Mapping a literary space uniquely its own, Evenson's Contagion and Other Stories pursues to a new level the
crepescular and delirious exploration begun in his acclaimed and controversial collection Altmann's Tongue. In the
O'Henry Award Winning "Two Brothers", a minister breaks his leg while his sons watch then refuses to call an ambulance, remaining
convinced even unto death that God will arrive to lift him up and make him whole. The self-acclaimed language specialist of "The
Polygamy of Language" indiscriminately blends linguistics with murder. "Contagion" is a skewed retelling of the early history
of barbed wire, which interweaves metaphysics with the Western genre. "Watson's Boy" shows a child endlessly wandering the human
equivalent of a conditioned response box while the protagonist of "By Halves" finds himself trapped in a relationship that may not
exist. Throughout, Evenson's immaculate prose draws us mercilessly up to confront troubled and troubling lives that,
astoundingly, are no less human than our own.
"Readers of Ballard and Burroughs will exult in Contagion—a brilliant, rageful, necromantic and philosophic swarm of nightmares
and lingering fevers"
—Rikki Ducornet
"It's work that lodges in the reader long after he's through turning the pages, like ancient scripture or true crime."
—Rick Moody
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