Brian Evenson gives thanks for the curse of being betrothed to the unknown. His journey is very singular, but he would hate being called a ‘guru’ or ‘enlightened’. Before his voluntary excommunication, Evenson was operating within in the Mormon faith. Reading his work, it’s clear that his main literary preoccupations surround the transgressive and profane facets of the world around him –
Chris Kelso: How did this line up with your previous faith, and did it inform your art in any way? I’m curious as to whether you were encouraged to pursue darker avenues of expression by family and friends, or if it was met with resistance? Does there remain any tangential relationship with the LDS Church?
Brian Evenson: Despite coming from a family that goes back to the beginnings of Mormonism, I’ve always been a bit of an outlier when it comes to my relation to the faith. When I was growing up in Provo, Utah, my father and mother were not only Mormon but were also staunch Democrats (they still are), while the majority of the town was overwhelmingly Republican. As a result, I was raised feeling like I both fit into the culture and didn’t at the same time, and I was also raised to be sceptical of everything that the majority of the culture around me took at face value. I think the darker avenues fascinated me because they were so different from the official story that Mormon culture was telling, but that darkness was still present in the culture if you were willing to scratch the surface a little.
And your parents encouraged you to explore your darker tastes?
My parents definitely encouraged me in this. My father introduced me to Kafka when I was 14, which led me eventually to Beckett and absurdist drama, all of which is fairly distanced from traditional Mormon values. I found that that work really fed me, and it did a great deal to form who I would become as a writer. I think my tastes quickly became more and more inclined to the transgressive and the profane—by the time I was 18, I’d stumbled onto Artaud in the university library and found it profoundly challenging, but also really enjoyable. I liked the way he unsettled me, and I began to search for that experience in what I was reading or watching. My parents weren’t very interested in that, but to their credit they never discouraged me from reading anything I wanted to read.
And you were exploring these texts alone?
That was quite different from the majority of the people I grew up around, who had strict and largely unexamined notions of what was and wasn’t appropriate. I saw what those people thought and saw how a certain percentage of them (not all by any means) had surrendered the ability to think for themselves. I knew I didn’t want to end up like that. At this point, I have many family members who are still Mormon, including my daughter, but I don’t really have any relationship with the Mormon church. That’s not to say it wasn’t formative for me—it was, and probably my thinking as a whole is profoundly influenced by it. But I have no desire to have any connection to the Church at this point. I’m very happily excommunicated.
I think a common theme that runs through your body of work is identity. You flit between genus and type (ranging from serious literary voyages through nihilistic philosophy to video-game adaptation), and this is a testament to your ability, but do you have a favourite genre to work in? Which genre reflects the tastes and sympathies of your own identity? I’m aware you might detest discussing the concept of ‘genre’. Humour a philistine.
I don’t know that I really have a favorite genre. What I like, above all, is being able to alternate between different genres and different sorts of projects. It gives me a great deal of pleasure to work on a translation, then work on a short story, then jump to a novel I’m writing, then write a short, compressed bit of memoir, etc., etc. That flitting back and forth is what really appeals to me, and is probably the best expression of my taste and sympathies—I think each project makes an appeal for the genre in which it can best thrive. So, while it’s true that I probably write most often in a kind of space that could be defined as literary horror, I have a lot of fun whatever genre I am writing in. I think I return to that “literary horror” space most often because it seems to allow for the most thorough investigation of the questions I want to explore as a writer.
Having said that, even though I don’t think I have a preference for a genre, I feel like the form I like the very best is the novella. I think that it’s an incredibly supple, flexible form in which you can have the focus on language of a short story but also just enough of the philosophical expansiveness of a novel.
You’re right in saying that my work as a whole is about identity, but I think it’s probably more about fractured or failed or multiplicitous identity…
Even after all your success and acclaim, you remain cordial and gracious to new writers and fans. Is it hard to ignore the hype or are you just like the rest of us humans - sceptical and neurotic?
It took long enough for people to get on board with what I was doing that I remain pretty suspicious of success or praise… For a number of years I just kept on stubbornly doing what I wanted to do, doggedly exploring what I wanted to explore, despite being told in my first review from a major newspaper that I’d be a better writer if gave up my odder, spookier, more morbid qualities. Now those are the very things I’m known for. A friend of mine, also a writer, won a major prize a few years ago. When I congratulated him about it, he said it was very lucky, that in a way the prize had nothing to do with him, that there were so many worthy books that could have equally stood in his book’s place. But that, at the same time, he felt real gratitude to have won. I remember that any time I’m lucky enough to win a prize. It’s not a question of “I’m so good and deserve to win” but rather “What a wonderful thing that my book has been chosen from among so many other books I admire. How wonderful that these people have been willing to come along on this very strange ride with me.”
I mean, you seem so relaxed and confident in interviews. I’m such a self-conscious and paranoid person myself – what advice would you give to similarly afflicted people trying to shamble their way through the shadows of their own psychosis?
That’s all very carefully constructed—it takes a lot to appear relaxed. But I think, as well, that the more you do interviews, the more easily it comes. It’s also, I suppose, a side effect of having taught college classes for several decades. I know you teach high school yourself so you’ll know that if you can simulate being relaxed and confident in front of the classroom, it tends to go better. Of course, I have all sorts of moments of self-doubt and self-consciousness and paranoia. I have moments in which I obsess over something I said or didn’t say. Or when something I do later on strikes me as really embarrassing and I keep turning it over and over in my head. But I tend to channel a lot of those feelings into my writing, which can offer a kind of relief from it.
What scares Brian Evenson? What inspires him?
When I was a kid, I was phobic of pretty much everything. I was afraid of heights, afraid of the dark, etc. I had to train myself out of that, but there are still moments when I find it almost unbearable to be in the dark (for instance). I often tap into my very physical memory of those fears when I’m writing. What inspires me? Deft and surprising art of all kinds, I guess, and also the very eccentric and complex way that children rework and repurpose language…
And in terms of literature?
In terms of literature, I find Laird Barron’s work quite frightening; he’s one of the few writers that has that effect on me. I’m reading a Richard Gavin collection of stories called Grotesquerie right now that is slowly worming its way under my skin, haunting me in ways I can’t quite figure out. I’m very fond of work that unsettles me, that pulls the ground out from beneath my feet: that sort of work always inspires me, and is the sort of work I most want to emulate… Lately I’ve been returning to Robert Aickman’s work, which I genuinely love, and I’ve just finished reading all of Algernon Blackwood’s stories—he’s a truly remarkable writer. I’m rereading James Purdy’s work right now—I think he’s one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. I just read 63: Dream Palace, which is stunningly good and which I heartily recommend… I’m also a huge Muriel Spark fan, something I don’t think most people would guess about me (unless they’ve read some of the stranger corners of Spark’s oeuvre).
Brian Evenson - Praised by Peter Straub for going "furthest out on the sheerest, least sheltered narrative precipice," Brian Evenson is the recipient of three O. Henry Prizes and has been a finalist for the Edgar Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the World Fantasy Award. He is also the winner of the International Horror Guild Award and the American Library Association's award for Best Horror Novel, and his work has been named in Time Out New York's top books.
Chris Kelso - is a multi-translated, British Fantasy Award-nominated writer, illustrator and editor from Scotland. He has been published in Locus, Black Static, Evergreen Review, Lovecraft eZine, 3:AM, LitReactor, EXPAT, The Unquiet Dreamer – a tribute to Harlan Ellison, Shoreline of Infinity, Sensitive Skin, Daily Science Fiction, and many more.