Severance E-Book

Robert Olen Butler

• Herausgeber: No Exit Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 88

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

The human head is believed to remain in a state of consciousness for one and one-half minutes after decapitation. In a heightened state of emotion, people speak at the rate of 160 words per minute. Inspired by the intersection of these two seemingly unrelated concepts, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler wrote sixty-two stories, each exactly 240 words in length, capturing the flow of thoughts and feelings that go through a person's mind after their head has been severed. The characters are both real and imagined Medusa (beheaded by Perseus, 2000 BC), Anne Boleyn (beheaded at the behest of Henry VIII, 1536), a chicken (beheaded for Sunday dinner, Alabama, 1958), and the author (decapitated, on the job, 2008). Told with the intensity of a poet and the wit of a great storyteller, these final thoughts illuminate and crystallize more about the characters' own lives and the worlds they inhabit than many writers manage to convey in full-length biographies or novels. The stories, which have appeared in literary magazines across the country, are a delightful and intriguing creative feat from one of today's most inventive writers.

Leseprobe

Severance

Robert Owen Butler, Pulitzer-prize winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, is one of the most inventive writers of our time. This book is inspired by the juxtaposition of two seemingly unrelated facts: first, that the human head is believed to remain in a state of consciousness for one and one-half minutes after decapitation, and second, that, in a heightened state of emotion, we speak at the rate of 160 words per minute. Based on this maths, he has written sixty-two stories, each exactly 240 words in length, giving voice to the flow of thoughts and feelings that go through a person’s mind in the minute and a half after their head has been severed. The beheadings are both real and imagined - of characters ranging from Valeria Messalina, beheaded by her husband, Emperor Claudius I of Rome in 48AD, to Anne Boleyn beheaded by Henry VIII in 1536, to a chicken beheaded for Sunday dinner in Alabama in 1958, to the author himself, decapitated on the job in 2008. The final thoughts are not morbid or macabre, but are a way of looking back on a person’s life and the world they inhabited. Each is told with the intensity of poetry and the wit of a great storyteller.

In the first two books of his acclaimed Christopher Marlowe Cobb series, The Hot Country and The Star of Istanbul, Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler captured the hearts of historical crime fiction fans with the artfulness of his World War I settings and his charismatic leading man, a Chicago journalist recruited by American intelligence. The Emperor of Night follows.

PRAISE FORTHE EMPIRE OF NIGHT

‘Mr. Butler does a terrific job of depicting both the journalist’s facility for teasing information from his subjects and the spy’s incessant fear of being discovered. There’s something almost magical about the way the author re-creates this 1915 milieu...’ - The Wall Street Journal

PRAISE FORTHE STAR OF ISTANBUL

‘Zestful, thrilling . . . a ripping good yarn’ — Wall Street Journal

‘An outstanding work of historical fiction’ — Huntington News

‘The Star of Istanbul has it all: history galore, exotic foreign settings, a world-weary yet engaging protagonist, villains in abundance and a romance worthy of Bogart and Bergman’ — BookPage

‘Double and triple crosses merge like lanes in a traffic roundabout, and . . . the novel commingles character-driven historical fiction with melodrama and swashbuckling action. Somehow . . . it all works; on one level, Butler is playing with genre conventions in an almost mad-scientist manner, but at the same time, he holds the reader transfixed, like a kid at a Saturday matinee’ — Booklist (starred review)

‘Butler impresses with his exceptional attention to historical detail, particularly aboard the Lusitania’ — Publishers Weekly

‘Butler is an excellent observer of interior psychological detail . . . and his fine description of the Lusitania’s demise shows he can write action-packed scenes as well. . . . It’s a pleasure to watch Cobb clear away layer upon layer of scheming and disguises to expose some ugly truths about humanity’ — Kirkus Reviews

‘While The Star of Istanbul meets the genre requirements for action and plotting, the precision and lyricism of Butler’s language, his incisive observations, his psychologically complex characters, and his understanding of the past lift this novel well into a genre of its own’ — Arts Fuse

‘Butler’s grasp of history is excellent. . . . You will enjoy every new twist and turn in this spy game’ — Arab Voice

‘[Butler’s] description of the aftermath of the attack on the Lusitania will leave you with your heart in your mouth. . . Yet another remarkable work from an author who continues, at this advanced stage of his career, to surpass himself’ — Bookreporter

‘Butler’s description of the sinking of the Lusitania is exceptional . . . In Cobb, Butler has created an appealing hero’ — Readers Unbound

‘An exciting thriller with plenty of action, romance, and danger. . . Fans of historical spy fiction will enjoy this fast-paced journey through a world at war’ —Library Journal

PRAISE FORTHE HOT COUNTRY

‘The Hot Country draws on many elements of the traditional adventure yarn, including disguises, fist fights and foot races, double agents and alluring young women who may be honey traps or spies... though in prose that has been written with serious attention... this first report makes you want to read on into the war correspondent’s second edition.’

