Changing the Subject by Stephen-Paul Martin
ISBN 978-0-9637536-5-6 | Fiction | 204 pages | $14
Publication date: 10/10/10.
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Review on Goodreads.
In Changing the Subject Stephen-Paul Martin once again deforms traditional notions of the story, giving us beautifully digressive revenge-fantasies, his singular and uncanny brand of the shaggy dog yarn, and uproarious moral tales.
Praise for Changing the Subject
In Stephen-Paul Martin’s new book, utterly banal situations are transformed into something extraordinary. His stories are unbirthday presents from the Mad Hatter. He is one of our great deadpan humorists.
—Eric Basso
What’s so transformative in Changing the Subject is Stephen-Paul Martin’s wizard-like range of knowledge–quantum mechanics, semiotics, literary theory, psychology & meditation practice–delivered in a voice unpretentous yet outrageous, scary yet funny, reader-friendly yet beyond category.
—Kirpal Gordon
Marked by subversive wit and philosophical insight, Martin’s prose is ultimately musical in construction, like a fugue for the ruin of time. Here, irony and longing coexist in counterpoint: Martin, a humanist in a posthuman age, is still composing figures of redemption.
—Andrew Joron
Stephen-Paul Martin is North America’s foremost master of the short story. The narrators of Martin’s new stories probe center after elusive center, until we see that it’s not just the subject that’s changing, but also our sense of what it means for a story to have a subject.
—Vernon Frazer
Praise for Stephen-Paul Martin
[Stephen-Paul Martin's] fiction is fresh, breaks new ground, and concedes nothing to conventional literary formulas.
—Ronald Sukenick
Martin spins his arresting tales, tales full of surprises and yet reassuringly “normal.” The Possibility of Music is a joy to read.
—Marjorie Perloff
Stephen-Paul Martin has, for many years, brilliantly wrestled with the problems posed by his own chosen material/experience. Entering his witty contemporary monologues, the reader unravels the great questions: does a person anticipate his or her own actions, as one word in a sentence anticipates the next? Or is an event an explosion of contingencies that arrive fully integrated? “I didn’t expect to become a composer,” he begins one story and this one statement articulates the magnificent and entertaining wrestling match he performs with time and act in each of his beautifully crafted stories.
—Fanny Howe
Read an excerpt
About Stephen-Paul Martin
Stephen-Paul Martin, former editor of Central Park magazine, has published many books of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry — including The Possibility of Music (FC2) and Instead of Confusion (Asylum Arts). He is currently a professor of English at San Diego State University.
