Shining Moon Episode 01: Literary vs. Genre

Hello, and welcome to Shining Moon: A Speculative Fiction Podcast, Episode One. Today we’ll begin our series by grappling with the questions of “what is literary fiction, and what is genre? And can the two ever be satisfyingly combined?” 

My guests for this episode are Marie Brennan, Jennifer Hudak, and A.T. Sayre.  We discuss the following stories:

Jennifer Hudak's “Topography of Memory” (Fusion Fragment,  2022)  and "The Weight of it All" (Fantasy, September 2022)

A.T. Sayre's 'The Angles' (Andromeda Spaceways, 2019) and 'Playtime' (Analog, 2023)

Marie Brennan's "At the Heart of Each Pearl Lies a Grain of Sand" (Sunday Morning Transport, 2023) and "Oak Apple Night," (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)

and  “Glass Moon Water” by Linda Niehoff in Diabolical Plots:
https://www.diabolicalplots.com/dp-fiction-101-glass-moon-water-by-linda-niehoff/

(Please also see: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mariebrennan/rook-and-rose-pattern-deck/ )

"Don't tell me that the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass." -- Anton Chekov

Piano music for closure

Thank you for listening to Shining Moon! You can reach the host, Deborah L. Davitt, at the following social media platforms:

www.facebook.com/deborah.davitt.3

Bluesky: @deborahldavitt.bsky.social

www.deborahldavitt.com

Transcript

Deborah: Hello and welcome to Shining Moon, a speculative fiction podcast, episode one. I'm your host, Deborah  L. Davitt. Today we'll begin our series by grappling with the questions of what is literary fiction and what is genre? And can the two ever be satisfyingly combined? My guests today are Marie Brennan, Jennifer Hudak, and A.T. Sayre. Let's start with some introductions, shall we? Marie Brennan is the World Fantasy and Hugo Award nominated author of the memoirs of Lady Trent and over 60 short stories. As half of M.A. Carrick, she also writes the Rook and the Rose trilogy. Find her online at swantower.com, on Mastodon at Swan Tower at Wandering Shop, or at Patreon at Swan Tower. Hi, Marie, how are you today?

Marie: Doing pretty well and delighted to be here, especially since it's the inaugural episode. I feel extra special.

Deborah: Thank you so much. 

Jennifer Hudak is a speculative fiction writer fueled mostly by tea. Her work has appeared in both Locust magazine and the SFWA recommended reading lists and has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Originally from Boston, she now lives with her family in upstate New York where she teaches yoga and it's pocket sized animals and misses the ocean. Find out more about her on her website, jennifervhudakwrites.com. Hello Jennifer, thanks for being on the podcast.

Jennifer: Hello Deborah, I'm so pleased to be here and really looking forward to this discussion.

Deborah: And finally, we have A.T. Sayre. Is a speculative fiction writer currently living in Brooklyn. His work has appeared in analog magazine, Aurelius, Haven Speculative, and Andromeda Spaceways. His debut novel, The Last Days of Good People, will be serialized in analog magazine in 2024. A more detailed list of his publications can be found at atsayre.com forward slash fiction. Hello, Andrew. It's a pleasure to speak with you today.

Andrew: It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.

All right, so let's dive right into it. Beowulf and the Odyssey have monsters and they're literary masterpieces. They're foundational to the canon of Western literature. Tolkien has monsters, but he's genre, even though he defined and even created the genre that imitates them. What makes something literary and what makes something genre? I'll open the floor to answers from each of you.

Marie: I think what I would say at the outset is there's, by my account, at least five different things we might mean when we say literary. And so part of the, like, why this and not that depends on which sense you're using the term in.

Deborah: Mm-hmm. Well, what are some of these five ways?

Marie: So I'm borrowing a little bit. There's an article that Brian Atterbury wrote some years ago, which I believe is called, Fantasy as Mode, Genre and Formula, or something along those lines. And I think I could possibly add a sixth category here, which is just sheer age, given that you're mentioning things like the Odyssey. There's a certain, we grandfather things in if they're old, but I would say I see the term literary being used as a value judgment, as a mode, as a marketing category, as a style, and as a genre. All of those, I think, at different times.

