The Din of Celestial Birds

by Brian Evenson

Though published second after Altmann's Tongue, The Din of Celestial Birds (1997) consists of the best of Evenson's early stories. They take place in a country (perhaps several countries) that seems at once everywhere and nowhere, haunted by birds, ghosts, poverty, abuse, tyranny, and the permeability of the line between the living and the dead. These stories offer a heady mix of absurdity and bleakness on the one hand and exuberant magic realism on the other. In one, a character imagines that a bird has been calling his name for six consecutive nights—and perhaps a bird actually has. A dead child is brought back to a stuttering and troubling life, while a dictator refuses to admit that he is dead even as he is being buried. A scientist works in isolation to try to cheat death. An ex-Nazi wanders in and out of the jungle, having become a different sort of nightmare. These stories offer the gestures and satisfactions that would come to define Evenson's later work, but also suggest other paths he might have taken and reveal how indebted his fiction is to writers such as Ben Okri, Gabriel García Márquez, Sony Labou Tansi, and writers of the Latin American Boom. And as Leslie Norris suggests, "They are written, too, in a faultlessly efficient prose, so we see these strange worlds in the clearest and coldest of lights."

This new edition adds eleven additional uncollected stories to the seventeen that made up the first edition, as well as insightful story notes by the author. An essential volume for any serious fans of Evenson's fiction.

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Fiction

265 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 1, 1997

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

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a cool book. I was unaware of Evenson’s early history with magic realism, and so I was quite surprised when I started reading and encountered a very different style from that found in his more recent work. Hence, it’s possible that this collection will disappoint some Evenson fans, but I think it offers a fascinating timeline of his development as a writer from a very early age.

The stories are all set in the same fictitious universe, either in the town of Labaise or within striking distance of it. Recurring characters also populate this place, sometimes prominently while other times merely garnering a passing mention. The style, at least in the earlier stories, is more formal than what it becomes later on. It’s like Evenson whittled away at his sentence construction over time—truncating and condensing—until he reached the masterful minimum needed to deliver his ideas. Theme-wise, as I read further into the book, it became clear that Evenson’s ongoing preoccupations were built into his stories from the start. His characters struggle with issues and situations tied to power dynamics, identity, existential despair, futility, and, of course, death and dying. So often, the people in his stories are confused, befuddled, and/or unsettled by what is happening to them. His stories are almost allegorical in how they reflect aspects of the common, everyday human condition but in an over-the-top absurd way. It’s like you’re reading and thinking, ‘this is a totally ridiculous situation’, but then when you consider the ontological underpinning, you realize it’s not unlike something that happened to you last week. In this way, Evenson’s fiction delivers a universal element found at the black heart of true horror: the fear and dread of the unknown—be it a who, what, why, or where.

The book concludes with an afterword written by Evenson’s early mentor Leslie Norris, as well as Evenson’s own explanation of the publishing history of the collection and his notes on individual stories. All in all, probably a collection best suited for diehard Evenson fans, and as previously noted, even some of those readers may not be all in on this early work, but I also suspect others will find it as compelling as I did, especially as a contextual key to his oeuvre.

Note: this new Weird House Press edition is a hardcover special edition, not a paperback as indicated in the GR record. It should probably have a separate record from the 1997 collection published by Wordcraft of Oregon, as it includes additional stories and Evenson’s notes. I could fix that, but I have better things to do than patching one of the myriad holes in this sinking ship of enshittified media...

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Early Evenson; you get a feeling for the writer to-be in these pieces, even in the un-even ones. There's still a lot to love here for BE fans - just not recommended as a first read if you are new to his work.

[Robbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Crazy that he was this good this early.

[G. Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a huge Evenson fan, and while this book is my least favorite of his collections that I've read thus far, I do recommend it to any others who are already acquainted with Evenson's broader catalog. This collection is different from his others in that the stories are tied together by locale and other small threads. The protagonist of one story may be the neighbor, relative, or victim of the protagonist of the previous story.

While this collection is mostly dark fiction chronicling the troubled lives of various people in and around the city of Labaise on an unnamed island in the Caribbean or off the coast of South America, it also incorporates some supernatural elements, especially in the title work, which I originally read in the Lovecraft Unbound anthology (though it is really far more like Poe than Lovecraft).

The writing is not as crystalized as in his later work, and the stories are not as witty and experimental as in Altmann's Tongue. Still, they are definitely worth the read for his fans. But this is not a starting point for the uninitiated.

[Cory Brock · Rating 2 out of 5]

Let me start off by saying Brian Evenson is a good author. I've read other shorts by him, and have genuinely enjoyed his work. Din of the Celestial Birds is one of his earliest collections, and while it was interesting to see where he was as a writer in the early ‘90s I can't say this collection worked that well for me. A lot of the stories here are loosely tied together; typically centered around the fictional town of Labaise. I like a good through-line in fiction collections, but, I don't know, the stories never felt as though they had a great payoff. Perhaps through a more literary lens these are impressive, but I'm learning that I prefer genre work over intentionally literary work more often than not.

[Viktor Takac · Rating 4 out of 5]

An early collection of short stories from Brian Evenson. As always, weird, filled with literary and historical references and an almost nihilistic sense of surrealness. It's hard to categorise this book but magical realism probably comes the closest. Each story revolves around an imaginary country called Labaise. Heavily influenced by Southern and Central American history/culture, it feels at once like a real place and a place that could be.


Each story has Evensons uniquely bizzare creativity, and you can really tell he was just starting to get interested in HP Lovecraft at this point. 


The stories start off seemingly unrelated but as each one goes on, you begin to notice an overarching narrative thread with connections and characters constantly reappearing. It doesn't necessarily give a concise story, but as a whole they collection acts almost like a guide book of the weird and wonderful Labaise.


There are ghost stories, stories that deal with death and grief, some hints of cosmic horror, and plenty of bleak social commentary. 


The only reason I'm not giving this 5 stars is because it was quite different to any Evenson book I've read before and the subject matter wasn't particularly interesting to me.

[Mary Giblin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, Brian. Your books scare the sh*t out of me.

[Seth Augenstein · Rating 5 out of 5]

His fifth-best collection… but still excellent

[Lotey · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 ⭐

Я буду грішити на якість аудіокнижки, а не на першоджерело, don`t get me wrong. Щось в мене вилетіло з голови, що це мала би бути збірка коротких робіт. І, чесно сказати, жодна з них не затрималась зі мною так, як я цього б хотіла. Так, моментами було моторошно, цікаво, сумно, але загальна картина така, що вони всі об’єдналися до купи ближче до фіналу в незрозуміле непойми-шо месиво 😒

[Alex Budris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Things get weird before the apocalypse. An inscrutable government subjects its citizens - living, dead, or otherwise - to senseless imprisonments and other bizarre torments. Dictators and other evil men flourish, unchecked. Reality, itself, is not quite stable. Prescient nightmares, disfigured by the logic of dream, these are small, emotionally relevant fairy tales, chillingly apt in these final days.

[Luke Dylan Ramsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

A different Evenson than I am used to, but still a quality Evenson. This one is more magical realism than his later stuff. Loved it.

[Simon · Rating 1 out of 5]

Another one of my wife's brother's book. Again, I do not feel like I can judge his work. I did not like the stories though.