A Thing Is Only Known When It Is Gone
University of Wisconsin Press, 2025
Paper: 978-0-299-34894-6 | eISBN: 978-0-299-34898-4
Library of Congress Classification PS3602.A96276T48 2025
Dewey Decimal Classification 813.6
Paper: 978-0-299-34894-6 | eISBN: 978-0-299-34898-4
Library of Congress Classification PS3602.A96276T48 2025
Dewey Decimal Classification 813.6
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Flowers bloom from the body of a man after his lover’s touch. Grieving parents find a way to communicate with their lost children. A teacher with water in his veins is held accountable when the extracurricular club he advises goes rogue. In these and other fantastical stories, Joe Baumann explores relationships, mostly queer, through the lens of the bizarre.
The stories in A Thing Is Only Known When It Is Gone are told in lyrical, often startling prose. Baumann’s experimentation with the surreal avoids gimmick and easy metaphor, keeping the complexity of the characters at the center. The strange worlds of these protagonists distort and reflect our own back to us, like the funhouse mirrors in “Morphology” that begin to change the fabric of reality.
Ultimately, we may not want to live in a world in which our broken hearts are on display in external birdcages attached to our bodies. But Baumann’s sophisticated, nuanced storytelling makes us wonder, however briefly, whether such a world might be preferable to ours. The emotional poignancy at the heart of each of these stories reaches across the strangeness of all of our possible worlds, tying us together in the universal search for connection.
The stories in A Thing Is Only Known When It Is Gone are told in lyrical, often startling prose. Baumann’s experimentation with the surreal avoids gimmick and easy metaphor, keeping the complexity of the characters at the center. The strange worlds of these protagonists distort and reflect our own back to us, like the funhouse mirrors in “Morphology” that begin to change the fabric of reality.
Ultimately, we may not want to live in a world in which our broken hearts are on display in external birdcages attached to our bodies. But Baumann’s sophisticated, nuanced storytelling makes us wonder, however briefly, whether such a world might be preferable to ours. The emotional poignancy at the heart of each of these stories reaches across the strangeness of all of our possible worlds, tying us together in the universal search for connection.
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