fiction and creative non-fiction from Brennan Quenneville
His reputation preceded him. I had heard David Foster Wallace's name long before I read any of his work---I started with Consider the Lobster, for those who are curious---and I knew that Infinite Jest was worshipped by a sizable cadre of devotees well before I had internalized the image of a scruffy, long-haired, bandana-wearing genius. [...]
For reasons that can best be described as “inexplicable,” my parents subscribed to both Rolling Stone and Entertainment Weekly while I was in high school. Neither periodical was a particularly good fit for my already-well-developed anti-establishmentarian artistic tastes and yet this was a time (for me, at least) before easy internet access and so, with few exceptions, I read [...]
Reading is an inherently independent activity so if there's anything unusual about my reading The Lord of the Rings every year, it's limited to the fact that I read The Lord of the Rings every year and not that I do so alone. Most years, after I finish that reading, I watch Peter Jackson's trilogy [...]
Before reading The Silmarillion, there are some questions that you should probably ask yourself: Do you know the basic stories of Gil-Galad and Beren One-Hand? Do you recognize names like Barahir, Grond and Fëanor and want to know more about them? Have you figured out, through context alone, what (fictional) words like dagor and ithil [...]
When it comes to post-rock soundtracks, the focus is usually on Explosions in the Sky because their music has been featured in several films while Tides of Man is often overlooked because, well, they haven't. But just because Tides of Man hasn't written the soundtrack for a film doesn't mean they can't write the soundtrack [...]
I have been defeated. Capitalism has won. I bought a Kindle. All hail technology.
Partly because I'm easily ensnared by shiny new things and partly because I try to be a devout practitioner of efficiency, I'm very tempted to purchase the forthcoming, revamped Amazon Kindle. I've never owned an true e-reader before (though I do own an iPad) and the allure of the Kindle has always been obvious to [...]
When I was younger I would listen to the same CD on repeat for hours upon hours and days upon days. I would come home from school and go up to my room and before I sat down to do my homework, play video games, or watch the Red Wings I'd hit the PLAY button on [...]
Spells and enchantments are enticing to writers because they suggest that words - the writer's most beloved commodity - have power and value beyond what simply appears on the page. And in 1968 Ursula LeGuin incorporated the similarities between writing and magic into her masterful bildungsroman A Wizard of Earthsea. Long before Harry Potter, A Wizard of Earthsea is the [...]
I had probably seen The Prince Bride (the movie) about twenty times before I realized that it more than just a brilliant Rob Reiner project and was actually based upon The Princess Bride (the book) by William Goldman. I was an ignorant child. So now, twenty odd years after I first fell in love with the film, [...]
