Altmann's Tongue: Stories and novella [Hardcover]

Brian Evenson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 23, 1994

Twenty-five short stories and a detective novella, The Sanza Affair, present a chilling collection of tales in which social institutions and human relationships dissolve without warning and with mayhem. A first collection.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

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. Death seems to arrive inevitably, often quickly, in these tales; in the title story, a man contemplates the justice of the two murders he has just committed, and, in the concluding novella, a detective relentlessly pursues a trail of bodies that leads ever closer to himself. Despite the horror present in each story, Evenson's blend of wit and shock, which plunges readers into the minds of his often demented protagonists, serves to create acceptance even as it generates repulsion; in "Stung," for example, a boy seemingly kills his stepfather for no apparent reason but then is seduced, languidly and ineluctably, by his mother. 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.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Generally speaking, the shorter stories are clever and the longer ones less so--with the exception of a polished novella--in this grisly debut collection by a Gordon Lish acolyte. When Evenson writes brief stories, they have the crisp, tight feeling of Jonis Agee's best work, with a sadistic edge. Because these are so quick, their titles make them self-explanatory. ``Killing Cats'' is narrated by a man who has been asked to drive two friends so that they can do just that. A character in the title piece urges the narrator to eat the tongue of a man he has killed. ``The Abbreviated and Tragical History of The Auschwitz Barber'' does not even occupy an entire page, yet tells just the story promised by its title. The longer stories are equally gruesome, but without that punchy delivery they feel more like drawn-out jokes, and Evenson's habit of coy concealment, while successful in the shorter pieces, grates. Several tales apparently deal with the same characters, although they are so uniformly brutal that it is hard to tell. In ``The Blank'' a man named Thorne has closed himself in his room and passes notes to men on the outside, including Bosephus. Bosephus is still watching and waiting in ``A Slow Death'' and also appears in ``Extermination.'' Just showing up is not enough, however, and attention wanes as Bosephus waits while occasionally killing some animals. The novella ``The Sanza Affair'' is in many senses the most structured work here, and it is also the best. A police detective named Sanza has been killed while investigating a case, which has been passed on to an inspector named Lund. Lund finds the case as impenetrable as Sanza did, and is soon making connections between Sanza's death and his work. This subverts traditional mystery-writing techniques while still maintaining suspense. Good and bad bits from someone who has trouble recognizing when enough is enough. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 239 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1st edition (August 23, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679429123
• ISBN-13: 978-0679429128
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #574,366 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Disturbing and dangerous, February 4, 2001

By 

Volkswagen Blues "cead1" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Altmann's Tongue: Stories and novella (Hardcover)

While it doesn't seem to me to hang together perfectly as a collection, Altmann's Tongue is an amazing amalgamation of shorts and short shorts. It contains some of Evenson's very best stories, especially the title short short, which turns a sudden double-homicide into a reflection on mortal power, who gets the authority to wield it, and what happens when we begin to speak the very language of those whose violent means we oppose. For these reasons, and as its title suggests, it is useful key to many of the other stories.

Evenson's written style is remarkable, tightly bunched words and curt but beautifully suggestive sentences that make the prose at once alienating and very friendly.

Many of these pieces ground themselves explicitly or implicitly in attempts to understand or articulate specific historical tragedies such as the Holocaust. They last long enough to open disturbing possibilities, then recede quickly and leave the reader to ponder the pieces. No heroes, no solutions, nothing but the problems and the problems of communicating those problems. In this, stories like "Altmann's Tongue," "Munich Window: A Persecution," "Killing Cats," and others come much closer to the reality of the Holocaust and our need to remember it than dismissively heroic tales like Spielberg's "Schindler's List" can ever hope to do.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars McCarthy meets Poe in a dazzling display of literate, brutal horror, July 30, 2010

By 

Joshua Mauthe (Nashville, TN) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Altmann's Tongue (Paperback)

I've never read anything quite like Altmann's Tongue before, although if I had to describe it, the closest I could come would be to have you imagine that Cormac McCarthy wrote a collection of Edgar Allan Poe homages, but even that doesn't quite prepare you for the psychological and physical horrors within Altmann's pages. The stories here range from half a page long to a lengthy novella, but almost uniformly, they defy easy assessment. Evenson isn't interested in easy moral judgment or even understanding the brutalities he depicts here; even so, by juxtaposing the tales together, you get a sense of what he feels about the world, the point he strives to make about violence. But, oh, what surreal and fascinating tales. From the title tale, a brief and horrific tale of a man compelled to further and further violence upon a body, to "Stung", the tale of a young boy with, shall we say, complex relationships with his parents, to "The Sanza Affair," a brilliant novella about the difficulty of ever truly understanding an event, to "The Munich Window", the closest to Poe's hysterical, damaged narrators, to Evenson's darkly funny take on the book of Job, these are strange, unnerving tales, made all the more so by their lack of context or explanation. Altmann's Tongue is not for all tastes. This is brutal, violent stuff, and it's far from easily accessible. For those with a taste for the macabre and for the literate, however, you'll find much here to admire and - dare I say it - to chew on.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Delightfully Disturbing, January 26, 2005

By 

J. L. Myers (Tulsa, OK) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Altmann's Tongue (Paperback)

First of all, it was a great pleasure and honor to attend Brians Fiction Writing courses when I was a student at Oklahoma State University. I found him the most selfless instructor of the written word and took to heart the advice he gave to me concerning my work. If you want to write, study from a master.

Towards 'Altmann's Toungue', I would simply tell you that Brian is the thinking mans 'Stephen King'. There is no spoon-feeding of plot here. It is brutal, raw imagery. And it is clear that he is a true student of Poe and Kafka. If you are hungry for horror in small servings, you must dine on Altmann's Toungue.