Brian Evenson and the Basics of Violence
Literary horror from an excommunicated perspective.
When I first learned about Brian Evenson, I was told two things that turned out to be true. One was that he was the kind of horror writer my restless and elitist horror tastes had been looking for (the recommendation wasnāt put to me in those words, but at least I know myself), and the other was that Evensonās early fiction had gone some way towards a mutually agreed upon excommunication from the Mormon Church. In this case the Mormon Church was represented by Brigham Young University, where Evenson was teaching at the time. His first collection of stories, from 1994, Altmannās Tongue, contains in its 2002 reprint an afterword by Evenson describing how this specific book led to the excommunication. It also details his philosophy of writing, his disenchantment with Mormonism (which preceded objections to his fiction), and much else, though Evenson does pull up short, cautioning āTalking about oneās stories is a little too much like nailing a dog to the floorāyou can get him to stay put that way but it doesnāt do much for the dog.ā
This is a fittingly grim analogy, because in Evensonās fiction, cruelty and violence come at the reader relentlessly. Evenson won the O. Henry Award for his story āTwo Brothers,ā which is about a vaguely evangelical family (the specific denomination is never clarified) made up of a father, a mother, and two young boys. At the very beginning, the father, Daddy Norton, takes a bad fall and breaks his leg. Refusing professional medical help on the grounds of religious belief, not only does the serious and painful injury become infected and slowly begin to drain the man of life, but the boys, Theron and Aurel, decide, in the ignorance of their youth, to take out the frustrations of their brief lives both on their father and mother. This includes removing their fatherās eyes:
[Aurel] opened his eyes to see Theron leaning over Daddy Norton, holding the remains of the manās eyelids closed with his fingertips, though when he released them they crept up to reveal the empty sockets. Theron twisted the manās neck and rolled the head, directing the face toward the floor. He wiped the knife on Daddy Nortonās shirt. Putting the knife into Daddy Nortonās hand, he stood back. The fingers straightened and the knife slipped out. He folded the fingers around the haft, watched them straighten again.
About violence in his own writing, Evenson writes that he wants to depict it āin a way that allowed readers, if they were willing to keep their eyes open, to perceive [it] not as symbolic, not as meaningful, but as a basic and irrecoverable act ā¦ as insignificant in that it doesnāt signify anything ā¦ as neutral and blank and indifferent.ā This accurate self-reflection was, apparently, a major source of the conflict between Evenson and BYU. That BYUās attitude towards Evensonās artistic freedom in the 1990s would so closely reflect a growing censorious attitude in the country as a whole in the 2020s might be regarded as, I donāt know, ironic by some. Similarly ironic is the fact that āTwo Brothersā added a bit of heat to Evensonās growing reputation, which was being stoked by literary intellectuals who also happened to be genre hounds, like Michael Dirda, Jonathan Lethem, and Samuel R. Delany. Who knows what its fate would be, if first published today? Not an O. Henry Award, I donāt think.