- Guardian

‘combines a fast-moving plot with characters of a complexity that is not always found in such fiction’ - Sunday Times

‘a genuine and exhilarating success’ - Times Literary Supplement

‘a historical thriller of admirable depth and intelligence’ - BBC History Magazine

‘Exciting story...The Hot Country is a thinking person’s historical thriller, the kind of exotic adventure that, in better days, would have been filmed by Sam Peckinpah’

- Washington Post

‘high-spirited adventure.... great writing’

- New York Times

‘Literate, funny, action-packed, vivid, and intriguing’

- Historical Novel Society

‘A fine stylist, Butler renders the time and place in perfect detail’

-Publishers Weekly

‘Butler writes thrilling battle scenes, cracking dialogue and evocative description, and the plot of The Hot Country keeps twisting to the very end’

-Tampa Bay Times

‘Pancho Villa, fiery senoritas, and Germans up to no good – Butler is having fun in The Hot Country and readers will too. An intelligent entertainment with colourful history’

-Joseph Canon

‘a spirited and beautifully told tale of adventure and intrigue in the grand old style, rich in both insight and atmosphere. Going off to war with Kit Cobb is as bracing and fun as it used to be in George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman books, or in Perez-Reverte’s Captain Alatriste novels. And the best part is that there are more to come. Saddle up’

- Dan Fesperman, Hammett award-winning author of The Double Game

Robert Olen Butler is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of sixteen novels, six story collections and a book on the creative process, From Where You Dream. A recipient of both a Guggenheim Fellowship in fiction and a National Endowment for the Arts grant, he also won the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. He has twice won a National Magazine Award in Fiction and has received two Pushcart Prizes. In 2013 he won the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature. He teaches creative writing at Florida State University.

robertolenbutler.com

SEVERANCE

Stories

ROBERT OLEN BUTLER

NO EXIT PRESS

First published in the UK in 2015

by No Exit Press, an imprint of Oldcastle Books

P O Box 394,

Harpenden, AL5 1XJ, UK

noexit.co.uk

The stories in this book originally appeared in Agni Magazine, The Cincinnati Review, Five Points, The Georgia Review, Glimmer Train, The Kenyon Review, McSweeney’s, Ninth Letter, Open City, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, Tin House, 21 Magazine, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and Water-Stone Review.

All rights reserved

© Robert Olen Butler, 2015

The right of Robert Olen Butler to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

ISBN

978–1–84344–756-6 (epub)

978-1-84344-757-3 (kindle)

978-1-84344-758-0 (pdf)

Typeset by Geethik Technologies, Madurai

With special thanks to Jay Schaefer, Catherine Argand, and Isabelle Reinharez, and to David Baker, James Cummins, and David Lehman.

After careful study and due deliberation it is my opinion the head remains conscious for one minute and a half after decapitation.

—DR. DASSY D’ESTAING, 1883

In a heightened state of emotion, we speak at the rate of 160 words per minute.

—DR. EMILY REASONER, A Sourcebook of Speech, 1975

for ELIZABETH

This book began when I showed you my beloved Saigon and we stood before the guillotine at the War Crimes Museum, long before the fall of the blade.

Contents

Mud

Medusa

Marcus Tullius Cicero

John the Baptist

Valeria Messalina

Dioscorus

Paul (Saul of Tarsus)

Matthew

Valentine

Dragon

George

The Lady of the Lake

Ah Balam

Piers Gaveston

Gooseneck (Gansnacken)

Thomas More

Anne Boleyn

Catherine Howard

Lady Jane Grey

Mary Stuart

Walter Raleigh

Brita Gullsmed

Louis XVI

Marie Antoinette

Marie-Jeanne Bécu (Comtesse Du Barry)

Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier

André Chénier

Maximilien Robespierre

Pierre-François Lacenaire

Ta Chin

Jacob

Angry Eyes

Chin Chin Chan

Dave Rudabaugh

Agnes Gwenlan

Charles H. Stuart

Rokhel Pogorelsky

John Martin

Henri Landru

Paul Gorguloff

Benita Von Berg

Nguyen Van Trinh

Alwi Shah

Chicken

Vera Jayne Palmer (Stage Name, Jayne Mansfield)

Le Van Ky

Kimitake Hiraoka (Pen Name, Yukio Mishima)

Robert Kornbluth

Jennifer Hadley

Nicole Brown Simpson

Mohammed Aziz Najafi

Lydia Koenig

Claude Messner

Lois Kennerly

Isioma Owolabi

Hanadi Tayseer Jaradat

Earl Daggett

Maisie Hobbs

Robert Durand

Tyler Alkins

Vasil Bukhalov

Robert Olen Butler

The Heads

MUD

man, beheaded by saber-toothed

tiger, circa 40,000 B.C.