The Sinister and The Mundane Clash Again in Brian Evenson's Latest Short Story Collection

It is always a very strange and a very specific pleasure to read Brian Evenson's short stories - a very own blend of latent dread, existential fears, perturbed presentation of everyday life and a good portion of chuckle humor is sure to grab and not let go until you have finished reading the last page. So, I’m more than happy to have had that pleasure again when this summer his new short story collection The Glassy Burning Floor of Hell was published.

Apart from the exceptional high quality of each story, the sequencing also plays an important part in making it easy to step into the dreadful world of Glassy, which starts with a striking piece of writing that instantaneously enthralls: “Leg”. This admittedly short but remarkably absurd and intriguing piece about a sentient shapeshifter leg turning into a serial killer on a spaceship, is only the gateway to a universe of uncanny encounters, environmental urgency, body horror, folk horror but also noticeably often dystopic and even post-apocalyptic elements; divided people, oppressive hierarchy structures, pollution, catastrophes, invasions.

The world is a hell, because we have made it so.

I was a little taken aback by the heaviness, grimness of the almost claustrophobically dystopian stories that form a proper block towards the middle of the book; domed cities outside of which (or inside, depending on who you are) air is unbreathable, robot-like creatures terminating humankind, the last human living, migration, torture… So many timely issues packed in so few pages - delicious, short pieces of contemporary critique surrounded by the more individual types of horror.

You never know when you are going to need a good scalpel.

Loss of control is another theme that creeps through the pages of Glassy, especially the loss of control over one’s body - through body modification gone wrong, through old age, through oppression by others, through illness or even one’s very own mind. I think this is one of the most potent fears there are and there is a typical Evenson-way in which he treats this fear that I personally could read forever without being bored. This goes for each of his stories in which he, almost in a Lynchian way, creeps under your skin by combining the sinister with the mundane.

As I already mentioned above, I think the arrangement or sequencing of the stories deserve an extra praise here, opening and closing the circle with the absurd and sinister leg-creature.

Reading Evenson’s last short story collection The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell was, again and always, a very strange and specific pleasure and I’ll be looking forward to his next one.