fiction and creative non-fiction from Brennan Quenneville
A few weeks ago, one of my favorite newsletter writers suggested that they weren't necessarily burnt out, they just didn't want to do much of anything for a while. I guess you could argue that's exactly what burn out feels like but it doesn't really matter what you call it, because the important thing is [...]
Though it had rained all day, the skies were clear as the sun set behind the quad. On the edge of campus, in a tavern that had been there before they were students and would remain long after their tenure as professors had come to an end, the journalist was staring slack-jawed at the astronaut. [...]
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. [...]
I suppose that's probably true for everyone that has a favorite blog because Substack newsletters are now the way that bloggers, i.e. people who want to make a living writing on the internet, are doing just that. I am a fortunate person. Unlike so many writers whose livelihoods depend on their ability to turn their [...]
I want to like Sideways, I really do. Alexander Payne's 2004 film, which tracks Paul Giamatti's Miles and Thomas Haden Church's Jack across a bachelor party tour of California wine country, spends much of its runtime celebrating writing and creation. It's just the kind of movie someone who writes a blog that is partially about [...]
As I write this I've just finished reading Volume Three of the incredible Saga series of comics by Brian K. Vaughn and Fiona Staples. From the opening page of Volume One, I've been completely enthralled with Saga and yet I haven't so much as considered writing about the series or, if I did, what I [...]
A writer's creative space is sacred, or at least that's the impression that everyone on the internet wants you to have. And, in fairness, they're not necessarily wrong. Every writer I know, along with the graphic designers, musicians and creators of whatever else, has a favorite place to settle in and get to the messy [...]
Spoiler Alert! This post discusses key plot points of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. In the middle act of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Greez—a squat, four-armed pilot who functions as the game's primary comedic relief—sits down with Cal Kestis, the player character, and has a serious conversation. In the moments leading up to that [...]
The year is drawing to a close and taking the decade with it (because, for some reason, we use zero-based numbering for that kind of thing). That means that we're approaching list season, when every denizen of the internet will bombard the digital void with lists of movies, albums, books and whatever else they have [...]
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 [...]
Songs & Stories 