Jennifer: So what I had always been taught was that the difference between literary and genre, I'm not saying that I'm like 100% behind this, by the way. This was just something that had been taught to me as a young, impressionable creative writing student, that literary fiction used language as So you know the difference between language as a door and language as a window pane, right? So like if you have language as a window pane, it's not at all noticeable as language. It's just you look straight through it so that you can experience the story. And language as a door or a wall means that the language itself is kind of opaque. That understanding the specific choices that the author is making in terms of languages integral to understanding of the story. So that was the distinction that I had been taught as a writer, that literary works used language as a wall as opposed to as a window. Having said that, I really don't think that distinction in any way encompasses the breadth of genre as we know it today at all. And it almost seems like when people talk about literary, they're talking about kind of like the default, like, okay, it's not a mystery, it's not sci-fi, or it's kind of like a mixture of those things or it dips into them, but not quite. So we'll just call it literary.

Deborah: All right, Andrew, do you have anything to add to that?

Andrew: Well yeah, I think I'd have to agree with both. I think there's a theme that I could see coming here that I would agree with that literary is not a very exact thing. It's not genre as in... It's not genre the way that you would consider like mystery or thriller or science fiction or fantasy as a genre. I've always kind of seen literary to be...more about the intent of the person who's doing the writing, what their intention is behind what they're doing. They're just gonna be writing something that's purely a cookie cutter, paint by the numbers type of thing, in a Western. That's not gonna be literary as such. Literary is more about what you intend to do, what your intentions are of your piece. And I totally agree with Marie when she was saying that there is different. it's the words being used many different ways that like because uh... i don't know why exactly why it seems that literally is something useful i would generally call general fiction or general or non-genre fiction uh... because i mean the things that with the things that the most the things that most all four is generally right more often than not are in a genre whether it be fantasy dark fantasy horror science fiction or they're under the giant umbrella of speculative fiction that being said i don't think it was i don't think anyone of any four of us would actually say that what we're doing is not literary . . . I would say that everything, I mean I've read everybody here, not everything, because I do have other people I like to read. I would say that we all, all four of us think that what we're doing is literary, right? But they're in genre. I mean it's not like...it's not it's just it's a very poorly uh... organized type of terminology the terms are very poorly organized especially when it comes around literary.

Deborah: I can see that Marie wants to sort of hop in with something here. So I'll make some space.

Marie: Yeah, I mean, I think when you say that I, you know, none of us probably think of our work as not literary. And actually, Andrew, what you said about if somebody's writing, you know, a cookie cutter paint by numbers Western, I think probably very few people actually think of themselves as okay, I'm just going to fill in the paint by numbers, you know, from the perspective of the writer, everybody thinks they have some kind of interesting idea that they're pursuing. And this is where we get a bit into that literary meaning value judgment, because, you know, that's one of the ways it gets used, and I think it's the least useful sense of the term, in particular because then that gets very quietly or not so quietly wedded to assumptions about what styles of writing, what modes of writing are the worthy ones. Yeah.

Deborah: Oh, absolutely. I will say that when I was coming up through high school, there was a distinctive moment when my teacher sat us down with two books, two short stories from our collection. And we were told, make a value judgment about which of these is the best. And one of them was the most dangerous game. And the other one was something I cannot remember the title of because it was so boring. And so, and we were all expected to say, yes, the one that I can't remember the title of is obviously the better of them because the most dangerous game is obviously, you know, it's just written to excite you and tantalize you and it gets you to read the next word and that's all that is to it. But I'm sitting here 29 years later and I can tell you the title of the most dangerous game and I cannot tell you the one that we were supposed to find as the most valuable literary piece.


Marie: It's written to excite you and catalyze you and it gives you the reason that's a word and that's all that is to it. I cannot tell you the amount that we were supposed to find at the end of this valuable lesson.

Deborah: So it's a question, isn't it? What is most memorable? What becomes most valued? What gets passed on to the next person in line that you want to recommend it to? Which is all the canon of literature really is, is a series of recommendations passed down from people before us. . . . 

Andrew: Yeah, that gets to another thing about the literary thing is this phenomenon that's been going on for probably ever since science fiction and fantasy broke off into their own genres of people. Writing so well they graduate out of being in genre. Ray Bradbury, for example, Ray Bradbury, so many people do not see Ray Bradbury as a science fiction and fantasy writer. It's like how can you not see that because he's too good to be a science fiction and fantasy writer is the is the answer that many people give you.

Deborah: Kurt Vonnegut. Of course he's not a science fiction writer.

Jennifer: And not only, I mean, Margaret Atwood, I mean, and I feel like too that there is also, there's a phenomenon where well-known literary writers quote unquote discover a genre trope, right? And so, you know, and they're writing about it and everyone thinks it's brilliant and meanwhile it's something that's been.

