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Reports
Brian Evenson’s Reports is an interrogation. Relationships real and imagined—with bygone chairs, vanished kitchen implements, friends of yore—and the linguistic positioning that defines such interactions are subject to particular scrutiny. In turns intimate and speculative, paranoid and expository, disparate and amalgamated, Evenson’s observations and inquiries into the nature of connection, description, and signification will permit you, too, to question the meanings that make your life.
- GenresShort Stories
54 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2018
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About the author
Brian Evenson
266 books1,528 followersBrian Evenson is an American academic and writer of both literary fiction and popular fiction, some of the latter being published under B. K. Evenson.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
September 28, 2019
'I know that the borrowed money and the books are neither ghosts nor corpses... and that neither cares if they are with my dead friends or me. I am the only one who assigns any significance to them. Eventually I too will be dead, and they will once again be things plain and simple, with no clear history, making their muddled way through an indifferent world.'
'My great memory for numbers is no longer an asset. It is a skill like chipping a wheel out of stone, useful only as a novelty, and since I no longer use it, it has begun to atrophy. Or maybe it's simply that im getting older. I would like to know if my losing my ability to remember numbers can be blamed on cell phones or old age. Is there anyone who can tell me that?'
'There is one terrible thing about writing: the way it leaks out into life, whether you want it to or not.'
Fucking hell, Evenson.
You slay me with your writing.
Every.
Fucking.
Time.
'My great memory for numbers is no longer an asset. It is a skill like chipping a wheel out of stone, useful only as a novelty, and since I no longer use it, it has begun to atrophy. Or maybe it's simply that im getting older. I would like to know if my losing my ability to remember numbers can be blamed on cell phones or old age. Is there anyone who can tell me that?'
'There is one terrible thing about writing: the way it leaks out into life, whether you want it to or not.'
Fucking hell, Evenson.
You slay me with your writing.
Every.
Fucking.
Time.
February 15, 2019
https://rogueliterarysociety.com/f/re...
...Writing these reports, too, is part of that. One day I wasn’t writing them and then, suddenly, circumstances in my life changed dramatically, I became someone else, and began writing them, perhaps as a way of pretending to speak to the person I had been and no longer was…
It matters not at all to me if Evenson’s “reports” deal with the “real” or “imagined” nor if the “reporter” himself is psychotic, paranoid, or obsessed. Not sure what the Pamphlet series is about, but Evenson on every page conjures the spirit of Thomas Bernhard for me in this short and masterly work. All throughout the reading of this little pamphlet a smile came to my face. It “felt” good to be subjected to this charming and engaging version of Evenson.
...When my ex-girlfriend J. moved out of the house, she took all three of our three lemon reamers…
The absurdity of Evenson the Reporter and his interrogative, especially scrutinized argument regarding lemon reamers, or lemon zesters, or the kitchen utensil his ex-girlfriend would call that thing for the lemons, was a delight to read. Especially the aggrieved ex-boyfriend stubbornly resorting to creatively using instead the bulbous end of a wooden spoon rather than going through, on principle, with the purchase of a new lemon gadget at the local kitchen store. Further offerings of this style of writing forthcoming from the widely-gifted Evenson would certainly be eagerly anticipated and received by those of us always wanting more and more of every good thing.
...Writing these reports, too, is part of that. One day I wasn’t writing them and then, suddenly, circumstances in my life changed dramatically, I became someone else, and began writing them, perhaps as a way of pretending to speak to the person I had been and no longer was…
It matters not at all to me if Evenson’s “reports” deal with the “real” or “imagined” nor if the “reporter” himself is psychotic, paranoid, or obsessed. Not sure what the Pamphlet series is about, but Evenson on every page conjures the spirit of Thomas Bernhard for me in this short and masterly work. All throughout the reading of this little pamphlet a smile came to my face. It “felt” good to be subjected to this charming and engaging version of Evenson.
...When my ex-girlfriend J. moved out of the house, she took all three of our three lemon reamers…
The absurdity of Evenson the Reporter and his interrogative, especially scrutinized argument regarding lemon reamers, or lemon zesters, or the kitchen utensil his ex-girlfriend would call that thing for the lemons, was a delight to read. Especially the aggrieved ex-boyfriend stubbornly resorting to creatively using instead the bulbous end of a wooden spoon rather than going through, on principle, with the purchase of a new lemon gadget at the local kitchen store. Further offerings of this style of writing forthcoming from the widely-gifted Evenson would certainly be eagerly anticipated and received by those of us always wanting more and more of every good thing.
February 2, 2019
So much fun.
July 30, 2018
This is another delightful release from The Cupboard. A worthy addition to your flash fiction collection.
March 21, 2020
4.5 stars--reminiscent of Robert Walser's _Microscripts_ and Thomas Bernhard's _The Voice Imitator_, but more overtly humorous. This is maybe a silly thing, but I also appreciate the fact that it comes "perfect-bound"--not always the case for these types of small press publications. The press itself has come a long way from Jesse Ball's _Parables & Lies_ and Joshua Cohen's _Bridge & Tunnel_, which I bought way back when... Anyway, a wonderful addition to Evenson's oeuvre; I'll never look at lemon reamers in quite the same way.
March 9, 2021
Evenson presents readers with a quirky collection of short philosophical meditations that take the guise of brief reports. The stories are not necessarily memorable as flash fiction on their own, yet they make for delightful reading.
April 21, 2018
Evenson's style melds masterfully into the unreliable report writer, whatever psychotic problem the report taker might be suffering from.
September 24, 2019
Good, but maybe too slight.
April 10, 2022
"Or perhaps he is still alive because he, too, is an agent, but whether for a foreign power or for the CIA I would not venture, in this report, to speculate."
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews