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Postludes
A, as in almanac for the dead but still dreaming. B, as in bestiary for the broken and the brave. C, as in crisis, catharsis, or the cosmological fate of us all and how we choose to end things. Offering up an eclectic landscape of language experiments, patches of surrealism, and more traditional tales, POSTLUDES spans the style spectrum from A-Z, analog to digital, and heartbreak to hope in its earnest and empathetic variations on the theme of finality and The End.
“ The ability to work this rule-bound stuff called language into a medium of pathos and humor and vivid imagination is a treasure few possess. It takes work. Burnside's prose is imbued with sensations of exquisite, haunting beauty, memories from childhood, enchantments gathered from backyard adventures in which innocence falls prey to the dark tonics of adulthood and whose strange perversities and imperious, murderous intents must be defeated by making it into a game. ‘As long as you make it up while you go,’ says Burnside, ‘they can’t touch you.’ ”
-John Olson, author of Larynx Galaxy
" Postludes is a masterful collection of weaving stories, aphorisms, riffs, heartbeats, that ‘wear their theft-of-night like tourniquets’, ‘redeeming the irredeemable’ through Burnside’s humorous insight of what makes us human. He explores with mesmerizing language, ‘until no room of you is spared and a heart hangs impaled upon the moon.’ Unforgettable and inimitable."
–Meg Tuite, author of Bound By Blue
" If the postlude concludes a religious service, then Burnside’s Postludes collects the lullabies of those who have wandered away from their own funeral. The predominant vision of his logic remains skeptical to the laws of physics and fiction; both, the writer knows, can be devised on the fly. As Burnside’s characters find themselves in various stages of journey toward radiant transformation, they manage to plant one foot in two, multiple, infinite worlds, yet belong to none. Postludes reminds the reader that it is the under-oiled technologies of the human heart that construct our liberation, then offers us a much needed tune-up. "
–Nathan Blake, author of Going Home Nowhere and Fast
" Apocalyptic, disturbing, folkloric, and erotic—and yet still, at times, deeply funny—Matthew Burnside’s Postludes is a sprawling, gorgeous epic through which to wander, wide-eyed, as if through a lucid dream, and watch as “Black Rainbows grew and twisted out of the walls like razorblade roses” and “hungry ghosts [shoot] tendrils from the mouth.” From the monomythic “Rules to Win the Game,” which arrives as some hybrid admixture of Monster Squad, The Legend of Zelda, and Saw, to the lodestone “Passengers,” in which we learn that “location is an illusion” because “everything is made of blinks”—including a book—Burnside is a masterful conductor of language in all senses of the the magician; the symphonist; the vessel that harnesses electricity, and delivers it to us ."
-Sara Eliza Johnson, author of Bone Map
" A polyphony of ringing, full-throated prose, Postludes will leave you disturbed, enchanted, and thoroughly dazzled. Matthew Burnside is a dark wizard capable of summoning the most astounding of magics ."
-Rachel Yoder, author of Infinite Things All At Once
Matthew Burnside’s work has appeared in Best American Experimental Writing, DIAGRAM, Ninth Letter, Kill Author, PANK, and Pear Noir! among others. He is the author of several chapbooks and numerous digital works. He currently teaches at Wesleyan University and is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
“ The ability to work this rule-bound stuff called language into a medium of pathos and humor and vivid imagination is a treasure few possess. It takes work. Burnside's prose is imbued with sensations of exquisite, haunting beauty, memories from childhood, enchantments gathered from backyard adventures in which innocence falls prey to the dark tonics of adulthood and whose strange perversities and imperious, murderous intents must be defeated by making it into a game. ‘As long as you make it up while you go,’ says Burnside, ‘they can’t touch you.’ ”
-John Olson, author of Larynx Galaxy
" Postludes is a masterful collection of weaving stories, aphorisms, riffs, heartbeats, that ‘wear their theft-of-night like tourniquets’, ‘redeeming the irredeemable’ through Burnside’s humorous insight of what makes us human. He explores with mesmerizing language, ‘until no room of you is spared and a heart hangs impaled upon the moon.’ Unforgettable and inimitable."