Marie:  Yeah. And that's why one of the ways that I like to think about genre that I find useful for thinking about genre is as a conversation. And when you get this, you know, literary writer who has just discovered the grandfather paradox and thinks he's the first person ever to explore this, he's coming barging into a conversation that he wasn't listening to going, everybody, I have a great idea. You're just going, sweetheart, read the room.

Andrew: Am I the only person who's been thinking of E. McEwen for this entire section? That's exactly who, because he was the last major writer to do this I think where he's like oh my god this whole thing that it's like.

Jennifer: Yes, that was the person I was thinking of.

Andrew: You know, this genre's been going on longer than you've been alive. It's nice that you've found it, but stop acting like you're the... Stop acting like Columbus getting to the Philippines... Stop acting like Columbus getting to the Caribbean.

Jennifer: Well, and stop saying, but it's not genre. It's I wrote something literary. I transformed this idea, yeah.

Deborah: So that leads us very nicely into something that Marie brought up earlier, which was, is literary a genre of its own?

Marie:  Well, I mean, first we'd have to agree on what the word genre means, and the problem is that means like five different things.

Deborah: Yes. Yes it does. It is very slippery and very mutable.

Marie: So you had mentioned before, I think Deborah, you were the one who brought this up, the idea of literary just meaning mainstream fiction. Somebody mentioned that, I'm sorry, I don't remember who. Oh, Andrew, sorry. That yeah, just this notion of literary as kind of the catch-all bucket for everything that isn't genre. And so That muddies it as well because you have stuff over there that is using the tropes and the motifs and so on of genre, but it's being put into the mainstream marketing bucket. And also I think the tendency to say, okay, this is all the stuff that isn't genre, hides the ways in which it is a genre, rather multiple, because I think we could probably name off like half a dozen different genres within the mainstream category. But because they're so strenuously defining themselves in opposition to genre, they're not taking a look at what their own expectations and conventions of their styles of storytelling are.

Jennifer: There absolutely are expectations and conventions in literary fiction for sure. And I think even if people consider it just kind of the standard, right? So like you have your literary, which is, quote unquote, normal, and then you have everything else, right? I mean, I've heard people talk about it like that.

Marie: Yeah. It's marked in unmarked categories in anthropology. Yeah.

Jennifer: Exactly, exactly, exactly. But at the same time, when you are taking creative writing classes, for example, like you learn specific techniques that make sense in if you're writing literary fiction and 100% do not make sense if you're not writing literary fiction. So I think it I do think it makes sense to think about literary as a genre, even, I mean, obviously we have no clue how we would define it, but I think I almost feel like it does both genre fiction and literary fiction a disservice not to think of it as its own job.

Marie: So I think it makes sense to think about literary as a genre. But I think I almost feel like it does both genre fiction and literary fiction of a certain way. Can you name an example of what you get taught that you think doesn't necessarily make sense outside of it? Because I haven't taken those classes, so I'm always curious what gets taught in them.

Jennifer: Oh goodness, it's been years, Marie. But for sure, so very much discussions of, I remember, and this is, I know this is all the time, but I very much remember discussions of carrying language down, like until you have eliminated every adverb, every adjective. every helping word. And I'm saying this like, I'm not mocking it. I mean, there is a style, right? There is a certain literary style, which, I mean, you think of Hemingway, right? It's like very, very spare, sparse language. Amy Humphle is another example whose writing is amazing. Very, very sparse and spare.

Andrew: and you have a haiku.

Jennifer: And in fact, I've had friends who've gone through MFA programs who have completely lost their own writing voice because they were taught to do this and then didn't quite know how to do anything else. But that's an example of something that, and I should say that maybe that's not literary in general, but a very specific subset of literary fiction, which is this kind of voice. Yeah.

Deborah: When I went through a creative writing course back in college, and this is something I'm going to come back to in our space opera episode, I had a teacher who had written over 200 novels under various pseudonyms. And he wanted to talk to us about commercial writing and what you can do to actually sell. And so his thing was, your plot should be structured in such a way that it's Each person will make a decision that will make the situation worse and the next decision will make the situation worse and the next situation will be worse and the next decision every decision will inevitably make things worse until you reach a crisis point and then you have to resolve it either by steering towards tragedy or towards resolution. And I have defined my career by writing exactly the opposite of the other. Which means that I don't sell as much as other people probably, but I really don't like this, so I have rebelled against this.

