The Bumblebee Knows it can Fly: Genre and the Gothic
This week, I kicked a few more pieces of the new novel into place, which felt good. It’s at a peculiar stage: I know the general plot arc, but I’m not ready to start writing. Partly, I need to know the characters better. But also, there’s more substance and under-the-surface thinking I need to figure out.
It felt too superficial. A colourful facade with nothing beneath. And so, I’ve been continuing my research: not only delving into Toronto history, but also theories of the Gothic and the sublime.
Including this roundtable on Southern Ontario Gothic!
Coles’ notes: Southern Ontario Gothic blends realism with terror, generally through explorations of family dysfunction, decay, decrepitude, and repressed trauma. In Southern Ontario. The conversation is well worth watching in full, especially for its characterization of Canada as a haunted country, which suggests a way to reconcile some artistic problems I’ve been having.
I was particularly struck by Jane Urquhart. First of all, because she reminds me of Elizabeth Hand—slightly in mannerism; greatly in her razor intelligence.
But also, because of this:
I think that, as an author, I write about what intrigues me, and then it’s later that somebody else decides that whether or not I’m part of some kind of movement.
And:
The genre was handed to the writer. The writer did not think to him or herself—“I know, I’m going to write something in the Southern Ontario Gothic genre.” I don’t think writers think like that. They don’t invent genres.
It was interesting. It’s not even that I necessarily disagree with her—I just want to explore these ideas further.
I think there is often a bumblebee-doesn’t-know-it-can’t-fly phenomenon going on with the development of new literature. Look at steampunk: K.W. Jeter only coined the term after he, Tim Powers, and James Blaylock had produced early examples of it. And once you have a name for something, once you have tropes—that’s when the family resemblances start appearing in subsequent works, whether the author intended them or not.
So what about when the genre is already established? I mean, the Creepy Play was initially code-named “Southern Ontario Gothic.” I wrote the script knowing exactly which genre it was.
But then—as Urquhart said, the genre was handed to the writer. I didn’t fit the story to the genre; I fit the genre to the story. (“Oh, wow, this is a dysfunctional family shot through with degeneration and repression—in Southern Ontario—I think I know what shelf this goes on!” rather than, “I want to write SOG, so I’d better build a family on the brink of collapse…”)
Going further with the bumblebee theory, I know some writers who refuse to read anything in their genre, for fear of contamination. For me, though—I fall back on my Stonecoast training. If you’re writing a Gothic novel, you read other Gothic novels. You read the early ones; you read the most recent; you read the literary criticism surrounding them. It’s important to understand where the genre came from, how it developed, and what people are saying now. Because it’s a dialogue—and you’re part of it. How can you contribute if you don’t know what’s been said before?
As for writing what intrigues me—I’m intrigued by the haunted, the degenerate, the many shades of family dysfunction. I’m intrigued by the liminal space between realism and the fantastic: the place where the worlds cross. I’m intrigued by the mountain of CanLit I’ve consumed this year: but I want to add magic.
So no—I don’t think (most) writers set out to create genres. But I think it is useful to have some idea of what you’re working with; what you intend to do. It’s like painting: tempera, oils, and watercolours all behave differently, and they all create different effects.
Perhaps we don’t name the movement. But surely, we imagine its form and colours…
-KT
What I’m Listening to This Week
I cycled back to a lovely Scottish-Gaelic piece. There’s still something about this music that makes me want to write all the things…
Transitions and Replenishment
I’m tired.
I’m tired, and depleted, and there is so very much to be done. But in fairness, it’s not wholly unexpected; this is a transitional period. Heavy lifting and shifting ground comes with the territory. As my mom put it, it’s like a monkey swinging through jungle: you can’t let go of the old vine until you have the new firmly in hand.
(Well, you can—I have done in the past—but you have to accept the risk of falling.)
I’m mostly just whining, to be honest. Because I’m uncomfortable, because I’m tired. But I keep telling myself that things will be better on the other side—I just have to get there.
I have noticed one thing, though: this whole past week, I’ve been yearning to find a secluded cabin and stuff myself with art. Paintings. Books. Music. Preferably surrounded by woods and lakes, with no people around. Introvert heaven.
Which is how I know I’m tired. It’s the spiritual/creative equivalent of my anaemia-driven oyster cravings. This is my subconscious’ way of trying to replenish the energy I’ve put out.