If all of this makes Evensonās fiction sound like an exhausting, depressing slog, allow me to disabuse you of that notion. Apart from the stories so far described being gripping and fascinatingly unsettling in their own right, Evenson shows throughout his work that he has many arrows in his creative quiver. For example, in the first collection of Evensonās stories I read, The Wavering Knife, you can find a rather gentle, bloodless (in the literal, visceral sense) satire called āPromisekeepers,ā which is about whom youād imagine itās about. Also in The Wavering Knife (a really excellent book to start with, as it displays a nice variety of what you can expect from his stories) is one of his best works, āThe Intricacies of Post-Shooting Etiquette.ā Itās the story of Kohke, a man who, at the very beginning of the story, shoots his lover Bein in the back of the head while the latter is eating breakfast. Weāre told that Kohke had his reasons for doing this, but at the moment the trigger is pulled he canāt quite bring them to mind. In any case, Bein doesnāt die, and in a panic Kohke hides his gun in a pitcher of orange juice and calls for medical help. Bein is now paralyzed from the neck down and blind. Even though the police find the gun quickly, at the hospital Bein absolves his lover of all blame, and Kohke is a free man. The question now is, by what other means can Kohke end their relationship? Initially, he refuses to accept Bein back into their home, but then decides this is suspicious, and soon the two are living together again. Kohke, however, feels strange about rolling Beinās wheelchair over the spot where heād been shot, so he rents the apartment downstairs, which has the exact same floorplan as their home, and so shouldnāt confuse Kohkeās blind lover. And yet:
āThis is my bed?ā Bein asked. āIt doesnāt feel like my bed.ā
āNothing feels the same after youāve been shot, Bein.ā
āHow would you know?ā
āThatās just what they say.ā This has been my way of trying to convince you that thereās a great deal of humor threaded throughout Evensonās bleak and violent world, but I wonāt blame you if you donāt see it, or it doesnāt land for you. Itās not the kind of humor that takes the sting out of everything in the story that surrounds it.
Evenson also writes novels. In fact heās about as prolific in those as he is in story collections. In order to earn a buck or two, heās written novels set in the Dead Space and Alien universes under the name B.K. Evenson, and even co-wrote the novelization of Lords of Salem with Rob Zombie (I would love to know if Evenson gets any creative satisfaction out of this kind of work; not that it matters one way or the other, but Iām curious). But Iāve only read three of his personal novels: The Open Curtain, which deals with a murder spree conducted by a descendant of Brigham Young (Iām sure BYU loves that one); Father of Lies, which is about a provost from a Mormon-esque religion who has a long history of molesting children from his congregation (Iām sure BYU, etc.); and Last Days, a novel that mixes hardboiled crime with cult horror. Itās very Cronenbergian, that last one, as the members of the cult in question raise their status in the church by removing parts of their bodies. Itās the first Evenson book I ever bought, though I didnāt read it for years because I thought the cover was appallingly cheap-looking (this has since been fixedāthe Coffee House Press reprint really did Evenson a solid on that one). Having since read it, I can say itās one of the best things Evenson has written, and one of my favorite horror novels.
Last Days is a complex thriller, filled with scenes such as Kline, the protagonist, being chased by a man who is missing fingers, thereby exposing him immediately as a cult member, and an enclosed, quietly apocalyptic ending, one that will affect everyone in the story, but no one outside of itānot you or me, for example. Near the end, after a burst of violence from Kline, he confronts Frank, a cult member of great status. After Kline describes what has just happened, Evenson writes:
āJesus Christ,ā said Frank. āTalk about an avenging angel. And now youāve decided to turn yourself in?ā
āThatās right,ā said Kline.
āWhy?ā
āSo I can be human again.ā
āBuddy,ā said Frank. āLook at yourself. Youāre covered head to toe in blood. Youāre never going to be human again.ā This seems like a rather good statement on the matter of violence, should one wish to be a bit more plain-spoken on the subject.
I donāt know how Evenson feels about being lassoed into the horror corral, given that the description of his autodidactic literary education in the afterword to Altmannās Tongue shows no leaning in that direction (as a student and young teacher, he read a lot of dark literature, but not a lot of Stephen King, if you get my drift), but he doesnāt seem to object particularly. Heās won several awards from various horror fiction societies (science-fiction societies too, as thereās a long strain of horror/SF hybrid stories in his bibliography, especially recently) and he hasnāt angrily turned any of them down. Perhaps heās happy enough being that rare thing, a writer embraced by both the genre and literary communities. I wouldnāt claim him to be a household name among horror fans, but horror fans who know what the good stuff is know Brian Evenson. And if those folks are too wrapped up in one kind of fiction, perhaps theyāll notice that Evenson has written non-fiction studies of the minimalist writer Raymond Carver, and the modernist Robert Coover, and theyāll become curious who those writers are, and theyāll take a leap. Stranger things have happened.