Andrew: I just said well, but um... I mean, I just... That sounds like such terrible advice. I just couldn't... It's like... nothing is written the same way as twice. I mean, even stories that are, I've written stories that are basically playing on the same theme from different sides, one right after the other, because I just, well, this is interesting, I'm not doing it this way this time, we're gonna do it this way next time, and I just wrote something. Even in situations like that, I didn't write the, the process wasn't the same. Writing formula just sounds so boring. I mean, this is AI-territorial.  you plug into an AI to come out with a come out with a novella that you sell on Amazon under somebody else's name.

Deborah: Ooh, that's a subject for a different topic, different topic.

Jennifer: Oh yeah, that's too soon, too soon.

Andrew: Oh, well I know, but when you're doing such a formula like that, it's like what difference are you from an AI? You basically are an AI when you're just writing by formula like that. Sorry, I will stop ranting now.

Marie: Yeah, I had someone critique the very first non-terrible short story I wrote, because I literally didn't know how to write short stories for the longest time, because I didn't know what a short story-sized idea looked like. And then I finally found one and went, oh, there we go. And I wrote a short story, which I eventually sold to an anthology, but I gave it to a professional writer who I shall not name here for critique. And she came back basically saying... this isn't a short story, because in a short story, the character needs to be struggling against an obstacle to achieve a goal, they need to try a thing and fail, and then they gotta try something else, etc. And my story was much more the tale of someone being told, you must do this thing, and then she learns some more things about it, and then at the end, she winds up in a bind where kind of none of the choices are good, but she still has to act. And that was the shape of what I'd written. I think any advice that says a story must be X. and it is this narrowly defined X. I don't care what the X is, it's bad. That advice is bad, because stories can be many things.

Andrew: Yes. The only thing a story needs to do is get out of my head so I can think of something else. That's the only thing a story needs to do is get out of my head. I have other things I want to think about.

Marie: I mean, we might agree that a story is made of words most of the time. That's about as far as we can get.

Andrew: but then you have Finnegan's Wake.

Deborah: Which we're not entirely sure is a story.

Marie: Yeah. Yeah, they are words. Is it a story? Hmm. Yeah.

Deborah: I'm gonna herd us back onto track by switching topics here a little bit. We're gonna talk about some of your stories now. And I'm going to summarize each one and then we're gonna have some questions and talk about them. So I'm gonna start with Jennifer Hudak. And this is "the topography of memory," which was printed in a Fusion Fragment in 2022. In this story, a young woman can't find her way home. She misses the off-ramp every time, as if the town itself is gone, until a vision of her father comes right out of the receipts in the glove box of her car and guides her there, not in time for her brother's funeral, but in time for the anniversary of it. We feel the pain and the loss with her, and we plunge through layers of memory, the chuckle's candy, the little details of memories like a little brother tripping and cutting his lip. The fact that this is an unreliable narrator, that this is a somewhat unlikable narrator, I would ask you, how hard is it to write a character who isn't likable and yet is the protagonist? Is this a literary trope?

Jennifer: So just a little background about this story. It is somewhat autobiographical. So, so, no, so it's just, it's just kind of funny because of course, if it's autobiographical, I'm gonna write an unlikable narrator. No, no, no. I'm being totally serious because, um, because I, um, I was very unhappy with the way I behaved. let's say, in certain circumstances. I was trying to kind of purge my own guilt through writing this story. But at the same time, I think what made, when you asked us kind of which one of our stories kind of tread that line between literary and genre, this was the story I thought about. And I think it is certainly because of what's told in the second person, which right away is kind of more of a literary technique than a genre technique. There's a lot of people who just loathe second person narration. And it is a very unreliable narrator, it is a very unlikable narrator, and it is also the kind of fantasy aspects of the story are not kind of tangible. It's more like, is this really happening? Is this not really happening? And I think that's a very important point.

Yeah, yeah, oh yeah, that is correct. I actually enjoy writing, unlike all narrators. I really do. I find them much more exciting to dig into. And I think the interesting thing about it is when I write a narrator like that, I end up really liking them by the end. And it always surprises me when readers don't. Because I think by writing it...I mean, so as I said, this is partly autobiographical, but it also turned into something that was very not autobiographical through the writing of it, right? So as you're writing a character like this, you really get into, their frame of mind, their history. And again, a character that doesn't like themselves is, you know, there's a pathos there, right, to that kind of character. So that makes, I feel like that makes you connect with them a little bit, or at least it makes me connect with them. So I almost feel like writing unlikable narrators is almost easier to me in some ways than writing likable narratives.  Just because I feel like people are messy. Most people are messy. And so I like the mess. I like digging into the mess a little bit, even if it's my own mess. Yeah.

