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Last Days (Evenson Novel)
''Last Days'' is a 2009 mystery- horror novel by Brian Evenson, first published by Underland Press. The first part of the book was originally published by Earthling Publications in 2003 as a novella titled ''The Brotherhood of Mutilation''. The story follows a detective kidnapped by a religious cult who believe amputations bring one closer to God. ''Last Days'' won the American Library Association's award for Best Horror Novel of 2009. In 2016, nonprofit independent publisher Coffee House Press reissued ''Last Days'', featuring an introduction by horror novelist Peter Straub. The novel received mostly positive reviews, with many critics noting the story's unique tonal blend of body and psychological horror with black humor. Some critics have compared the narrative to the work of pulp noir writer Raymond Chandler, describing it as a "send-up of the hardboiled detective novel". See also *Body integrity dysphoria * Matthew 5:30 *Paul Wittgenstein *Skoptsy The Skoptsy (, ; ) w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brian Evenson
Brian Evenson (born August 12, 1966) is an American academic and writer of both literary fiction and popular fiction, some of the latter being published under B. K. Evenson. His fiction is often described as literary minimalism, but also draws inspiration from horror fiction, horror, weird fiction, detective fiction, science fiction and continental philosophy. Evenson makes frequent use of dark humor and often features characters struggling with the epistemology, limits and consequences of knowledge. He has also written non-fiction, and translated several books by French-language writers into English. Since 2016 he has taught in the School of Critical Studies at the California Institute of the Arts, both in the Creative Writing MFA program and in the Aesthetics and Politics MA Program. Biography Brian Evenson was born August 12, 1966, in Ames, Iowa. His father, William Evenson, was a longtime professor of physics at Brigham Young University (BYU) and later an administrator at the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Psychological Horror
Psychological horror is a genre, subgenre of horror fiction, horror and psychological fiction with a particular focus on mental, emotional, and Mental state, psychological states to frighten, disturb, or unsettle its audience. The subgenre frequently overlaps with the related subgenre of psychological thriller, and often uses mystery fiction, mystery elements and characters with unstable, unreliable, or disturbed psychological states to enhance the suspense, horror, drama, tension, and paranoia of the setting and plot and to provide an overall creepy, unpleasant, unsettling, or distressing Mood (literature), atmosphere. Characteristics Psychological horror usually aims to create discomfort or dread by exposing common or universal psychological and emotional vulnerabilities/fears and revealing the darker parts of the human psyche that most people may repress or deny. This idea is referred to in analytical psychology as the Jungian archetypes, archetypal Shadow (psychology), shad ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
2009 American Novels
9 (nine) is the natural number following and preceding . Evolution of the Hindu–Arabic digit Circa 300 BC, as part of the Brahmi numerals, various Indians wrote a digit 9 similar in shape to the modern closing question mark without the bottom dot. The Kshatrapa, Andhra and Gupta started curving the bottom vertical line coming up with a -look-alike. How the numbers got to their Gupta form is open to considerable debate. The Nagari continued the bottom stroke to make a circle and enclose the 3-look-alike, in much the same way that the sign @ encircles a lowercase ''a''. As time went on, the enclosing circle became bigger and its line continued beyond the circle downwards, as the 3-look-alike became smaller. Soon, all that was left of the 3-look-alike was a squiggle. The Arabs simply connected that squiggle to the downward stroke at the middle and subsequent European change was purely cosmetic. While the shape of the glyph for the digit 9 has an ascender in most modern typef ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Skoptsy
The Skoptsy (, ; ) were a cult within the larger Spiritual Christianity movement in the Russian Empire. They were best known for practising emasculation of men, the mastectomy and female genital mutilation of women in accordance with their teachings against sexual lust. The descriptive term "Skoptsy" was coined by the Russian Orthodox Church. The sect emerged in the late 18th century. It reached the peak of its popularity in the early 20th century but was essentially wiped out by the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin. Beliefs and practices Skoptsy is a plural of ''skopets'', at the time the Russian term for "castrate" (in contemporary Russian, the term has become restricted to referring to the sect, in its generic meaning replaced by the loanwords ''yévnukh'' е́внух, i.e. eunuch, and ''kastrat'' кастрат). The Skoptsy referred to themselves as the "White Doves" (). Their aim was to perfect the individual by eradicating original sin, which they believed had com ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Wittgenstein
Paul Wittgenstein (November 5, 1887March 3, 1961) was an Austrian-American concert pianist notable for commissioning new piano concerti for the left hand alone, after his right arm was amputated during World War I. He devised novel techniques, including pedal and hand-movement combinations, that allowed him to play chords previously thought impossible for a five-fingered pianist. He was an older brother of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Early life Wittgenstein was born in Vienna, the fourth son and seventh of the eight children (excluding a daughter who died at birth) of industrialist Karl Wittgenstein and Leopoldine Maria Josefa Kalmus. He was raised as a Catholic; three of his grandparents had converted from Judaism as adults. Only his paternal grandmother had no Jewish lineage. His brother Ludwig was born two years later. The household was frequently visited by prominent cultural figures, among them the composers Johannes Brahms, Gustav Mahler, Josef Labor, and Rich ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Body Integrity Dysphoria
