Changing the Subject

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 meditation practice--delivered in a voice unpretentious yet outrageous, scary yet funny, reader-friendly yet beyond category."