fiction and creative non-fiction from Brennan Quenneville
Having learned the art of brevity from his time as a journalist, Ernest Hemingway created what became known as iceberg theory: By omitting everything but the barest necessities of narrative, a capable writer lets the reader intuit deeper, thematic truths, thereby improving the reading experience and strengthening the story. One of the side effects of [...]
I blame Gordon Lightfoot. Many songs incorporate aspects of storytelling but only a few are truly narrative, such that stripping away their music would leave a clear, functional story. And, for whatever reason, those stories tend to focus on the sea. The first, clearest example of this trend is Lightfoot's "The Wreck of the Edmund [...]
"It's not the cold making my legs shake," sings Cody Bonnette at the outset of "Timothy", the final, grueling track from As Cities Burn's sophomore LP, Come Now Sleep. As the song unfolds it becomes clear that what's making the narrator's legs shake is, in fact, grief. Across its nearly 13-minute run time, "Timothy" explores [...]
Halfway through Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, titular hero Harry is in need of reassurance. Like a lot of teenagers (and, frankly, a lot of adults), Harry is suffering from a common malady: He thinks he sucks. Because J.K. Rowling knows her way around a plot device, Harry's lovably rogue father figure [...]
The misapplication of social media can lead to the dissemination of fraudulent information, the degradation of trust in democratic systems and even the incitement of tragedy. These are worrying, ever-present concerns in the modern world. They are also representative of the types of social problems that have existed for millennia because, for as long as there have been social [...]
At the climax of the 1986 muppet-dystopia Labyrinth, David Bowie's impressively-codpieced Jareth confronts Jennifer Connelly's emotionally ascendant Sarah in an Escheresque series of gravitationally impossible stairways. Frustrated by Sarah's continued rejection of his romantic overtures, Jareth makes one final attempt to subdue the object of his affection. He fails. But in the opening minute of [...]
You can disdain the band's high-school-goth lyricism or snicker at their emo-extremist wardrobe but you can't deny that My Chemical Romance had a flair for the (often needlessly) dramatic. With Father's Day just having passed and with parentage on my brain, let's take a moment to enjoy one of the best instances of that dramatic [...]
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 [...]
Music is important. This much we can all agree upon. But lyrics? That tends to be a matter of great debate. Staff writer Brennan is here to argue that lyrics can and should be valuable to all appreciators of music, not just teenage girls and hippies obsessed with Bob Dylan. To that end, and at [...]
Music is important. This much we can all agree upon. But lyrics? That tends to be a matter of great debate. Staff writer Brennan is here to argue that lyrics can and should be valuable to all appreciators of music, not just teenage girls and hippies obsessed with Bob Dylan. To that end, and at [...]