Body integrity dysphoria (BID), also referred to as body integrity identity disorder (BIID), amputee identity disorder or xenomelia, and formerly called apotemnophilia, is a rare mental disorder characterized by a desire to have a sensory or physical disability or feeling discomfort with being able-bodied, beginning in early adolescence and resulting in harmful consequences. BID appears to be related to somatoparaphrenia. People with this condition may refer to themselves as transabled, but the term is controversial. Signs and symptoms BID is a rare, infrequently studied condition in which there is a mismatch between the mental body image and the physical body, characterized by an intense desire for amputation or paralysis of a limb, usually a leg, or to become blind or deaf. A 2017 survey by researchers at the University of Amsterdam of 80 individuals with BID found that 71.3% experienced sexual arousal related to their condition, with this group more likely to be male, reli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Raymond Chandler
Raymond Thornton Chandler (July 23, 1888 – March 26, 1959) was an American-British novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at the age of forty-four, Chandler became a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Great Depression. His first short story, " Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in 1933 in '' Black Mask,'' a popular pulp magazine. His first novel, '' The Big Sleep'', was published in 1939. In addition to his short stories, Chandler published seven novels during his lifetime (an eighth, in progress at the time of his death, was completed by Robert B. Parker). All but '' Playback'' have been made into motion pictures, some more than once. In the year before his death, he was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America. Chandler had an immense stylistic influence on American popular literature. He is a founder of the hardboiled school of detective fiction, along with Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and other ''Black ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Noir Fiction
Noir fiction (or roman noir) is a subgenre of crime fiction. Definition Noir denotes a marked darkness in theme and subject matter, generally featuring a disturbing mixture of sex and violence. While related to and frequently confused with Hardboiled, hardboiled detective fiction—due to the regular adaptation of hardboiled detective stories in the film noir style—the two are not the same. Both regularly take place against a backdrop of systemic and institutional corruption. However, noir (French for "black") fiction is centred on protagonists that are either victims, suspects, or perpetrators—often self-destructive. A typical protagonist of noir fiction is forced to deal with a corrupt legal, political or other system, through which the protagonist is either Symptoms of victimization, victimized and/or has to victimize others, leading to a No-win situation, lose-lose situation. Otto Penzler argues that the traditional hardboiled detective story and noir story are "dia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Black Humor
Black comedy, also known as black humor, bleak comedy, dark comedy, dark humor, gallows humor or morbid humor, is a style of comedy that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo, particularly subjects that are normally considered serious or painful to discuss, aiming to provoke discomfort, serious thought, and amusement for their audience. Thus, in fiction, for example, the term ''black comedy'' can also refer to a genre in which dark humor is a core component. Black comedy differs from blue comedy—which focuses more on topics such as nudity, sex, and body fluids—and from obscenity. Additionally, whereas the term ''black comedy'' is a relatively broad term covering humor relating to many serious subjects, ''gallows humor'' tends to be used more specifically in relation to death, or situations that are reminiscent of dying. Black humor can occasionally be related to the grotesque genre. Literary critics have associated black comedy and black humor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Body Horror
Body horror, or biological horror, is a subgenre of horror fiction that intentionally showcases grotesque or psychologically disturbing violations of the human body or of another creature. These violations may manifest through aberrant sex, mutations, mutilation, zombification, gratuitous violence, disease, or unnatural movements of the body. Body horror was a description originally applied to an emerging subgenre of North American horror films, but has roots in early Gothic literature and has expanded to include other media.Halberstam, J. (1995). ''Skin shows: Gothic horror and the technology of monsters''. Duke University Press. Characteristics According to the film scholar Linda Williams, body horror falls into one of three "gross" genres or "genres of excess" which also includes pornography and melodrama. Williams writes that the success of these body genres "is often measured by the degree to which the audience sensation mimics what is seen on the screen". For example, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Coffee House Press
Coffee House Press is a nonprofit independent press based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The press’s goal is to "produce books that celebrate imagination, innovation in the craft of writing, and the many authentic voices of the American experience." It is widely considered to be among the top five independent presses in the United States, and has been called a national treasure. The press publishes literary fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. History Coffee House began with ''Toothpaste'', a mimeograph magazine founded by Allan Kornblum in Iowa in 1970. After taking a University of Iowa typography course with the acclaimed Harry Duncan, Kornblum was inspired to turn ''Toothpaste'' into Toothpaste Press, a small publishing company dedicated to producing poetry pamphlets and letterpress books.Jessica Powers"The impulse to publish is the impulse to share enthusiasm". After 10 years of publishing letterpress books, Kornblum closed the press in December 1983; the following year, he moved ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Straub
Peter Francis Straub (; March 2, 1943 – September 4, 2022) was an American novelist and poet. He had success with several horror and supernatural fiction novels, among them ''Julia'' (1975), ''Ghost Story'' (1979) and ''The Talisman'' (1984), the latter co-written with Stephen King. He explored the mystery genre with the Blue Rose trilogy, consisting of ''Koko'' (1988), ''Mystery'' (1990) and ''The Throat'' (1993). He fused the supernatural with crime fiction in '' Lost Boy, Lost Girl'' (2003) and the related '' In the Night Room'' (2004). For the Library of America, he edited the volume ''H. P. Lovecraft: Tales'' and the anthology '' American Fantastic Tales''. Straub received such literary honors as the Bram Stoker Award, World Fantasy Award, and International Horror Guild Award. According to his ''New York Times'' obituary, Straub "brought a poet's sensibility to stories about ghosts, demons and other things that go bump in the night." Early life and education Str ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