And so I’ve taken some concrete steps (I believe in taking concrete steps). In a month’s time, I’m heading north to Georgian Bay for some trees, water, and dark starry skies. Only for a long weekend, but I’ll take what I can get.
In the meantime, I’ve been stuffing myself with art. Late last week, I took a rare day off. I went to the Art Gallery of Ontario, which is rapidly becoming one of my favourite refuges. (The knot in my chest dissolved within minutes of entering the galleries.) It was a fairly short excursion; I mostly wanted to see my favourite paintings and splurge on fancy espresso.
But I did play a little game. Sometimes when I’m learning about my characters, I take them to museums. That is, I wander museums and I let them chatter quietly in the background. What’s familiar to them, what’s weird, what are they drawn to?
For instance, I like Victorian Romanticism and Impressionism, like this:
My protagonist very quickly decided she likes twentieth-century abstract art: “The ones that look broken, but aren’t.”
So I suppose I was working even while off, but I know her better now. I’m not ready to start writing this novel yet, but we’re getting closer…
Then I explored the new Grange Park (gorgeous) and hit the library to restock on books (more CanLit, plus a collection of Octavia Butler shorts).
While I feel vaguely guilty for not working in the midst of so much happening, these are the things which keep me going. They give me enough energy to get through the woods, grab the next vine.
This feels like a turning point. I just need to hold on a while longer.
-KT
What I’m Listening to this Week
Back with my pal Handel, and the “Amen” chorus from the end of Messiah. I’ve been absentmindedly singing this all week, albeit with the words to the Sanctus. Not sure what’s happening there.
In any case, enjoy the supporting strings and percussion, along with the graceful dance between the vocal lines. The tenors have a particularly beautiful moment around the 2:19 mark. And at the very end— no uses expectant silence like Handel!
Weddings, Writers, and Friendships
My dear friends Erik and Katrina got married this weekend! It was a gorgeous ceremony, an awesome party after, and of course, wonderful people in attendance. As a bonus, there were friends I usually only see at cons: not nearly often enough.
Back around the Nebulas, I thought about what a funny thing convention culture is. Conventions are like pocket universes—full of people you love, but strangely separate from everyday life. They’re business and social life rolled into one, and when we land in Ottawa, Baltimore, Boston, wherever—we simply pick up where we left off in whichever city hosted us last.
Looking at my friends at this wedding, I met half at World Fantasy, and half at Ad Astra. (Fittingly, that includes the couple: I met Erik at one, Katrina at the other.) And I’m a little misty-eyed to think—from these conversations in carpeted hallways, these moments stolen from conference rooms and hotel bars—we become part of others’ lives in such a meaningful way.
One of the beautiful things about cons is how they act as a nexus point. My friends range across Canada and the United States: from the Deep South to New England to Ontario, and over to the West Coast. I never would have met them if we weren’t drawn to these cities like moths to a flame.
During the dancing on Saturday, I had a little shiver of joy. Seriously, it was really cool. We’d gone from panels to dance floors, readings to toasts, hugs of goodbye to hugs of congratulations. It’s been a lot of experiences in many different contexts.Writing can be terribly lonely. It’s easy to feel isolated. This weekend was a beautiful reminder of the friendship that brings joy to the road.
Erik and Katrina: you looked beautiful, your joy was palpable, and I wish you many happy years together.
With love,
KT
What I’m Listening to this Week
You all know that I’m unflinchingly honest in this section. Last week, we had 14th century sacred music. This week, we have Taylor Swift. Yes, I have a few of her songs in my library. And this week, this one got firmly lodged in my ears:
Under the Shadow
So, I had a post all written about the existential anxiety caused by the threat of nuclear war.
But then, this tweet…
…became only the second-worst thing to happen last week.
There have been so many words of fury and mourning spoken about the events in Charlottesville, but I’ll add mine anyway. Through Saturday, I alternated between cold anger and heartbrokenness.
Three people are dead. That it happened in Virginia heightened my emotions – if I have adopted any state, it’s Virginia – but really, it would’ve been equally reprehensible in any state.
This is 2017. We should not be tolerating Nazis. We should not be apologists for them. We should not even see them. The world fought a war about that very fact. It was this whole entire thing.
And my anger spins into froth because – have they learned nothing? Do they have no awareness? How does one read the diary of Anne Frank – look at the photos of mountains upon mountains of shoes – listen to survivors’ interviews and testimony – visit concentration camps – and not see that this is evil? How does one see that evil and embrace it anyway?
There are no two sides to this. There is the side of evil and that of right. Right is not always polite. It is not always tender or gentle. Sometimes it is loud and uncomfortable, because right is brave, always.
A vague cop-out about “all sides” is cowardice that makes my stomach turn.
“We want to preserve what we have,” says neo-Nazi Peter Cjvetanovic. And yes, unwittingly, he laid it all out. They want to preserve a system which favours them and them alone. They want to maintain their privilege and overpowering voice. They want to stay at the top, even if they must crush everyone else to do it.
Based on the widespread condemnation, I hope – desperately – that we are seeing the spasmodic death throes of a way of life that is passing. The dinosaurs must have raged too, when they saw the night falling.
The events of this weekend are indeed America. They could be Canada, too. They are the result of decades of ossified racism, misogyny, and inequality. But this is not who we must be. We know who we want to be – let us work harder than ever to get there.
“In spite of everything,” Anne Frank wrote, “I still believe that people are really good at heart.”
I believe that too. Now let us prove it.
And let us not fall into nuclear war, either.
-KT
What I’m Listening to This Week
A long one this week: I’ve just been running Machaut’s Messe de Nostre Dame while I work. It’s a 14th century polyphonic mass, and it is gorgeous. The way the parts fit together is so different from my usual Renaissance polyphony—and I love the ornamental quavers so very, very much.
The Raspberries are Gone: Nature and Rhythms
So I had a visitor recently that did the whole, “Don’t you wish you lived in the 1800s?” thing, and I gave my usual response of enjoying twenty-first century plumbing, medicine, and women’s suffrage. But then he asked,
“Is there anything you like better about the past?”
And I had a think. Because, yes—there is something I like better.
I appreciate the closer ties to the natural world and its rhythms. I passed our raspberry bushes today and the raspberries are all gone: their season is over. It’s a sign that summer is winding on. Conversely, the hops are developing later than they ought. The vines themselves are fairly lush (one seems to have become particularly virulent) but the blooms aren’t as far along as I’d expect.
But hey, the Queen Anne’s lace and thistles are coming into their own, and soon enough the leaves will turn (the maple by the front gates first—always—probably in another three weeks if it keeps to schedule), and then I’ll be able to get good Ontario apples again.
The geese will fly south; the frogs and turtles will disappear for a little while. The Summer Triangle will dance offstage, and we’ll all greet Orion before the winter holidays. Then sometime in March, I’ll be on robin-watch.
I live in Canada’s largest city.
While I like indoor plumbing and heating, the insular nature of modern living is something I do regret. For many people…well, it doesn’t matter what season it is, does it? Turn on the lights, adjust the furnace/fan/AC, and it can be a bright and balmy 25 C all year around. There’s a convenience to that, but it also fills me with a vaguely horrified, un-moored feeling.
I need shape to my year. I need it as surely as people did centuries ago, with their patterns of saints’ days and agricultural markers. The raspberries are gone, and that means something to me. Being aware of the greater tapestry grounds me. It brings me outside my head, and I’m learning—if I’m too much within my own thoughts, I burn out. My nerves wind too tight to create, to write.
Beyond my day job, I’m trying to find ways to keep this contact with nature and its seasons. Whether it’s slipping out into the ravines more, or finding more of Toronto’s parks and gardens, or actually heading up north next summer.
Until then…
I’ll be waiting for the hops to bloom.
-KT
What I’m Listening to this Week
The liturgical calendar also structures my year quite nicely. And we’ve hit the part of summer where I dearly miss my choir. “If Ye Love Me” is a delightful old chestnut. Particularly love the altos’ harmony around 0:30, and the cascading repetitions of, “That he…” around 0:40.
I feel like if you’ve sung this piece, you fall into one of two camps: “E’en the SPEERT of truth,” or, “E’en the SPRIT of truth.” (I am the latter.)
Thinking of the Future
My life seems to change drastically every seven years or so. We’re not quite due for a shake-up yet, but it’s been on my mind. Maybe it’s the whole “turning 26” thing. My friends are buying houses, getting married, having babies. Stuff’s getting real…
…whilst I continue to frolic about like a bohemian Peter Pan. There’s a quotation from the end of Barrie’s book that haunts me:
[Peter] had ecstasies innumerable that other children can never know; but he was looking through the window at the one joy from which he must be forever barred.
I’m fine.
But then I started actually thinking about the future. I have no idea how things are going to end up, and it seems a bit silly to fret too much. It all changes every seven years, right?
And so I started thinking slightly differently. Not what will happen?
What do I want for myself?
I’ve never cleaved closely to the conventional narrative, after all. I know that I won’t buy a three-bedroom semi-detached home in midtown Toronto. I know my relationships and family won’t look conventional. We’re not just outside the box: we left it squished three miles down the road. So if the “should be” isn’t a thing…
What do I actually want?
There’s another poem that speaks to me:
Mine be a cot beside the hill;
A bee-hive’s hum shall soothe my ear;
A willowy brook that turns a mill,
With many a fall shall linger near.The swallow oft beneath my thatch
Shall twitter from her clay-built nest;
Oft shall the pilgrim lift the latch,
And share my meal, a welcome guest.Around my ivied porch shall spring
Each fragrant flower that drinks the dew;
And Lucy at her wheel shall sing
In russet gown and apron blue.The village church among the trees,
Where first our marriage vows were given,
With merry peals shall swell the breeze
And point with taper spire to Heaven.-Samuel Rogers (1763-1855)
That’s all. That’s it.
Essential. Real. Meaningful.
Just need to keep that close.
-KT
What I’m Listening to This Week
I’ve been working on a thing that’s required a lot of fantasy-style music. Here’s a lively piece from Heather Alexander!
We Need to Listen: Guilt and Responsibility in Canada
This is a difficult post to write. It’s painful and awkward, and potentially upsetting. Which is also why it’s important.
This year is “Canada’s 150th birthday.” It’s the sesquicentennial of “our nation’s birth.” Break out the beavertails, deck yourself with maple leaves, and bask politely in our universal health care and handsome prime minister, eh?
Okay, so.
This is complicated.
I’m going to start with the simplest quibbles first and work my way up. On a purely historic, pedantic note, “Canada” was an entity long before 1867. Europeans have been calling it that since the 1530s. Indigenous populations were here millennia before that. This is the 150th anniversary of the British North America Act taking effect, that’s all.
That’s just me being persnickety. Let’s move on to the hard stuff.
We have a reputation, we Canadians. We’re polite. We apologize a lot. We’re tolerant, diverse; we value multiculturalism.
Look, there’s no easy way to say this: we treat Indigenous peoples appallingly, and we have for well over 150 years.
I’m not even sure where to start. With residential schools? With broken treaties? With erasure from the historical narrative? The effing garbage-fire of that “Appropriation Award” controversy? Repeated drinking-water crises on Canadian reserves? Epidemics of suicides? The 1,181 indigenous women murdered and missing between 1980 and 2012? The fact that those are only the documented cases?
It’s horrific.
And it’s not just in the past. It’s not just something that happened in 1867, or 1787, or 1653, or 1535. We’re not done. It isn’t over because it’s 2017: the same history plays out again, and again, and again. How could we be over it, when our country rests on the foundation of such a colonial legacy?
Add another layer of complexity: generally speaking, I’m happy to be Canadian. It’s in every bio I write. “KT Bryski is a Canadian author and playwright…” There are many things that Canada does well. We’ve a lot to be proud of.
But.
But we’re also this:
And this:
And hey, while we’re at it, we’re also this:
And this:
And yet, we are also these things:
And I don’t know. I don’t have answers. I don’t have suggestions. All I have is a thorny mass of conflicted feelings that I’ve been trying to sort through for over a year.
But perhaps there are two things to consider:
Canada tells itself that we are pluralistic. Our ideal nation-self is one which contains multitudes.
Then perhaps – does “all of the above” get closer to an answer? Can multiple Canadas coexist simultaneously? Can I have strong ties and affection for my country, whilst also being ashamed of its cruelties and failures?
Because Canada does have things of immense beauty and kindness. It also has many things which are horrific beyond words. There is light – I do believe that – but we’ve clung to our “sunny ways” for so long, we have failed to acknowledge and remedy our darkness.
And to even begin to do that, we need to do the very thing that, historically, we suck at.
We need to listen.
Listen. Own it. Listen some more. Repeat.
Happy Canada Day.
-KT
What I’m Listening to this Week
A remixed English folk ballad, because reasons. Here’s “The Three Ravens,” which kind of forgets about the ravens halfway through and becomes an allegory instead. You know, as a lot of old English poetry does.
But there’s some beautiful harmonies that remind me vaguely of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique. I’m slowly starting to ponder a novel – and I suspect I’ll be listening to this song much more in the coming months.