Altmann’s Tongue

Showing off Evenson’s myriad skills, the stories range from rural tales of death to a retelling of the biblical Job story, in which a skeletonized Job trades barbs and blows with a murderous lumberjack…There is a detached brutality to the collection, similar to Beckett’s novels, which, due to Evenson’s precise control over language is both disturbing and compelling. -Review of Contemporary Fiction. The spirit of Edgar Allan Poe inhabits this collection of violent and mysterious stories that recall not only that master of the perverse but also the seamier side of the nightly news…Many of these tales, particularly the short-shorts, remain enigmatic, resistant to any explication; yet even they are told in such a compelling fashion that one reads not to understand but merely to witness. -Publishers Weekly. Evenson has created a fascinating, mysterious, and austere prose set in scenes that attain the precision of staged burlesque. Through the sparse economy of the plot and settings, Evenson’s great moral sensibility is glimpsed behind the carnival mask of apparently frivolous murder. -Seattle Weekly. Brian Evenson has added an O. Henry Award-winning short story, Two Brothers, to this controversial book and a new afterword, in which he describes the troubling aftermath of the book’s publication in 1994. Evenson is an assistant professor of English at the University of Denver. He is the author of six books of fiction, including Father of Lies and Contagion: And Other Stories. Alphonso Lingis is a professor of philosophy at Penn State University. He is the author of numerous books, including The Imperative and Dangerous Emotions.