May 29th, 2009 / 10:55 pm
Excerpts

Sentence by Sentence & Story by Story: Brian Evenson’s ‘Fugue State’

fugueJust got a galley of Brian Evenson’s new collection ‘Fugue State,’ coming out in July from Coffee House Press. I haven’t felt this giddy about a book in a while. As with each Evenson title that comes out, I feel he reroutes not only the terrain of what is possible in fiction, but my own mind and method of writing: the power of new blood page by page.

In the spirit of this, and because I’m so excited about it I can’t help not, I’ll be exploring the book and reviewing it or commenting on it story by story, between longer posts on my own blog, and over here, at Giant, sharing my favorite sentence from each story, beginning now, with the first piece in the collection, ‘Younger,’ which kicked off the book in massive, terrored form, if in a more subtle and understated way than Evenson’s past might have predicted, maybe even more so, for it, terrifying.

In this way, we’ll lead up to the release of the book in July slowly and then continue with posts thereafter with the book in people’s hands.

Here’s the sentence:

They weren’t getting anywhere, which meant that she, the younger sister, wasn’t getting anywhere, was still wondering what, if anything, had happened, and what, if anything, she could do to free herself from it.

I love the repetition in the short segments here, the repeating and recursing tonalities, but also the mental loop of the logic therein, the sentence trying to figure what it is saying out while it is saying which as a pocket in the story, about being locked in a moment of a life, hit full on in its pacing, with the kind of abstract but right-there verbiage and at-your-throat but aimed away construction that seems so difficult to nail, and yet which Evenson is unarguably a master.

My full post on the story itself is now live here.

More info on ‘Fugue State’ here.

Preorder ‘Fugue State’ here.

More all in thereon to be continued…

Tags: , ,

12 Comments

  1. Red

      I read Evenson’s story “Alfon Kuylers” in the fall ’08 ed. of the Columbia Review. Great stuff. When I met him after he participated in a PEN panel on religion earlier this month, I mentioned how much I’d enjoyed it. He said it would be included in Fugue State. If his other stories are as good as “Kuylers” — and I think they will be — this collection will be amazing.

      Evenson’s a sleeper. Totally underrated. I hope he starts getting the praise that his writing deserves.

  2. Red

      I read Evenson’s story “Alfon Kuylers” in the fall ’08 ed. of the Columbia Review. Great stuff. When I met him after he participated in a PEN panel on religion earlier this month, I mentioned how much I’d enjoyed it. He said it would be included in Fugue State. If his other stories are as good as “Kuylers” — and I think they will be — this collection will be amazing.

      Evenson’s a sleeper. Totally underrated. I hope he starts getting the praise that his writing deserves.

  3. michael

      i seem to not comment on things that don’t touch extremes.

  4. michael

      i seem to not comment on things that don’t touch extremes.

  5. christopher higgs

      I’m really looking forward to this one. Especially interested to see the Zak Sally illustrations and how they work with the Evenson words.

  6. christopher higgs

      I’m really looking forward to this one. Especially interested to see the Zak Sally illustrations and how they work with the Evenson words.

  7. Mark Doten

      Scored Fugue State at BEA, and am really psyched. Evenson’s in my top four or five living writers. Just read “Younger” am a little frightened; if I have nightmares about horses and a man knocking and knocking on my door, I’ll know who to blame.

      “Younger” isn’t much like anything else he’s written (which isn’t a surprise). Shares some genetic material with DFW’s “The Depressed Person,” I think. Though of course it’s also very different and succeeds in a totally different way. But it did make me think again of the “cover song” post.

      http://htmlgiant.com/?p=8877

      I interviewed Evenson last year for Dennis Cooper’s site, and he talks about influence and how all that works, in particular the ways in which Bernhard’s novels have affected his own writing.

      http://denniscooper-theweaklings.blogspot.com/2008/03/no-more-teenagekicks-presents-brian.html

  8. Mark Doten

      Scored Fugue State at BEA, and am really psyched. Evenson’s in my top four or five living writers. Just read “Younger” am a little frightened; if I have nightmares about horses and a man knocking and knocking on my door, I’ll know who to blame.

      “Younger” isn’t much like anything else he’s written (which isn’t a surprise). Shares some genetic material with DFW’s “The Depressed Person,” I think. Though of course it’s also very different and succeeds in a totally different way. But it did make me think again of the “cover song” post.

      http://htmlgiant.com/?p=8877

      I interviewed Evenson last year for Dennis Cooper’s site, and he talks about influence and how all that works, in particular the ways in which Bernhard’s novels have affected his own writing.

      http://denniscooper-theweaklings.blogspot.com/2008/03/no-more-teenagekicks-presents-brian.html

  9. Caleb J Ross

      I have not been so excited for a book since…LAST DAYS by Evenson. And I haven’t been so jealous of a blog having an ARC printing of a books since, ever. I hate you HTML Giant. Keep news of your coveted goods to yourself.

  10. Caleb J Ross

      I have not been so excited for a book since…LAST DAYS by Evenson. And I haven’t been so jealous of a blog having an ARC printing of a books since, ever. I hate you HTML Giant. Keep news of your coveted goods to yourself.

  11. Red

      Thanks for linking to your interview, Mark. I really enjoyed it.

  12. Red

      Thanks for linking to your interview, Mark. I really enjoyed it.