Deborah: Well, she certainly grows by the end, which is a lovely thing to see. And it's something that not every short story has. So I wanted to really point out that she has a catharsis moment and it's very classical. And when she emerges from it, she's had her epiphany and she's able to move on with her life, which is another lovely thing to see.

Jennifer: And I think that's true too. I mean, I think that is also, I mean, coming from, cause I am originally from a literary background, that coming from a literary background, I really had to be taught how to plot. That was not some, that was, I mean, it's still not a strength of mine. And it was definitely not something that I really focused on when I was studying and writing literary fiction. definitely more about the catharsis, as you said, kind of the emotional arc rather than the plot.

Marie:  That's kind of one of the things that I think of as being characteristic of either literary as a style descriptor on a particular genre or literary fiction as its own genre is that downplaying of plot in the conventional sense, right? Every story has events that happen in it, but the lesser story is driven by exciting incident and is more just kind of following that character arc or the theme or whatever. That is one of the things that marks literary to me.

Jennifer: Most definitely. And I think that is, that was one of the hardest transitions for me, moving from a literary background into the genre field, was learning how to, learning how to make friends with plot, I guess, in a way that I hadn't before. Yeah, yeah. Because I also feel like there's plenty, plenty of examples of genre fiction that focus on character more than focusing on plot. Maybe more so now than you know back in the 1950s and 60s. And certainly in flash fiction there's a lot of examples of almost prose poems in flash fiction, right? Yeah.

Deborah: Right, we're going to move on to Andrew's story, which is The Angles, which appeared in Andromeda Spaceways in 2019. It's a story in which time and space become disjointed for a pilot suffering from brain damage from too many jumps through rips in gravity known as The Angles. The story begins with a cognitive test for concentration and slowly shows the way in which the pilot's mind is slipping between times with characters talking to him when no one could possibly be there and so on. In this story, nothing is at first what it seems, and the narrator is strongly unreliable. We're left at the end with an objective reality that we still have to question, however. So I'm going to ask you a couple of questions. The first is about the ending, because I found it as a reader sort of frustrating, because I wanted him to escape. I wanted him to make that final jump. Do you agree that the ending can be read in more than one way? Are we supposed to take objective reality at the end as the truth?

Andrew: well it's entirely possible that he does actually survive at the end i mean it's not that it's not the ending i was going to be something andy i meant uh... i was i was fully going to the fact that matthews is uh... well he dies he dies at the end he goes the i actually honestly think that the angles is the this you get the sort of small rips in space and time created by the gravity pull between planets.  you can go through sort of like a wormhole and up someplace else in space and time. And it's the way that human beings travel and these pilots have this special talent that allows them to be able to do this, but if you do it too long it basically ruins your mind and basically makes you unstuck in time and you basically experience time in a non-linear way. I mean, just in case you guys... But, um... Yeah, he...i was i was gonna say that uh... at the very end of his case because he's been found that he has so much brain damage they can't let him do it anymore sneaks off and takes one last trip and it gets caught he flees into a gas giant planet because he thinks he sees an angle down there the way i think the way i think that he doesn't actually see an angle that's just wishful thinking on his part and he just basically flies his spaceship straight into the planet and dies and uh... but you can you can take it to say that he uh... actually does the actually does escape the he finds a special angle and gets away but that's not that's not what i meant

Marie: I have to say I love how unremittingly just like smeared together time was in that story. Just like no scene breaks nothing, you're just in the middle of one conversation and suddenly he's somewhere else. I really liked the way that you played that effect because it makes the reader experience what the character's experiencing, which worked really well.

Andrew: Yeah, thank you. I was really going, I was really, I was going to feel like every time I write something, I want to try some type of experiment, whether a big or a small one. And that one was me experimenting with nonlinear storytelling, like really nonlinear, like, um, it's sad how many of my examples are going to be films when i talk about things like this but i don't know if you've ever seen the adam mcgoyne film from about 1996 called the sweet hereafter it's an adaptation it's an adaptation of a russell banks novel i won't get into what the story is about it's a great it's one of the best films made in the nineteen nineties that's all i'll say about it oh yeah great book russell banks you know rest in peace but the film is non-linear and it's exactly the same way as it is in the way it was in the story I was doing. I was trying to figure out exactly how you can do that, and I think my conclusion was is where you have a plot or storyline that goes by conflict, action, resolution, the triangle of the plot arc. We're in a linear story that goes by what's going on, what's the actions that go on a story. When you do a non-linear story, you still have that same arc, but it goes by the theme. It's following the theme up and down. And that's the difference. That's what I found out while writing the angles, that you can still do it. It's following, the arc of the story is following the theme, not the action. the development of the theme. And that's what I found out. I guess that would be a literary thing to do, I guess. I mean, I can think of plenty of science fiction stories that do things just as experimental as that, though.

