White Dialogues

Praise for A Questionable Shape

•BARD FICTION PRIZE 2014

•THE BELIEVER BOOK AWARD FINALIST

•ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2013 —Complex Magazine, Book Riot, Slate, The L Magazine, NPR’s On Point, Salon

“Equal parts David Foster Wallace and Richard Matheson […] A Questionable Shape is certainly the first Proustian zombie novel, but hopefully not the last horror novel of ideas.” —Slate

“A Questionable Shape is a rewriting of the genre in rather literal sense… Sims’ zombie novel perhaps contains the highest proportion of great descriptions of light per page since Proust.” —Los Angeles Review of Books

“Evokes the power of David Foster Wallace with a narrative that’s cerebral, strangely beautiful, philosophical, and pretty, well, brilliant.” —Bustle

“A Questionable Shape presents the yang to the yin of Whitehead’s Zone One, with chess games, a dinner invitation, and even a romantic excursion. Echoes of [Thomas] Bernhard’s hammering circularity and [David Foster] Wallace’s bright mind that can’t stop making connections are both present. The point is where the mind goes, and, in that respect, Sims has his thematic territory down cold.” —The Daily Beast

“Unlike anything I’d ever read. Underlying the seemingly quirky subject matter of Sims’ novel is a notable linguistic dynamism and impressive command of philosophical challenges. Sims’ work has a life of its own.” —Full Stop

“Yes, it’s a zombie novel, but also an emotionally resonant meditation on memory and loss.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“Sims demonstrates he isn’t just smart—he’s brilliant; his book’s not beautiful—it’s gorgeous. It’s sensitive, insightful and ruminative, which aren’t always things you get to say about zombie fiction, let alone most books.” —The L Magazine

Versions of these stories appeared in the following publications: ‘House-sitting’ in Tin House; ‘The Bookcase’ in Zoetrope: All-Story; ‘Ekphrases’ in A Public Space; ‘Two Guys Watching Cujo on Mute’ in Story; ‘City of Wolfmen’ in The Iowa Review; ‘Destroy All Monsters’ in Orion Magazine; ‘Fables’ in Conjunctions and Subtropics (as ‘The Balloon’), as well as in the Pushcart Prize Anthology; ‘A Premonition’ in Gigantic; ‘Radical Closure’ in Conjunctions; ‘White Dialogues’ in Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading.

For Sam

CONTENTS

House-sitting

The Bookcase

Ekphrases

Two Guys Watching Cujo on Mute

City of Wolfmen

Destroy All Monsters

Fables

Za

A Premonition

Radical Closure

White Dialogues

House-sitting

‘Spiders as nature’s craziness, I often think.’

—Thomas Bernhard, Gargoyles

Within moments of arriving at the cabin, you begin to suspect that the owner is a madman.

The place is in a state of disrepair. Isolated from the mountain town of N— by half an hour’s drive, and separated from the road by a mile’s hike down a narrowing footpath, the cabin is a perfect hermitage: a single-story log structure standing alone in a weedy grass field, which is itself in the middle of the mountainside’s thick pine forests. Hidden from sight, the property has been allowed to dilapidate. The front yard’s weeds have grown waist-high, and they advance on the cabin as far as its banister. When a wind blows to bend them, seed-gone grasses lap at the porch. And leaning close to the cabin are a couple of pine trees whose untrimmed branches rake at its roof. The cabin could not look any more like a ruin. Yet you have reason to know that it is not a ruin. A human being—the cabin’s owner, your new employer—still lives in this place. If the property is disheveled, then it must mirror the dishevelment of his mind.