–Meg Tuite, author of Bound By Blue
" If the postlude concludes a religious service, then Burnside’s Postludes collects the lullabies of those who have wandered away from their own funeral. The predominant vision of his logic remains skeptical to the laws of physics and fiction; both, the writer knows, can be devised on the fly. As Burnside’s characters find themselves in various stages of journey toward radiant transformation, they manage to plant one foot in two, multiple, infinite worlds, yet belong to none. Postludes reminds the reader that it is the under-oiled technologies of the human heart that construct our liberation, then offers us a much needed tune-up. "
–Nathan Blake, author of Going Home Nowhere and Fast
" Apocalyptic, disturbing, folkloric, and erotic—and yet still, at times, deeply funny—Matthew Burnside’s Postludes is a sprawling, gorgeous epic through which to wander, wide-eyed, as if through a lucid dream, and watch as “Black Rainbows grew and twisted out of the walls like razorblade roses” and “hungry ghosts [shoot] tendrils from the mouth.” From the monomythic “Rules to Win the Game,” which arrives as some hybrid admixture of Monster Squad, The Legend of Zelda, and Saw, to the lodestone “Passengers,” in which we learn that “location is an illusion” because “everything is made of blinks”—including a book—Burnside is a masterful conductor of language in all senses of the the magician; the symphonist; the vessel that harnesses electricity, and delivers it to us ."
-Sara Eliza Johnson, author of Bone Map
" A polyphony of ringing, full-throated prose, Postludes will leave you disturbed, enchanted, and thoroughly dazzled. Matthew Burnside is a dark wizard capable of summoning the most astounding of magics ."
-Rachel Yoder, author of Infinite Things All At Once
Matthew Burnside’s work has appeared in Best American Experimental Writing, DIAGRAM, Ninth Letter, Kill Author, PANK, and Pear Noir! among others. He is the author of several chapbooks and numerous digital works. He currently teaches at Wesleyan University and is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
142 pages, Paperback
Published August 8, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
May 29, 2017
If you enjoy short story collections of magical realism and just weird fiction, this is the perfect book for you. The length is perfect, ensuring these wonderful stories don't overstay their welcome.
June 3, 2018
This book is often strange and unsettling, but it’s got a lot of heart underneath the weirdness. I know Matthew, at least through the Internet, and I’m so grateful for that heart.
January 18, 2022
No one writes about the unbearable, the unspeakable, the unthinkable, quite like Matthew Burnside. The stories in his 2017 collection Postludes - at least a few of which seem to connect loosely to his more recent Wiki of Infinite Sorrows - both for KERNPUNKT Press - effect a kind of sustained atmosphere of being punched in the gut - a slow, hand-over-hand elongation of the intestinal tract that, every few pages, quietly adds another loop or hitch or twist, such that by the end you're so tangled up with emotion that you can barely decide what to cry about (though you definitely will cry at some point). But rest assured, it's not all doom and gloom. That's only half the equation (ok, maybe more like 3/4 of the equation). For where Burnside's work really shines is in the final turn - that moment where he snaps his fingers like some mournful, wandering magician, and all at once the knots untie themselves, and allow you to once again draw grateful breath through a hopeful heart.
So, if all that didn't make it clear, this deceptively slim volume can make for some very tough sledding. "Rules to Win the Game" operates through the warping-in-real-time minds of a family of abused children - their fears, their fantasies, their half-remembered and half-understood traumas - exploring their fight for survival through the first, formative stages of what will surely grow into lifelong coping mechanisms. "Cosmonauts/Nots/Knots" revolves around grieving parents, adrift in a dark and boundless universe of sorrow, flailing for a spaceport of call at a time when even the assurances of light and gravity have seemingly abandoned them. "Bestiary" is set in a ward for mentally unstable sex offenders, tracing their daily routines behind institutional walls where no matter how rehabilitated they might come to feel in the eyes of their caretakers, their remains a pervasive certainty that the outside world will never see them that way. No one story in this book takes more than a few minutes to read, but each bears the agonizing weight of hours, and the promise of tragedy that unfurls itself across a lifetime.
Stitched together via brutalist Lego architecture, revisionist fairytale iconography, and a devastatingly economical command of poetic language, Burnside has crafted one of the most harrowing collections of short fiction in recent memory. The threat of stolen innocence; the possibility of lives destroyed in an eyeblink; the very real consideration of suicide; these things lurk around every corner in Postludes' compact little tales - each one a grimly imagistic postcard from the edge. But at the end of every black rainbow, there is a glimmer of something golden - a lucky penny to hold onto - a tiny key to a kinder world. Matthew Burnside isn't here just to bring us down - in 2022 we, as a species, have no trouble doing that for ourselves, thank you very much. Instead, what he offers is a kind of respite; a kind of grace. A reminder that no matter how hard things get, they can always get harder, and that even when they're at their hardest, there is always a way through; a reminder to keep our eyes and ears and hearts open; a reminder to keep breathing.
