fiction and creative non-fiction from Brennan Quenneville
For a long time I didn't use any powered tools to maintain my lawn. I channeled my old-timey dad energy every time I used my reel mower, with each swing of my double-bladed grass cutter I turned a little more into a Victorian farmer, and with every inch of sidewalk that I trimmed with the [...]
The Queue is a recurring excuse for me to talk about songs or albums in short form. This week I examine three tracks that explore anxiety about the end of human culture in three very different ways. Let’s investigate. Muse -- "Exo-Politics" In case naming their album Black Holes & Revelations and then choosing a [...]
Do not for a second believe that the events of January 6th, 2021, in which domestic terrorists assaulted the United States Capitol, were fomented only by the words of Donald Trump. The sitting president is a habitual, unrepentant liar and his constant spew of hateful, untruthful rhetoric is of dire consequence for America. But he [...]
Malcolm Gladwell's Talking to Strangers introduced me to "Hell You Talmbout," a magnificent piece of social activism by Janelle Monae and Wondaland Records from 2015. The song is primarily a roll call of Black Americans that have been murdered by the police and that it feels even more prescient right now than it did in [...]
Congress is in the early phases of negotiating another massive stimulus package and it's tempting to append "before it's too late" to the end of that statement but, in truth, it's probably already too late for this next stimulus package to have anything near optimal impact for the people it's meant to serve. Of course, [...]
"Tell me what democracy looks like," said a young black man. His words, amplified through a megaphone, carried across the intersection to where we stood. "This is what democracy looks like," came the response from the crowd that had flooded each of the four corners of our city's small downtown. We wore masks and stood [...]
We are living in a fraught, historic time and right now it feels nearly impossible to think about anything save the unrest that grips the nation and the onslaught of dangers that beset black Americans and other systemically disenfranchised minorities. As a member of the privileged white middle class, I make a less than compelling [...]
Post-apocalyptic fiction rarely focuses on the fall. There's the initial outbreak, the surprising interaction between man and beast or man and nature that introduces some mutagenic pathogen to first one individual and then, rapidly, countless others. Then comes the smash cut to a hollowed out world of ghost towns and ragged survivors, a bombed out [...]
For a book about children, William Golding's 1954 classic Lord of the Flies contains an awful lot of fatality. There's the fiery disappearance of the boy with the birthmark, the unseen demise of the fighter pilot whose parachuting corpse becomes, for a time, the embodiment of the Beast and the slaughter of a fair number [...]
Songs & Stories 