Jennifer: It is, it is, I really like the way that you said that, that it kind of, the arc is the theme rather than the events and the plot. I really, I really like that. And I do think that is, I mean, that is very, it is a literary technique. Because again, the way that you're telling the story is integral to our understanding of it. Like the story had to be told in that particular way in order for the reader to understand it the way that we understand.

Andrew: yeah it's beautiful because it gets you I don't see another way I could have gotten at that idea I was trying to get across other than the way I did it I mean I could have said I mean there's other ways I could have done it obviously but not at the exact angle that I was able to get the way I said it but the exact the angle I was able to get it yes I realized I did it after I said it the exact

Marie: I've definitely had some stories where I had an idea that just didn't seem very interesting until I chopped it into pieces and rearranged them out of order, and then it became far more compelling doing it that way. So yeah, sometimes the structure really just is necessary to create a useful effect out of it.

Andrew: Yeah, it's just. It's actually another great example of the way the non-linear story that is the arc is following the theme and not the action is, it's again, it's another movie, I'm sorry, but it's Pink Floyd's The Wall. I don't know if you've ever seen the movie film version of that. Absolutely, 100% non-linear. It has no interest whatsoever in telling things in an orderly fashion. But the idea of the film and the idea of the concept album goes on the arc by the theme. more not the not the progress of the story I don't know if that made any sense there

Marie: now thinking, I wouldn't call it a literary novel at all, but I loved Diane Owen Jones books when I was growing up. They were very formative for me. She's got one called Hexwood, which when she passed away, I did a reread of all of her fiction and was blogging about it. And when I got to Hexwood, my comment was, I don't remember if I've read this one before. And then I read it and went, no, I think I would have remembered the one where Diane Owen Jones wrote an episode of Doctor Who. But at the end of the book, my feeling was this book has an unreliable narrator and that narrator is time. Time is the unreliable narrator here, and I think I need to read that book again to make sense of it.

Andrew: I do have one question I want to ask though about, I mean just one more thing on the angles. You say that the narrator, Matthew's main character in it is an unreliable narrator. Even, but it's a third person story. Do you think you can, I've always felt that unreliable narrator would be a first person thing.

Marie: No. You can, now that it's a third person job. Yeah. You can. It depends on how tight the third person point of view is. But if you're doing a limited thing, then you are limiting yourself to what that character perceives, then I think that can be unreliable.

Deborah: You can have it as a third person. You absolutely can. As reality is dissolving around him, he is fundamentally unreliable. Everything that he says and does and thinks is unreliable until you hit that moment of objective reality as this ship is being smeared across Jupiter. And then, even then I was sort of wondering whether or not I should be able to question reality here or not. So I was a fascinating story, I really loved it.

Andrew: Yeah, I was always so very proud that I was, how well that one came out. That's actually, it's, you know, that's like, it's like, I wrote that one about five years ago. It's probably about 40 stories ago. It's still one of my favorites. One of the favorite things I've ever done.

Deborah: We're going to move on to Marie Brennan's story now. And this is, "at the heart of each lies a grain of sand," which appeared in SundayMorning Transport. That's pretty recent, right? 

Marie: Yeah, that was just a few months ago.

Deborah: Very nice. It is told in the style of 1001 Nights as if it were an old Islamic fable. This is a story of three half-sisters, each of whom has a tale unremarkable by the standards of the fantastic times that they lived in, and the last of whom, who marries the Caliph, makes him swear never to ask her to reveal her story, which is unremarkable even for our times when it is revealed. But the great secret is the grain of sand and the caliph's pearl. The fact that his wife has a secret becomes a source of serenity to him, oddly. But nothing fantastic has ever happened to her, she claims. Not even though the brother of her intended husband killed her betrothed and sought to marry her. I didn't come to pass and she's lived a life of peace and harmony for all of her years. I am so unremarkable. "I am so not out of the ordinary," she protests by the end.

Marie: So this is deliberately based on a specific story out of the Thousand and One Nights. You actually get sort of a summary of that tale in what I wrote because it was interesting to me that if I'd been writing on a European fairy tale, I probably could have made this story much shorter because I could have assumed that a larger percentage of my audience would already know what I was talking about. 