So, if all that didn't make it clear, this deceptively slim volume can make for some very tough sledding. "Rules to Win the Game" operates through the warping-in-real-time minds of a family of abused children - their fears, their fantasies, their half-remembered and half-understood traumas - exploring their fight for survival through the first, formative stages of what will surely grow into lifelong coping mechanisms. "Cosmonauts/Nots/Knots" revolves around grieving parents, adrift in a dark and boundless universe of sorrow, flailing for a spaceport of call at a time when even the assurances of light and gravity have seemingly abandoned them. "Bestiary" is set in a ward for mentally unstable sex offenders, tracing their daily routines behind institutional walls where no matter how rehabilitated they might come to feel in the eyes of their caretakers, their remains a pervasive certainty that the outside world will never see them that way. No one story in this book takes more than a few minutes to read, but each bears the agonizing weight of hours, and the promise of tragedy that unfurls itself across a lifetime.
Stitched together via brutalist Lego architecture, revisionist fairytale iconography, and a devastatingly economical command of poetic language, Burnside has crafted one of the most harrowing collections of short fiction in recent memory. The threat of stolen innocence; the possibility of lives destroyed in an eyeblink; the very real consideration of suicide; these things lurk around every corner in Postludes' compact little tales - each one a grimly imagistic postcard from the edge. But at the end of every black rainbow, there is a glimmer of something golden - a lucky penny to hold onto - a tiny key to a kinder world. Matthew Burnside isn't here just to bring us down - in 2022 we, as a species, have no trouble doing that for ourselves, thank you very much. Instead, what he offers is a kind of respite; a kind of grace. A reminder that no matter how hard things get, they can always get harder, and that even when they're at their hardest, there is always a way through; a reminder to keep our eyes and ears and hearts open; a reminder to keep breathing.
October 25, 2017
This is a great collection of short fiction, with a great sense of humour and of humanity. The stories range from the rather experimental to much more conventional, but each is engaging and occasionally quite heart-warming, with comic touches that verge on the darker side of things. Longer pieces, such as Rules to Win the Game, and the closer Bestiary, are well contructed short stories, with the latter peppered with odd references, comments, and quotes as its unconventional structure jumps back and forth. I found this last piece in particular to be very strong, and its structure of being told in very short sections made it a genuine page turner, in a very real sense. Altogether, a series of very strong, funny, engaging stories, from a writer with a genuine sense of poetic language.
February 19, 2017
Imagine a world of tattered dolls, drunken villains, toddlers who are also superheroes, sparking galaxies, life-or-death games, and masturbating poets ripped apart and then pasted back together in a cacophonous collage of tragedy and beauty, delights and horrors, and you might get somewhere close to imagining this book. A polyphony of ringing, full-throated prose, Postludes will leave you disturbed, enchanted, and thoroughly dazzled. Matthew Burnside is a dark wizard capable of summoning the most astounding of magics.
March 28, 2018
Matthew Burnside's Postludes is clever in the best sense of the word, shrewdly observant and often surprising. I found myself going back to re-read a story or a sentence to enjoy it all over again. The whole book is wonderful, but I was especially drawn to the fractured realities that make up the section entitled "Bestiary." This is a book to keep close at hand and revisited often.
March 29, 2021
A book full of heartachingly beautiful words.
May 11, 2022
Immediately the title grabbed me-- we're familiar with preludes and interludes from theater and music, but what is a postlude? And why are the postludes inbetween stories? What do they come after? What do they extend or conclude?
The postludes were my favorite part of this nonlinear narrative as they seem like sketches for stories to be later fleshed out: "There is the story of the staircase found under the baby's tongue. The story of the tiny people who opt instead for the elevator in his left eardrum." They are passages, escapes, labyrinths.
The postludes were my favorite part of this nonlinear narrative as they seem like sketches for stories to be later fleshed out: "There is the story of the staircase found under the baby's tongue. The story of the tiny people who opt instead for the elevator in his left eardrum." They are passages, escapes, labyrinths.
November 27, 2016
Beautiful and heartbreaking!
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews