Dread

by Robert Steiner

Comments on Dread and Robert Steiner's writing:

"[Dread] is like to prove a major event ... I cannot help but reiterate my enthusiasm for this latest novel, so superbly rich and ironic, dramatic and large of vision." —John Hawkes

"Steiner is a rare sort of writer ... a kind of poet among novelists, intensely lyrical, highly intelligence, a shrewd and elegant craftsman." —Robert Coover

"A hyperrealistic talent that eroticizes everything. Objects of desire are obscure, casting spells — an artist who knows so well how to balance them on burning quicksand." —L'Express (France)

"Steiner's prose is taut, his imagery — at its best — shocking and original. He makes the world tilt, provides a new way of seeing." —North American Review

Genres: Fiction

188 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1987

Reviews

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 3 out of 5]

(3.5) Dread opens with a mystery: the narrator's wife has disappeared. But as with many—if not most—postmodern ‘mysteries,’ the mystery is of little consequence. Here, the plot revolves most extensively around the shadowy character known as Keller. The first part of the book is titled ‘Not Keller’ and it is unsurprisingly narrated by someone other than Keller. The second part of the book is titled ‘Keller’ and it is indeed narrated by the person known as Keller. Throughout both sections we learn just enough about Keller to stimulate even more wondering about him. The timelines in this book flow in and out of linearity. Two American couples vacation together in southern Europe, where they encounter the mysterious Keller on a boat. Eventually their fates become inextricably linked together. But what do we ever find out about Keller or these other people that would lead us to any definitive conclusions. There are endless possibilities. It’s like how near the end of the novel Keller describes imagining different lives for himself, each of them lived to completion. Except this is a postmodern novel so there is no completion in the conventional sense of the word. And I doubt anyone picking this book up would expect otherwise. However, they might enjoy passages such as this:

In the fall one finally takes there is a desire to restore wonder to familiar objects. Old things resonate in new ways, moving so that what was statuary when life was simply being led is suddenly projected like a film on the screen of an eye’s whiteness. Yet while it may be true that an unexamined life is not worth living I am not convinced studied life is much of an improvement. To realize one has enacted a ritual does not, it seems to me, soften the slightest injury. It only causes one to ask, perhaps for the first time, who was it that suffered most and who was reborn because of it. Knowing, somewhere in us, that our lives are ruefully laboratorial we are nonetheless vigilant to free them, keep them moving, keep them ours. Even the worst catastrophe, because we have survived it, becomes just another part of our experience. In fact, do we not consider ourselves stronger because of it, as though our characters fed on disaster? In a short time we make the best out of the worst and may finally believe that we survived because of our character.

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

Don't be fooled ::

1) Hawkes blurb. [ Hawkes (!) blurb!!]
2) Coover blurb.
3) Sun&MoonPress

er, hell. If you're not fooled by that you're a posing hipster and I hate you.