A collection of short fiction by Stephen Dixon, What Is All This? features one bizarre, baffling tale after another. Not baffling in the sense of being incomprehensible, but rather in the way in which it is nearly impossible to imagine how one human mind could have ever conceived such a breadth of strange and wonderful stories.

I don’t know anything about Dixon, really, other than that the folks at Fantagraphics Books find him worth publishing, and when they recently sent me a small booklet containing seven of the stories to be featured in the 450-page What Is All This?, I sat down with it having no preconceived notions about the author’s writing at all.

Each story is as different from every other one as stories by separate authors would be. Not that Dixon doesn’t have a unique and identifiable voice, because he does — kind of a surreal blend of Kafka and Carver — but because the concerns and themes of each tale are discreet, wrapped up in distinct packages of narrative genius.

“Knock Knock,” is the story that really convinced me I had lucked on to something good with Dixon; some will find it brilliant, most will likely find it incredibly aggravating. It is nothing more or less than a tour of the mind of someone suffering deeply from obsessive-compulsive disorder, thinking about two knocks on the door, and allowing a fractal explosion of possibility to cripple the protagonist’s effort to simply answer the frigging door already. It’s brilliant; it’s aggravating; it’s incredible, is “Knock Knock.”

“The Neighbors,” is the most Carveresque tale in the preview booklet; it seems to be about two squabbling neighbours at a standoff over who will move out last and collect the biggest payday from the developers looking to tear down their apartment building. In reality, the story is about psychic warfare and the stripping away of human civility that any one of us is always just one blind corner away from experiencing.

I’ll skip the other vastly entertaining and thought-provoking stories I read in the preview and skip to the end, to tell you that “The Leader,” is just one of the best and most engaging pieces of short fiction I’ve ever read, and that no matter what your perceptions and conclusions as you make your way through its plain-spoken (if bizarre and challenging) narrative, you absolutely will be astonished by its ultimate resolution. I can’t tell you a goddamned thing about “The Leader,” without spoiling its utter narrative perfection, so let me say that you won’t find a more shocking or downright extraordinary piece of fiction to spend some time within, and you won’t soon forget what happens inside it. I’m not sure I’ll read anything better this year.

What Is All This, based on my reading of this short and enticing preview, looks to be one of the most exciting and intriguing fiction releases of the decade. That I’ve only had a chance to read less than a quarter of its 450 pages is maddening, and thrilling. I can’t wait to read the rest of what Dixon has in store.

— Alan David Doane