But I'm writing for an English language audience. It's not one of the best known stories out of the 1001 Nights. And so I felt like I needed to kind of recap it. But yeah, there's this whole thing about, the Disguised Caliph goes to the house of these three sisters who all have these weird stories behind them, et cetera. And it mentions at the end that it gives you the story of what happened to the first sister. And yeah, it's all these crazy things like you get in the 1001 Nights. And then you get the story of what happened to the second sister in the same. And then at the end of the tale, at least in the version that I have, I don't know if there are different ones, there's just the third sister and the Caliph marries her. And as I finished reading that, I'm like, well, what's her story? And then for whatever reason, it flipped around in my head that maybe the interesting thing is that she doesn't have one. She's actually a completely ordinary person, which for living in the 1001 Nights is weird. And yeah, it wound up just on this note of like, what's the resolution of the story?

It's the fact that the Caliph promised, you know, not to ask about that, which does not concern him, and he doesn't need to know her story, and so he doesn't ask. Because in the 1001 Nights, just as in a lot of European fairy tales, people promise, I won't open that door, or I won't, you know, like, I won't ever strike you, or whatever promise it is that they've made, and of course they always break the promise. But here the Caliph just never asks who to thunk it. The dude makes a promise and keeps it.

Deborah: So when we are talking about literary and genre, how is this one literary? Because I loved the language in it. I thought the language itself was a beautiful painting and I enjoyed reading every minute of it. So is it the language alone that makes it literary? Is it the fact that it is reaching back to folkloric ancestry here? What makes it literary?

Marie: I mean, so I was going through my work and trying to find things that would fit this model especially out of my more recent stuff rather than picking something that was like published 15 years ago. And Honestly, this is going to sound like a bit of a slam, but I can say it because it's my own work. I think what makes it literary is that sort of nothing happens. It's got a summary. It's got a summary of that other story that was very exciting, but that's just the backstory. And fundamentally, what happens at the end of this story is the caliph never asks. She does sort of relate to him why she has never told her story, but he's asleep by the time she tells him, so he doesn't hear it. And so it's that...That feeling of it ends on this quiet note of just the point here is this thematic and character thing about him keeping his promise and about the kind of harmony between them rather than it being some sort of obstacle is overcome, some sort of enemy is defeated. And yeah, I mean, I say this in a very loving way. I think one of the ways to go, how literary is this story? Is how much are you gonna say nothing happened? Because... iIf you feel like nothing happened, then you are downplaying that plot and incident and conflict side of things, and probably focusing more on just that little bit of character growth or that resolution of the theme or something like that. I think in some ways a story kind of needs to be quieter to let those things be heard. And so this is fundamentally a fairly quiet story.

Deborah: I would agree with that and I think it's a phenomenal story, so thank you for sharing it with us. I hope that people will seek it out and read it.

Marie: I do want to say because you mentioned the language thing, and Jennifer, you mentioned that is one of the hallmarks of literary fiction, which I would agree, even as somebody looking at it from the outside. And yet there is the part of me that really quibbles with that windowpane thing, because it often assumes that there's no effort that goes into choosing the words in the windowpane, and I'm like, oh, but there is. 

Jennifer: I feel like it's hard to write a story in which the language is not calling attention to itself. I mean it is a skill that I do not possess. Well, especially, I would say, anybody who's ever taught writing, especially to beginning students, you will see that, yes, being able to write clear, readable prose that is not going to distract you from the story is a skill.

Deborah: My background is in technical writing. After I got done teaching at the college level, I left academia and then I was a technical writer for 17 years. So writing clear, understandable prose is one of my goals in life. It even transmits to my poetry. I always want to be able to make people understand where I'm coming from. I don't wanna obfuscate, my writing isn't a riddle and I'm just as happy that when people understand it. then people don't understand it and I'm like, I have failed. 

