布赖恩·埃文森

Brian Evenson

生卒: 1966 –
国籍: 美国
外文名: Brian Evenson

照片：Rosiestep，CC BY-SA 4.0，来自维基共享资源「Brian Evenson at World Fantasy Convention 2026.jpg」（经缩小）。

生平与创作

这个词条暂时没有中文维基百科条目，下面是英文维基百科的内容（英文原文）：

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 who also draws inspiration from horror, weird fiction, detective fiction, science fiction and continental philosophy. Evenson makes frequent use of dark humor and often features characters struggling with the 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 there. As a young man, Brian Evenson served a two-year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) in France and Switzerland.

He received degrees from BYU (BA) and the University of Washington (MA and PhD). After leaving a teaching position at BYU, he held positions at Oklahoma State University, Syracuse University, and the University of Denver before being hired at Brown University. He was Professor of Literary Arts at Brown from 2003 to 2015.

BYU controversy

While teaching at BYU, Evenson was involved in a controversy surrounding his first book Altmann's Tongue (1994).

While a newly hired professor of creative writing at Brigham Young University (BYU), Brian Evenson published the story collection Altmann's Tongue, which included scenes of violence such as characters who are forced to eat mutilated tongues and who attempt to cut off their own limbs. Evenson stated the publishing contract for this book was a "significant factor" in his being hired, and he included some stories from the collection in his application to BYU. A graduate student complained anonymously to church leaders, claiming the work promoted the "enjoyment" of violence; Evenson responded by saying his fiction accentuated violence in an attempt to show its horror and "thus allow it to be condemned." Evenson's ecclesiastical leaders became involved in what he felt was a university personnel matter, and a senior faculty member planned to tell church authorities Evenson understood similar publications would "bring repercussions," but Evenson denied making such a statement. Evenson resigned from BYU in 1995, and left the church formally in 2000.

His case, along with others, was included in a report by the American Association of University Professors, which argued academic freedom was stifled at BYU.

Writing style and influences

Evenson's Ph.D. is in both literature and critical theory, and his work is subtly philosophical, particularly influenced by continental philosophy. Many of Evenson's recurrent themes of virtuality and "sensation" are traceable to Deleuze & Guattari's Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Altmann's Tongue opened with an epigraph by Julia Kristeva; Dark Property featured quotes in untranslated German from Martin Heidegger; and several of Evenson's books have epigraphs from philosopher Alphonso Lingis. However, Evenson has stated that he intends any philosophical elements to be fully integrated into his fiction rather than promoting any particular viewpoint, and has argued that reading philosophical works directly is more rewarding than reading philosophy that is veiled as fiction.

Some of Evenson's work explores his Mormon heritage, often from a critical perspective or examining controversial subject matter. For example, the main character of The Open Curtain (2006) becomes preoccupied with a murder committed in the early 1900s by William Hooper Young, a grandson of 19th-century Mormon leader Brigham Young, while Immobility (2012) takes place in a post-apocalyptic Utah and features some esoteric elements of LDS theology. Nonetheless, Evenson has asserted that he maintains a measure of respect for devout believers in the LDS Church and does not intend to casually offend or provoke them.

Evenson's work has been compared to that of J. G. Ballard, Jorge Luis Borges, Paul Bowles, Franz Kafka, William S. Burroughs, Cormac McCarthy, Robert Coover and Edgar Allan Poe (among others). Evenson has expressed admiration for horror novelist Peter Straub, and for crime fiction in the hardboiled genre, both past masters like Dashiell Hammett and Jim Thompson, and contemporary practitioners like Andrew Vachss.