Fear & Philosophy

Martin, Stephen-Paul

Literature & Fiction

Detour Press

Martin begins with predictions that western civilization underwent a paradigm shift in the 20th century. Older forms of rationality are patriarchal; artistic forms are closed conventions and fulfill norms of logic and causality. The emerging forms of thought are feminine, open, and incompleterequiring nurture and creative participation of the reader for meaning to exist.

Open Form and the Feminine Imagination (Postmodern Positions)

History & Criticism

Maisonneuve

Invading Reagan

Poetry

Generator Pr

Tales

Contemporary

Paradigm Press

Fiction. Stephen-Paul Martin has been called "one of our great deadpan humorists," by Eric Basso and "North America's foremost master of the short story" by Vernon Frazer. Marjorie Perloff has described his writing as "wildly comic," and Fanny Howe has called his stories "magnificent and entertaining." In CHANGING THE SUBJECT Martin once again deforms traditional notions of the story, giving us beautifully digressive revenge-fantasies, hysterical moral tales, and his singular, uncanny brand of the shaggy dog yarn. Kirpal Gordon writes, "What's so transformative in CHANGING THE SUBJECT is [the] range of knowledge--quantum mechanics, semiotics, literary theory, psychology &amp; meditation practice--delivered in a voice unpretentious yet outrageous, scary yet funny, reader-friendly yet beyond category."

Changing the Subject

Ellipsis Press

"Stephen-Paul Martin's not-quite fictions are as 'true' as they are wildly comic and horrifying. They are likely to begin with the most ordinary of situations- X wishes she had Y's brain - and turn the 'natural' on its head. Martin's seeming cool is actually a carefully channeled passion: a profoundly political writer, he plays on myth, legend, press release, and earlier fiction so as to show us what it is we really are. Not Quite Fiction represents Stephen-Paul Martin at his razor-sharp best." - Marjorie Perloff (from book's back cover)

Not quite fiction: Stephen-Paul Martin

Vatic Hum Press

Stephen-Paul Martin’s The Ace of Lightning is a series of interconnected stories focused on a turning point in Western history: the assassination in Sarajevo of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria which triggered World War I, and the mysterious circumstances that led Gavrilo Princip to shoot and kill the heir apparent to one of Europe’s most powerful empires. Far from being a conventional work of historical fiction, Martin’s collection asks readers to think about what truly constitutes history. What would the past look like if history was written under the influence of Mad Magazine and The Twilight Zone? What happens when the assassination in Sarajevo becomes “the assassination in Sarajevo,” when Gavrilo Princip becomes “Gavrilo Princip,” when the past and the present shape a textual future that looks suspiciously like a past that never was and a present that never is?

The Ace of Lightning (Fc2)

United States

Fiction Collective 2

Fiction. In the seven new stories that comprise INSTEAD OF CONFUSION, Stephen -Paul Martin continues his ongoing critique of American popular culture, politics, and morality, while simultaneously exploring the boundaries of history, language and fiction itself. Stephen-Paul Martin is the author of nineteen books of fiction, poetry and nonfiction, including The Gothic Twilight, which was nominated for the National Critikcs Circle award in 1993. Between 1980 and 1996 he edited Central Park magazine in New York City.

Instead of Confusion

Asylum Arts

Stephen-Paul Martin’s TwentyTwenty reminds us that in his finest moments, he’s the king of writing degree zero, the American Albert Camus, if Camus had a sense of humor. “He stares at the seemingly random combination of numbers and letters, then shrugs and clicks. There’s a flash on his screen, a clip of someone jerking off in a bedroom. Clark thinks it might be a picture of himself right before the phone rang, but the image is gone before he can see it clearly.” His straightforward yet unaccountably insane prose is anomie trapped in a bounce house. His seemingly relaxed narrative is “a leash that can be jerked at any moment,” as his hapless protagonists, in stories like “Almost Famous” and “Just Another Emergency” obsess over people’s fake smiles, mermaids who appear out of nowhere, and the political soul destroyers who mask their evil intentions with bland and obvious gestures in a nation soothed to boredom by the grotesquerie of the commonplace. 
Johnny Payne, 
author of Confessions of a Gentleman Killer 
Stephen-Paul Martin is North America’s foremost master of the short story. His fiction probes 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, on Changing the Subject

Twenty Twenty

Humor & Satire

Spuyten Duyvil Publishing

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Books by Martin, Stephen-Paul