An Interview with Brian Evenson

Bookslut has an interview with Brian Evenson up.

I knew Brian Evenson. I was in one of his English classes the year he lost his job at the Y. I got him to autograph a copy of Altmann's Tongue before he left. I was deeply saddened by that turn of events despite understanding what was going on.

Brian's work is hard to take. I haven't read his newer books, but Altmann's Tongue was definitely something that made you stop and think. It is a deeply violent book. At the time, American culture had turned violence into entertainment. That's not to say we don't still see violence that way, but post 9/11 there are some subtle differences. He was writing in a manner that made the reader look at violence and be appropriately shocked and sickened by it. The short "stories" in the collection were really only partially narrative - the incompleteness of the stories is what made you see the violent acts as just that - violence. They were disturbing and uncomfortable and in some ways brilliant. He certainly achieved his goal of making an audience uneasy about violence.

So, go check out the interview. Pick up one of his books. They're not for everyone, but if you consider yourself a little callous to violence, his work will remind you that it's not something to slough off. It will remind you of what it means to be mortal and human. And for that reason alone it has some merit.