FUGUE STATE: How Brian Evenson upends the conventions of realism

Brian Evenson, Fugue State, Coffee House Press, Minneapolis, 2009, $14.95

There has always been a dark strain in American letters, a strain that holds a cloudy mirror up to each generation’s version of realism as a reminder that there’s never been an absolute or exclusive hold on narrative verisimilitude. In the beginning, Brockden Brown, Hawthorne, and Poe challenged the authority of 19^th century realists, and in the 20^th century the insurgence continued with the likes of O’Connor, Coover, and McCarthy. Brian Evenson is the contemporary inheritor of the newest irrealist tradition, a postmodern torchbearer gleefully smashing preconceptions about truth. Think: Franz Kafka tag-teamed by H.P. Lovecraft and Jacques Derrida. Think: Jorge Luis Borges French kissed by David Lynch and Gilles Deleuze.

Narrative naturalism rests upon an Enlightenment vision that human beings can, in principle, progress; that perspective assumes free will and thought are unproblematic affairs. Hence, characters in realist fiction typically have an ability to grow and change for the better, and even if they don’t change, there is at least a possibility of change—a growth in awareness, an epiphanic moment—presented to a protagonist. However, in Fugue State, Evenson plays with reality like a nine-year-old twisting the heads off his sister’s baby dolls. The past is not easily recoverable, but rather inexplicable and maddening. Language and logic are not necessarily aids to human understanding and growth, but often contribute to further convolution and suffering. Human consciousness is not the foundation of reason, but fundamentally irrational.

As with many of the stories in the collection (“Desire with Digressions,” “Dread,” “The Third Factor,” “Alfons Kuylers,” and “Fugue State”), the dark farce “A Pursuit” undermines the notion of free will via the psychiatric disorder known as fugue state, a short period of amnesia where a distinct persona emerges that acts independently of the self. A driver, having recently experienced a “strangely dreamless sleep,” inexplicably believes himself pursued by his three ex-wives: “An individual ex-wife could be outflanked, backed into a corner, subdued, dismissed. But against a triad of ex-wives, a solitary ex-husband has no hope.” During this seemingly endless pursuit, the ex-husband begins to have unsettling dreams that implicate him in the fate of his ex-wives. “[Pursuing] the line of nearly dried blood … the door swings back and what do I see inside but myself?” Terrified of the accruing clues that he’s done something horrible, and the rotting smell coming from inside his trunk, the ex-husband can only continue fleeing, eschewing the epiphany moment usually given in realism. “How long can I keep this up, my ex-wives neither alive nor dead, both alive and dead, and myself perhaps in the same state? How long can I keep driving? With a little luck … perhaps forever.” In an absurd world, Evenson suggests, where one can unknowingly commit murder, incessant pursual is a justifiable delusion.

The problem of memory also plays a role in “Younger,” where a woman’s childhood encounter with the unknown plagues her sanity as an adult. “The incident,” she feels, “was the start of her losing her hold on her life. Even years later, she continues to feel that if only she could understand exactly what had happened, what it all meant, she would see what had gone wrong and correct it.” Left alone at home one morning, her father having given strict instructions “not to answer the door” and to go to school after the oven timer went off, someone begins “ringing the doorbell, trying to come in” when it’s time to go to school. Caught in the in-between space of an either-or logic, where any action seems to violate her father’s restriction, she becomes paralyzed with fear, “motionless…waiting for the door to shiver in its frame trapped in the house [forever].” While that day was traumatizing for the protagonist, her older sister refers to the incident as “nothing—less than nothing,” blocking any possibility for further understanding and healing. The younger sister’s inability to understand her past demonstrates that sometimes it may be impossible to sort the emotional power of “the world outside rationally.” Thus, although narrative realism may privilege the ideals of epiphany and personal growth, “Younger” reveals that some people cannot avoid a fate of “ending up mad or dead.”

“Invisible Box” is another story that undermines realist assumptions by demonstrating that an adventure is not free when it is imposed upon you. This time Evenson highlights the split, problematic nature of human consciousness. After a one-night stand with a mime, a woman cannot stop perceiving the shimmering box that he “felt out…around them…straddling her” in bed. After unsuccessfully attempting to reason the box away (“She slept naked, she slept clothed, sober, drunk, half-naked, half-clothed, half-sober, half-drunk”), she begins “thinking with two different parts of her head at once. One part of her head was thinking…that she should kill the fucking mime, but the other part was thinking that, no, perhaps not kill but fuck him again.” While most versions of realism presuppose the rational Cartesian ego, the “I think” to be the dominant part of the mind, psychoanalysis and neurobiology have both shown the subconscious, or unconscious processes of the mind (See: emotions, desires, instincts, and drives), to be the true foundation of human consciousness—which is to say, the mind is fundamentally irrational. Unable to escape the unconscious suggestion of the mime, the woman falls into a sleepless state of confusion similar to that of the ex-husband in “A Pursuit.” Consequently, the power of the unconscious that Evenson so comically exploits in “Invisible Box” suggests realist narratives that privilege a rational model of human consciousness are highly ideological.

Like previous collections from Evenson (Altmann’s Tongue, Contagion and Other Stories, The Wavering Knife), the nineteen stories in Fugue State range from the farcical to the grotesque, exploring characters in various states of psychological fugue. Brian Evenson is the peculiar kind of writer that appeals to philosophers, literati, and horror fans alike; his style is underpinned by a sort of intellectual terror. These stories are the kind you want to read at bedtime—or anytime with the lights out—with a flashlight on.

By Steve Owen