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Page 23 May–June 2009 Less is More Robert Glick Last Days Brian Evenson Underland Press http://www.underlandpress.com 256 pages; paper, $12.95 In Brian Evenson’s disturbing and absurd linked novellas Last Days, a one-eyed guard responds to a knock on the door with the query, “What is wanted?” Signaling both the desire for something and its absence, the word “wanted” maps the terrain of a book in which almost every character is a voluntary amputee. At the cauterized suture of absence and presence, logic fails: as the caption to a pinup magazine of amputated women perversely states, Less is More. Or, as one brother quips, shouldn’t the count of amputations work in the negative, as minus-one rather than as plus-one? It is these “fallen” logics, irrational systems that demand either unwavering faith or a violent attempt at epistemological resolution , that Kline, the novellas’ protagonist detective, must navigate, presumably to solve a crime at the isolated compound of The Brotherhood of Mutilation . Last Days applies pressure to the definition of humanity in a gory universe where violence governs the all-too-human curiosity for knowledge. Though its simple language, rapid pacing, and action-packed plot make Last Days an incredibly quick read, the book is by no means simple. Much of its complexity stems from the texts and genres it engages with in conversation about the human condition . The twisted logic of faith, in which the biblical concept of cutting off one’s own hand becomes the fundamental tenet of The Brotherhood of Mutilation, casts a cynical eye on religion. Those with biographical knowledge of Evenson (and perhaps those versed in Mormon symbolism/iconography) will intuit that allegories of religion in Last Days take particular aim at the Mormon Church. Still, the book targets institutionalized Judeo-Christianity in general. Characteristic of the paradoxes of faith-based logic, the arbitrary dictates of The Brotherhood allow Kline to pursue the criminal only because Kline is a mutilate , but forces him to lose (against his will) three toes in order to be allowed to interview a brother with significantly more amputations. In the act of amputation as a procession towards the divine, we become simultaneously less human (the loss of limb, our proximity to God) and more human (the innate condition of pain, the cycle of sin and purification, our awareness of our material condition). The unstable nature of the human condition, especially as it is evoked on almost every page by the disfigured body, calls to mind Julia Kristeva’s definition of the abject. As the moment of abjection highlights the fluid distinction between self and other, Last Days constantly tests claims by members of The Brotherhood of Mutilation that their amputations bind them. Kline, while rejecting declarations of kinship, nonetheless feels physical sensation in his phantom limb when viewing other people’s amputations. The “amputation parties” held by The Brotherhood, in which members publicly undergo amputations, exemplifies the Kristevan notion that abjection involves both a measure of jouissance and the (temporary) consolidation of identity. Another avenue of inquiry traces a path from Last Days to the oeuvre of Samuel Beckett. Imagistically, the nod to Beckett takes form in the characterofAline,whois the most faithful and perhaps least human leader of The Brotherhood. Aline resembles many of Beckett’s characters: limbless, eyeless, earless , lipless, his buttocks shaved away. Evenson and Beckett also depict a life cycle that catapults humans forward in search of some totalizing value that, upon cognition of its impossible reach, forces a revision of their subjectivity. As a result of his encounter with “The Gentleman with the Cleaver,” Kline has lost an arm. Depressed, he doesn’t have the energy to begin the next phase of his life. Much like Aline (their names require an amputation of a letter to become alike), Kline is confined to bed. His curiosity and desire to solve the crime, albeit prompted by men with guns, leads to gallons of spilled blood and nothing close to epiphany, especially as he doesn’t realize that he is being framed for Aline’s murder. The compulsion to knowledge may crack Kline’s depression, but not much is learned, and...

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