“Brilliant...Evenson manages to capture madness with a masterful tone. The specific genius of Fugue State rests in subtlety, in Evenson’s ability to maintain suspense, dread and paranoia through utter linguistic control.”—Time Out New York
“19 satisfying and surreal stories...packed with subtly hilarious sentences.”—Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Brian Evenson is one of the treasures of American story writing, a true successor both to the generation of Coover, Barthelme, Hawkes and Co., but also to Edgar Allan Poe.”—Jonathan Lethem
"The stories in this collection will thrill, unsettle, and captivate. Like lanterns in dark rooms, paper boats carried down on subterranean waters, they lead the reader into mysterious and perilous territory. Read at your own risk."—Kelly Link
Illustrated by graphic novelist Zak Sally, Brian Evenson’s hallucinatory and darkly comic stories of paranoia, pursuit, sensory deprivation, amnesia, and retribution rattle the cages of the psyche and peer into the gaping moral chasm that opens when we become estranged from ourselves. From sadistic bosses with secret fears to a woman trapped in a mime’s imaginary box, and from a post-apocalyptic misidentified Messiah to unwitting portraitists of the dead, the mind-bending world of this modern-day Edgar Allan Poe exposes the horror contained within our daily lives.
Brian Evenson is the author of the Edgar and International Horror Guild award-nominated novel The Open Curtain. Visit his website at www.brianevenson.com.
Industry Reviews
"Brian Evenson is one of my favorite writers. The stories in this collection will thrill, unsettle, and captivate. Like lanterns in dark rooms, paper boats carried down on subterranean waters, they lead the reader into mysterious and perilous territory. Read at your own risk." --Kelly Link "Brian Evenson is the Donald Barthelme of psychological horror." --Los Angeles Times
"Evenson accesses dark, unusual facets of human frailty, powerlessness and fear. . . . This intense, nightmarish collection captures the fear of night terrors, when one wakes in the middle of the night, unable to move." --Publishers Weekly
"The specific genius of Fugue State rests in subtlety, in Evenson's ability to maintain suspense, dread and paranoia through utter linguistic control." --Time Out New York (five stars)
"[Fugue State] brings us into contact with thinking itself, with a sense of terror that seems to multiply plainly, and with the most difficult kinds of truth."--The Believer, "55: Brian Evenson"
"Laughter can be an effective tool of the horror writer, and Evenson is its finest practitioner." --Time Out Chicago
"These 19 satisfying and surreal stories plumb the psyches of murderers, paranoids, frightened children, bitter ex-husbands, religious zealots in post-apocalyptic worlds and people whose fleeting sanity will be gone by story's end. Evenson takes even his most fanciful characters seriously even as he partakes of gallows humor; this book is as packed with subtly hilarious sentences as haunting images." --The Cleveland Plain Dealer Brian Evenson is one of my favorite writers. The stories in this collection will thrill, unsettle, and captivate. Like lanterns in dark rooms, paper boats carried down on subterranean waters, they lead the reader into mysterious and perilous territory. Read at your own risk. " Kelly Link"
Brian Evenson is the Donald Barthelme of psychological horror. " Los Angeles Times"
Evenson accesses dark, unusual facets of human frailty, powerlessness and fear. . . . This intense, nightmarish collection captures the fear of night terrors, when one wakes in the middle of the night, unable to move. " Publishers Weekly"
The specific genius of Fugue State rests in subtlety, in Evenson s ability to maintain suspense, dread and paranoia through utter linguistic control. " Time Out New York (five stars)"
[Fugue State] brings us into contact with thinking itself, with a sense of terror that seems to multiply plainly, and with the most difficult kinds of truth. "The Believer, 5x5: Brian Evenson "
Laughter can be an effective tool of the horror writer, and Evenson is its finest practitioner. " Time Out Chicago"
These 19 satisfying and surreal stories plumb the psyches of murderers, paranoids, frightened children, bitter ex-husbands, religious zealots in post-apocalyptic worlds and people whose fleeting sanity will be gone by story s end. Evenson takes even his most fanciful characters seriously even as he partakes of gallows humor; this book is as packed with subtly hilarious sentences as haunting images. "The Cleveland Plain Dealer"" "Brian Evenson is the Donald Barthelme of psychological horror... he has birthed a distinctive, postmodern style for exploring his favorite macabre topics--amputation, post-apocalyptic landscapes, doppelgangers, 'creatures of darkness' and religious bloodshed. Yet the grimmest turns in Evenson's writing have always been connected to a singularly modern obsession with language."--"Los Angeles Times"
