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Brian Evenson

One of the two technicians picks Marion le Goff up under the armpits, along the sagging edges of her breasts. He raises her over the lip of the hatch, lowers her into the dark water. She speaks all the while of her crimes, pleading for absolution.


Brian Evenson is the author of Altmann's Tongue (Knopf, 1994), and is a professor of literature and critical theory at Oklahoma State University, on leave from Brigham Young University, where he was asked to discontinue publishing fiction or risk his status in the Mormon Church. Evenson earned his Ph.D. in critical theory and English literature at the University of Washington. He is father of two daughters and he and his family live in Provo, Utah.

Brian Evenson, from The Interview with Ben Marcus
To render a violent act in Ianguage is not at all the same as committing a violent act. The writing itself is not violent, but rather precise, measured, controlled, in the grip of certain arbitrary but self-consistent rules. Only rarely does real violence become endowed with aesthetic qualities. Like religion, language does violence to the immanent world by forcing the objects of that world to be understood in terms of generalities, by stripping them of their specificities and categorizing them. And this sort of violence is in everything.

Selections from Brian Evenson's work:
These selections are also included in Altmann's Tongue published in 1994 by Knopf.

 The Munich Window: A Persecution
Altmann's Tongue
After Omaha
Usurpation
Stung
My Possessions
The Father, Unblinking
The Evanescence of Marion le Goff
Job Eats Them Raw, with the Dogs: An Undoing

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