“Haunting, original prose by a writer unlike any other on the planet. Jason Schwartz is a master.” —BEN MARCUS “[Schwartz] is complete, as genius agonizingly is.” —GORDON LISH JOHN THE POSTHUMOUS exists in between fiction and poetry, elegy and history: a kind of novella in objects, it is an anatomy of marriage and adultery, an interlocking set of fictional histories, and the staccato telling of a murder, perhaps two murders. Knives, old iron gates, antique houses in flames; Biblical citations, blood and a history of the American bed: the unsettling, half-perceived images, and their precise but alien manipulation by a master of the language will stay with readers. Its themes are familiar—violence, betrayal, failure—its depiction of these utterly original and hauntingly beautiful. JASON SCHWARTZ was born in New York and lives in Florida. The author of A German Picturesque, his work has appeared in American Letters & Commentary, Antioch Review, Conjunctions, New York Tyrant, The Quarterly, StoryQuarterly, Unsaid, and other publications. PRAISE FOR JASON SCHWARTZ JOHN THE POSTHUMOUS “Do I not, in speaking as I sense I must, exploit, for my own purpose, the uncanny beauty another man has made? They’re spangled feathers—the lives, the achievements, the properties of others. Who among us does not have a nest to keep stewarded with all the glitter gatherable in reach? Let me tell you something: if the act of the profiteer is what we are talking about, then living better, for my part, couldn’t be any better than my having lived long enough for me to enrich myself by dint of realizing the least proximity to the insuperably forged sentences of Jason Schwartz. As for the author, this mandarin heretofore hidden among us, there is positively nothing I can usefully say to you for him or of him or to him. He is complete, as genius agonizingly is. Can there be a more ghastly occupation? It is no guess that it had to have been terrible for Schwartz to have contained John the Posthumous and its equally uncontainable antecedent, the 1998 collection of sinuosities brought out as A German Picturesque. How reckless of Jason Schwartz for him to have recommended himself for the test of turning a totalized form of attention over to such a quality of suffering. Yes, the folly of it, declares your opportunistic intercessor. Oh, but how lucky the forerunner is!—how thrillingly, how terrifically, how unimprovably lucky.” —GORDON LISH A GERMAN PICTURESQUE “Grandly intrepid … In story after story, his cool language scrutinizes the world; behind this smooth prose seethe the violence and confusion of many lives, many acts … Unlike much so-called experimental fiction, Schwartz’s work contains genuine passion and invention.” —NEW YORK TIMES “A careful construct of repeated words, phrases and description lends the book a steady, subtle pulse which belies a guiding inner logic that is entirely its own … Those whose idea of a good-time read is a literary Rubik’s Cube have a colorful new toy on their hands.” —DETROIT FREE PRESS “An extraordinary, associative, allusive artist whose stories in scope, innuendo, subtlety are like reading T.S. Eliot in prose … Schwartz’s pieces can keep a reader mystified in almost every way who, why, what, where but never in the perfect logic of sentences moving forward one after another: what comes next, comes next, most often brilliantly and sometimes breathtakingly … His vast but miniaturist genius is for seeing the enormous in the tiny, the significant in the silent, the horror-filled in the mute, the voicelessly poetic in almost everything.” —KIRKUS REVIEWS ALSO BY JASON SCHWARTZ A German Picturesque © 2013 Jason Schwartz Portions of this book first appeared in American Letters & Commentary, The American Reader, The Antioch Review, failbetter, Green Mountains Review, H_NGM_N, New York Tyrant, Salt Hill, Unsaid, and Web Conjunctions. Published by OR Books, New York and London Visit our website at www.orbooks.com First printing 2013 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher, except brief passages for review purposes. Cataloging-in-Publication data is available from the Library of Congress. A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-939293-21-3 paperback ISBN 978-1-939293-22-0 e-book Typeset by Lapiz Digital, Chennai, India. Printed by BookMobile in the United States and CPI Books Ltd in the United Kingdom. The U.S. printed edition of this book comes on Forest Stewardship Council-certified, 30% recycled paper. The printer, BookMobile, is 100% wind-powered. SUSAN POLLARD 1943–1998