Literary Birthday – 12 August – Brian Evenson

Happy Birthday, Brian Evenson, born on 12 August 1966.

Brian Evenson Quotes

1. Fiction is exceptionally good at providing models for consciousness, and at putting readers in a position to take upon themselves the structure of another consciousness for a short while.
2. At times, I become confused about the order in which things should be told. Parts of me know things that other parts do not, and sometimes I both know a thing and do not know it, or part of me knows something is true and another part knows it is not true, and there is nothing to allow me to negotiate between the two. (The Warren)
3. Talking about one’s stories is a little too much like nailing a dog to the floor—you can get it to stay put that way but it doesn’t do much for the dog. (Altmann’s Tongue: Stories and a Novella)
4. What makes books quintessentially what they are is the promise that hides in their pages. The sense that we can metaphorically — or even, with holy books, for ‘real’ — escape death through them, as authors and as readers. Even if they don’t believe that books will really save them from death, writers still hold tight to the belief of living on after our deaths if their books are still read. What we want ultimately as humans is not to be forgotten.
5. Anything can happen: anything. Or nothing. Who can say? The world, monstrous, is made that way, and in the end consumes us all. Who am I, administrated or no, to have the audacity to survive it? (Fugue State)
6. I don’t always know what’s going to go on in terms of the mood of the story. Sometimes I start with the mood, but sometimes I just try to work toward discovering it. But I do think often there’s a mood or unsettling quality, in which the reality of the world seems to be taken away, that I really love, and it’s something that I almost always unconsciously move toward.
7. I’m pretty instinctual when I write, and I really like to get to a point where I’m writing where I don’t know what’s going to happen next. Usually when I get to that point, something will happen that I find intriguing or interesting, or that will push the fiction in a way that I really like.

Source for quotes 1-4: Goodreads and quotes 5-7: A-Z Quotes

Brian Evenson is an American academic and writer of both literary and popular fiction. His work often combines literary minimalism with elements of horror, weird fiction, detective fiction, science fiction, and continental philosophy. Evenson has received three O. Henry Prizes and an NEA fellowship. His novel Last Days won the American Library Association’s Best Horror Novel award in 2009. In 2020, he received the World Fantasy Award for his short story collection Song for the Unraveling of the World. Evenson has cited horror novelist Peter Straub as an influence. He also admires hardboiled crime writers such as Dashiell Hammett and Jim Thompson, as well as contemporary crime writer Andrew Vachss. Since 2016, Evenson has taught at the California Institute of the Arts. He teaches in both the Creative Writing MFA programme and the Aesthetics and Politics MA programme.

Source for photograph: Author’s Website

by Amanda Patterson
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