finalist - Shortlisted in the short fiction category.
"I’m very excited & pleased to publish David’s chapbook. He covers taboo subjects with humour & daring."-Amanda Earl / DevilHouse Press
" Excellent writing is excellent writing...In these tight, sexy fictions that make up One Dead Tree, David Menear’s stories and characters uncover hitherto unexplored aspects of the Canadian urban experience. Kudos to Amanda Earl for bringing these transgressive stories to print under the DevilHouse imprint." - Urban Graffiti-Mark McCawley
Publishing History
'This Will Only Take a Minute'
(flash fiction)
Guernica Editions
Toronto 2022
'Swallows Playing Chicken'
(short story collection)
Mansfield Press
Toronto 2019
'Molten Bone'
Flash Fiction Anthology
This Will Only Take a Minute
Guernica Editions 2023
2019 & 2020 ReLit Awards finalist - Shortlisted in the short fiction category
'Tentative Brushstrokes'
(short story fiction)
Things That Matter Anthology
Toronto September 2018
'Ragged White Ice'
(short story fiction)
Danforth Review
Toronto September 2017
'Some Devils Dirty Laundry'
(short story fiction)
CommuterLit
Toronto May 2016
'Painted Turtle'
(short story/novel excerpt)
CommuterLit - Toronto April 2016
'Happy Trails'
(Flash)
One Thing
Amanda Earl Blog-Ottawa September 2015
'Some Devils Dirty Laundry'
(short story fiction)
Hood
Lynn Crosbie's Blog-Toronto May 2015
'Fern Leaves Unfurling In the Dark-Green Shade'
(short story anthology)
The Exile Book of New Canadian Noir
Exile Editions -Toronto March 2015
'River Water'
(literary short story fiction)
FreeFall Magazine – Calgary Fall 2014
'One Dead Tree'
(short story collection)
DevilHouse/AngelHouse Press – Ottawa June 2014
'Best of 2014-Sensitive Skin Magazine
'Flatline'
(literary short story fiction)
Urban Graffiti Magazine – Calgary
May 2014
'Picasso's In Prison'
(literary short story fiction)
The Danforth Review – Toronto December 2013
'Blood Runs Deep'
(literary short story fiction)
CBC Canada Writes-Toronto November 2013
'Some Devils Dirty Laundry'
(literary short story fiction)
QWF/Carte Blanche – Montreal September 2013
Poetry published in
Most Anticipated - 49th Shelf
2019 ReLit Awards finalist - Shortlisted in the short fiction category
2020 ReLit Awards finalist - Shortlisted in the short fiction category
“Your command of language is mesmerizing and I mean this as high praise when I say you write like a poet. I can see your craft choices happening at the sentence and even syllabic level, I notice the way you use sound and rhythm and I applaud that.”
Margo LaPierre, Acclaimed Poet, Author and Editor
"David Menear is one hell of a writer. We at HOOD, among the filth and infuriated beauty around us, laud him for his cutting edge and knifey work. He is a fearless, limit-crushing purveyor of high art pulp...A truly gifted writer" -Lynn Crosbie
David has spent most of his life between Toronto and Montreal, but has also lived in London, U.K. & Divonne, France. He studied art in NYC at SVA. Currently, he is back in Toronto at ‘The Beach’, writing hard and playing tennis with terrifying enthusiasm and mediocrity.
Menear is most often described as an edgy, urgent, gritty and sometimes ‘transgressive’ short story writer with a soft heart and a sense of humour. You find him at that place where Salinger meets Cormac McCarthy for tea and cookies.
David has been published in a great many publications and anthologies including Freefall, Carte Blanche, Exile, Urban Graffiti and The Danforth Review.
His recently published collection Swallows Playing Chicken was a 2019 & 2020 ReLit Awards finalist - Shortlisted in the short fiction category.
"I’m very excited & pleased to publish David’s chapbook. He covers taboo subjects with humour & daring."-Amanda Earl / DevilHouse Press
" Excellent writing is excellent writing...In these tight, sexy fictions that make up One Dead Tree, David Menear’s stories and characters uncover hitherto unexplored aspects of the Canadian urban experience. Kudos to Amanda Earl for bringing these transgressive stories to print under the DevilHouse imprint." - Urban Graffiti-Mark McCawley
Publishing History
'This Will Only Take a Minute'
(flash fiction)
Guernica Editions
Toronto 2022
'Swallows Playing Chicken'
(short story collection)
Mansfield Press
Toronto 2019
'Molten Bone'
Flash Fiction Anthology
This Will Only Take a Minute
Guernica Editions 2023
2019 & 2020 ReLit Awards finalist - Shortlisted in the short fiction category
'Tentative Brushstrokes'
(short story fiction)
Things That Matter Anthology
Toronto September 2018
'Ragged White Ice'
(short story fiction)
Danforth Review
Toronto September 2017
'Some Devils Dirty Laundry'
(short story fiction)
CommuterLit
Toronto May 2016
'Painted Turtle'
(short story/novel excerpt)
CommuterLit - Toronto April 2016
'Happy Trails'
(Flash)
One Thing
Amanda Earl Blog-Ottawa September 2015
'Some Devils Dirty Laundry'
(short story fiction)
Hood
Lynn Crosbie's Blog-Toronto May 2015
'Fern Leaves Unfurling In the Dark-Green Shade'
(short story anthology)
The Exile Book of New Canadian Noir
Exile Editions -Toronto March 2015
'River Water'
(literary short story fiction)
FreeFall Magazine – Calgary Fall 2014
'One Dead Tree'
(short story collection)
DevilHouse/AngelHouse Press – Ottawa June 2014
'Best of 2014-Sensitive Skin Magazine
'Flatline'
(literary short story fiction)
Urban Graffiti Magazine – Calgary
May 2014
'Picasso's In Prison'
(literary short story fiction)
The Danforth Review – Toronto December 2013
'Blood Runs Deep'
(literary short story fiction)
CBC Canada Writes-Toronto November 2013
'Some Devils Dirty Laundry'
(literary short story fiction)
QWF/Carte Blanche – Montreal September 2013
Poetry published in
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 13, 2015
They were good if a little crass. How you came up with the topics I have no idea.
April 1, 2015
One Dead Tree
Short Story Chapbook, David Menear,
DevilHousePress, June 2014
Reviewed in Broken Pencil Magazine
(Scott Bryson)
devilhousepress.com, $15 (Sold Out)
The dead tree referenced by this collection’s
title sits directly in front of The
Crossroads bar in Montreal, and is an apt
signpost for its contents. As David
Menear describes it, the tree “looms there
like some dark omen of what lies within.”
Menear’s stories — some are new,
some are previously published — are split
between childhood reminiscences and
in-the-now character sketches, and it’s
the latter that entertain the most, in no
small part because they tend to head in
portentous and smutty directions. Adjectives
and metaphors are plentiful here, as
is the tendency to veer into abstract territory;
several of these fictions open with
paragraphs that are so obscure they make
little sense until the story’s conclusion.
It’s tough to decide whether that’s maddening
or charmingly enigmatic.
Understandable closure does always
come to these stories, though many lack
a discernible climax. Fortunately for
Menear, this is a rare case where the lack
of a distinctive peak doesn’t seem to hinder
enjoyment. In Menear’s bio, it mentions
that these stories are from his “first
year of writing,” and that reality does
emerge, as well the need for an editor.
Technique quibbles aside, these stories
hold up well for having been written by
an apparent novice. (Scott Bryson)
BROKEN PENCIL 66
January 14, 2018
"Excellent writing is excellent writing" Mark McCawley
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews