fiction and creative non-fiction from Brennan Quenneville
It's easy to feel that we live in the most extreme of times, whether good or bad, and that these current years are truly the crux of humanity, the pinnacle of our society. But every generation has felt this way and so, necessarily, every generation has been wrong. It's hard to see how we're any [...]
As I sat in the sun, nomming on a delicious bit of smoked meat, I realized that I will almost certainly never be a vegetarian. I should be, though. You should too. All concerns about animal cruelty aside—and God knows there's plenty of concern there—a vegetarian diet is more easily sustainable and tends to have [...]
It was just after sunset when your heart gave out and I should have been strong enough, but I broke down. So I buried my last hope and hid my eyes. I know you deserved better, but this is all I could provide. We met as liars and thieves, vagrants on the road. We grew [...]
It may be that the final campfire scene in Final Fantasy XV is the single most emotional moment I've ever experienced through a video game. After spending 50-some odd hours with Noctis and his lovable band of dude-bros, having been absorbed into their friendships through a near-endless Road Trip to Save the World and subsequently [...]
Next week Solo: A Star Wars Story will be released to preposterous revenues and at least some amount of incendiary fan rage. A good chunk of this rage will assuredly complain that this newest installment in the prodigiously growing Star Wars cinematic universe undercuts the pre-existing material, introducing plot holes into a beloved story about space [...]
Earlier this week I saw Avengers: Infinity War. Having seen a grand total of four of the prior 18 (!!!) films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I knew only a few of Infinity War's characters by name (or sight) but as the movie very clearly designates all of its principals as either a "good guy" [...]
In his short story “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,” Jorge Luis Borges—that miraculous, mind-fucking Argentinian—proposes an unusual premise. The titular Menard is shown to be obsessed with unusual literary feats and, as such, he decides to take it upon himself to rewrite Cervantes' classic, Don Quixote. He's not planning to translate the book or [...]
Three years ago The Decemberists released What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World, the band's seventh full-length album which, like most releases from Portland's premier prog-folk outfit, is clever and catchy and thoughtful. Stylistically, What a Terrible World hews closely to The Decemberists' well-established folksy style but the album is no worse for being [...]
Ursula K. Le Guin, my hero, died on a Monday. On the Wednesday that preceded her passing, only five days before her death, I sent her the only piece of fan mail I've ever written. In it, I struggled to contain and express the boundless praise and thanks due to a woman who, despite our [...]
A little after 4pm on Sunday the Cleveland Browns lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers, plunging them to the NFL's second-ever 0-16 finish. The loss would have been soul crushing if only there had been any souls left to crush in Cleveland. Bad as the Browns season finale was, though, it wasn't the worst of the [...]
Songs & Stories 