Brian Evenson's Last Days Review and Updates
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REVIEW:
Brian Evenson’s Last Days
Underland Press
The first part of this book is a novella called The Brotherhood of Mutilation, which was originally released as a limited run chapbook on Earthling Publications. I remember Brian telling me about that particular project several years back. It was funny because at the time I was working on a short story about a man who was waking up with parts of his body missing and I thought I should probably dump my project because Brian’s would most likely be more interesting and find a publisher before mine; I’d end up looking like I was mimicking him. I was right about one of these things, Brian Evenson’s story was much more impressive than mine. I bought a copy of the signed chapbook when it came out and ripped through it in one sitting. Last Days is an interesting take on the traditional noir. Instead of a sexy sleuth, we’re presented with a character that is painted so completely flat that he comes across as sexless – his only biological imperative is to survive. When I say he is sexless, I don’t mean that Evenson writes him without of gendered actions. I might argue, that he is a very masculine character. I normally don’t attribute opening doors with a severed head to be a particularly feminine action; however, this claim might just illustrate how fixed I am in my reinforcement of gendered norms. (Is opening doors with a severed head a gender norm?)
Sometimes it’s difficult for me to read the detective genre because the flatness of the characters doesn’t come across as an intentional device but as a byproduct of poor writing. Evenson, much like Laird Hunt and Stanisław Lem, creates flat characters and dialog that don’t come across as lazy writing, but as precise machines that satisfy their duties with charm and class. Kline, the anti-hero former detective in Last Days, keeps the reader engaged. His actions are pure and his intentions are quite clear. The reader never worries about that pesky, “Is this a likeable character” question, because in all honesty it just doesn’t matter. Kline is gritty and does what he has to do to get from point A to point B; because he’s such a straightforward character we are inclined to follow him anywhere, which is good because the entire story is filtered through is interaction with the world around him.
When I was at the University of Denver, I taught a course about violence in literature. We often discussed how authors used violence and we discussed whether their use of violence was justifiable. In Evenson’s works the ends always seem to justify the means. Here again, we have a book that is steeped in blood, but it’s never sensationalized. It is subtle, understated. His bad guys (if there are even bad guys in this book) are written so well that he doesn’t have to write actions to show the reader how bad they are. They don’t rape women for the sake of showing how bad they are; they don’t kill cats for the sake of it. They are character that carry with them a stain so deep that it seems to be in every cell of their body. The reader knows as soon as s/he enters, the character is dark and troublesome. This is the mark of a gifted writer. I believe Peter Straub touches on the lightness of Brian Evenson in his Introduction (an introduction that is interesting to read because of his discussion of genre markers). Straub writes:
In fact, an incredible amount is left out of these stories’ rather sketchy narratives—landscapes, contexts in general, back stories, and history in general. The stories take place in a barren world that offers very little of the unspoken consolation provided by other fictions (x).
Indeed, Evenson doesn’t waste our time with brand names and flowering descriptions of trees or homes. For example, when Kline enters the amputee complex for the first time, Evenson writes, “They passed a row of houses, turned down a smaller road where the houses were a little more spread out, then down a third, smaller, tree lined alley that dead-ended in front of a small, two-story building” (40). Although the point of view is filtered through Kline’s vision, and we might assume our keen detective should notice every small detail of this entrance, we never question him. Moreover, there is no reason to. Evenson’s stories work, excel, without the need to write lengthy paragraphs describing the scenery. This is something that most writers could not do successfully. I often think of a section in The English Patient, where Michael Ondaatje spends three pages describing a water fountain that never plays a significant role in the story. How would Ondaatje handle an Evenson story? Granted Ondaatje’s style and subject matter is completely different from Evenson’s and impressive in its own right.
The richness of Evenson’s work, and
