Talking about your own story is a bit like nailing a dog to the floor. You can get it to stay there, but it doesn't do much good for the dog.

Evenson isn't anything to write home about. I can't hardly remember a single story from Collapse of Horses, and only realized this is the same author after I became bored of the "depravity" schtick in the same way that I did about CoH – and then it clicked.

Most of these stories are forgettable in the same way, but a few stuck out – and the additional afterword about how this book in particular contributed to his getting fired from BYU and self-excommunicating from the Mormon church helps add some appreciable color to where he's coming from (same deal for Nathan Hardy tbh).

The forward, anonymous review I think was included because it mirrors what he has to say in the afterword:

Wrote most of the stories while he was a professor, and on the way to becoming the mormon equivalent of a bishop. Less interested in the depiction of violence and more interested in the readers apprehension of the senselessness of it all.

Violence is depicted and then superseded by style which acts as a form of violence against the reader himself. Less interested in telling a story about having a gun to his head, driving a homeless person around Seattle and more interested in helping the reader to experience that sensation himself. This is just what storytelling is about, but his fixation on ultra violence and depravity in particular with his background is interesting.

Stories while I use a professor, bringing the beginning more officials talks about how he was less interested in the reader app

18 of the 26 stories contained within are about killing killing people killing cats. The dogs would show up get killed.

The Father, Unblinking

Father appears to have murdered his daughter and has to go ask somebody to borrow tools to bury her guide does not have the tool. Mother asks if he will call the sheriff to find out where she's gone. He says that she will not or he will not and holds her gaze until she lets it go.

Killing Cats

A mother and a father who wished to kill the cats named by their children. The father plans to shoot them, and the narrator is some guy that they roped into driving them somewhere to do it before they get to the murder spot the father drops one of the cats out the back and then instruct the driver to go back to finish them off because it was messy and incomplete.

Altmann's Tongue

Altman's tongue is the among the shortest of the stories and it almost seems like a glimpse into the mind of Anton Chigurh. It's about how he kills Altman and decides that this is a good thing and makes it all worthwhile: people like Altman need to be killed. But then this other dude pipes up and says some mystical nonsense about how he needs to eat Altmann's tongue. Weird, mystical shit like that, and then the narrator blasted him too, and is unsure about whether or not this was the right thing to do. He thinks that everybody falls into one of two categories good to die or just makes it more complicated after the fact, and he considers himself to be the unique or sole exception to his own Parmenidean binary

The Munich Window: 9/10

Banger. A perfect short story. A German expat goes to visit his daughter, whom he abandoned, who tried to kill herself by throwing herself out a window, which –incidentally– is the same way in which her mother did manage to kill herself.

He finds her at the Munich station pretty much just repulsed by her acquired tendencies that she picked up from her adoptive family that he abandoned her with, and he immediately starts to pick her apart for the viciousness which her mother advanced when she killed herself and his youngest daughter, which caused him to flee the country? Implied murder.

The next part picks up where it left off with him encouraging the woman that was following him, who we learn is his daughter’s psychiatrist, to heat up a spoon and shove it up her nostril so as to stop the bleeding that she acquired when he fucking dropped her. The story is hilarious with Nabakovian dryness.

Part three picks up in the Hamburg train after he defends himself against the allegations from his daughter and her psychiatrist that he killed her mother. He dismisses these saying that the daughter was in the closet, so how could she know that he killed the mother the mother was a victim of self murder and that she (the daughter + psych) contrived situations and circumstances that made him look like he would have a motive, and now the psychiatrist has concocted fake memories to continue to assess a fee against his daughter. He was unimpressed by their viciousness.

part IV, back at daughters apt, he encourages her next time to jump out the middle window bc it’s more aesthetically pleasing, makes for better photos.

The Blank / A Slow Death / Extermination

Fortress commander sometime in the not too distant past holes himself up and proclaims his death but keeps passing notes under the door. Bosephus who has an axe (could bust down the door but doesn’t) receives his notes and assumes command as they are besieged by ~the enemy. the others are wary of him. Siege drama ensues and enemies are depicted, but like many of the other stories, ijdc.

Usurpation

The Abbreviated and Tragical History of the Auschwitz Barber

A Conversation with Brenner

German scientist, probing some poor fellow (Brenner), who is tied up in his possession.

Stung

fucked up, Wallacean. About a kid killing his stepfather and filling his body with bees, unbeknownst to his oblivious mother who just wants him to rub sunscreen on her back and weirdly sexual ways. Nothing sexual actually happens she just is kind of insistent about being undressed around him, getting some sun and is oblivious to her rotting husband.

My Possessions

Wallacean (a la W's M) about somebody escaping from something. But the thing that they're escaping from is a androgynous they/them called Paya Amato or something like that I think that that means bisexuality is indicative that the person's possessions are symbolic of their gender, and they seem to be going mildly insane dividing possessions into things before realizing that nothing matters forgettable.

After Omaha

After Omaha is a story about some guys getting into some sort of trouble, presumably after getting out of prison in Omaha, and this dude has flashbacks to prison also forgettable

Hey, Luciano!

a story about a boy, whose mother is growing very ill. I think the implication is that he puts her out of her misery and enlist his father, who is like a yard, worker of sorts to help put her under the ground after he's finished killing her it's all very vague.

Shift-Work

Shiftwork seems to be about a guy who is busy, nailing his own hand or maybe his arms into the table at the bar after his shift it describes without getting very gory whatsoever how difficult it is to hammer something with only one hand and how he uses his free hand to soft up the mess that is presumably made with paper towels. This one was good.

Job Eats Them Raw, with the Dogs

Reminded of of Between Two Fires but funnier insofar as Job is walking around, convinced that everything that he does is assigned from God and symbolic of his affliction, cursed by God as he stumbled upon somewhat Eldridge terrors

Hébé Kills Jarry

Hole

The Body Stories

The bully stories remind me of Faulkner and McCarthy, senseless violence with stream of consciousness narration.

The Evanescence of Marion le Goff

Bodies of Light

New Killers

Mix, Mex, Somebody

Borges but bad

Her Other Bodies

Ends up being one of the longer and stronger stories. About a serial killer who's driving around, trying to get back in touch with his ex-wife and raping and murdering a bunch of women along the way. He has a weird ritual where he cuts 9xn stars into their bodies (where n is the index of his victim). He's clearly going insane fading in and out of consciousness and burning himself with cigarettes to stay awake he keeps calling his ex-wife. Ends up snapping and getting sloppy, trying to attack a woman in public and seems utterly remorseless, nor even eager to die as he gets beaten to death by a bystander hero.

Eye

The Sanza Affair

Chess puzzle, Bolañan

Two Brothers

Chess, Vile, Short Stories, Between Two Fires

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