But we're gonna move back to Jennifer Hudak again. This is the weight of it all. It appeared in fantasy in September of 2022. Issue 86, you should totally check it out. A ghost slips from body to body until it finds itself trapped in the body of an anorexic young person with severe body image issues who clings to the ghost, trapping it in her increasingly frail frame. Until the ghost manages to free itself and reach out through the body of one of the woman's friends, fostering connection between them and hopefully be urged to live. The story is lush in its detail with regards to the mental condition and to food. I love the descriptions of babka and things like that. That made my heart happy. Grounding us firmly in the weight of an ailing body and its destruction. And this is where I come back to something that I was gonna ask about earlier, which is...literary and realism because you and all of your stories you seem to focus on realistic detail to ground us in reality and then that allows us to accept this more slipstreamy effects the more the more speculative effects that much more easily because we trust you as in there as a writer too that you've grounded us we're firmly enveloped in the embrace of this body that is trying to slip into dissolution on us. And it's a wonderful thing. So I wanted to ask you, how much research did you do on anorexia to get the details as right as you did? Because it is it's definitely not glorifying the condition. It is a really heavy read. 

Jennifer: So, um, once again, this was autobiographical in some ways. So I do have an eating disorder. And so many, many of the descriptions were absolutely 100% from my own experience. However, I also talked to, I ran this story by a lot of other people. who have experienced eating disorders because everyone's experience is so different. And I wanted to not have this just be, I didn't want this just to be my story. I wanted this to be, I wanted to kind of detach from this a little bit personally. So I actually did, and this gets into something interesting, is that sometimes the things that you know the most about you actually have to spend the most time researching because it's so easy to get so trapped or to get myopic in your own way of experiencing something, your own way of looking at something. So I actually did do, I wouldn't say I did research like as in book research, but I did a lot of talking with friends of mine who have various different kinds of eating disorders. I wouldn't say I did research like as in book research, but I did a lot of talking with friends of mine who have various different kinds of eating disorders. To, and then I had people do sensitivity reads of this as well, well, just to make sure. It's tricky. I feel like it's tricky writing an identity piece like this with so many concrete details. And I knew it wasn't going to capture everyone's experience. 

But I wanted to make sure that it didn't strike anyone who had gone through this kind of thing as too easy. I think that was my main concern was that the resolution at the end, I wanted it to feel earned and also not complete, right? It's not like you don't get better immediately. And that was the one thing, and my first draft of this actually, which I wrote for a contest actually, but my first draft for this story was it ended quite way too quickly and way too easily. And I had people that get over who have also had experience with this kind of thing and they were just like, no. This is not what would happen. You know, things are never that quick and easy, which is absolutely.

Deborah: one of the things I loved about this story is the fact that the ghost doesn't come up with the first solution by forcing her to eat. And then the body craves the nourishment, but then she throws it up anyways and the ghost is just, well, what am I going to do with you? And finally, it comes down to an intervention by a friend. And that was, this is just beautiful. And it really touched me. And I just wanted to, I wanted to thank you very much for sharing this moment with us because it was so good.

How would, if we're talking about this in terms of literary, again, it ends on that quiet note that we talked about earlier. Would you agree that that's what makes it literary?

Jennifer: So I think that this story, yes, it does not follow, I feel like it doesn't follow a conventional plot, right? It's definitely much less, it's kind of like Marie was saying, you know, nothing really happens. I mean, if you look at it from the outside, not much happens in the story.

Deborah: Oh, I would disagree. There's plenty of stuff that happens. Yes.

Jennifer: But it's very internal, right? It's not, if you think about like, if we were gonna outline this in terms of events, there aren't that many events that happen. It's more kind of an internal battle of wills, both between the ghost and the girl, and also each of them individually with themselves. And so I feel like part of what makes, kind of treads on literary territory, is that kind of deep interiority of the story. And also, like you said, the resolution being somewhat of a resolution. It is, like I said, I do like a catharsis. So there is a catharsis in this story, but it's limited, it's conditional. And it's also...It kind of shares the DNA with Andrew's story, right? In that, you know, there is a certain set of events that happens at the end of the story. You also kind of, you are left as a reader wondering, you know, what's going to come of all this for both characters, for both the ghost and the girl.

And if there's something that I like more than a catharsis in a story and an unlikable character, an unlikable narrator, it's an ambiguous ending. I am, love an ambiguous ending. But I also, yeah, I do feel like those, you see those more in literary fiction than you see in genre fiction.

Deborah: Actually, that segues beautifully into talking about one of Andrew's other stories, which is Playtime, Analog 2023. And it has a very ambiguous ending, and I wanted to ask about that. But first I'm going to summarize and then we can talk about it a little bit. A computer tech oversees holographic suites for young children and is asked to adjust the fairy godmother program to more closely resemble the mother of a pair of twins so that they will bond more appropriately with their mom instead of only bonding with a babysitting program.

One of the programmers suggests that the kids aren't being done any favors. They need a little adversity, otherwise they won't be able to handle real life. The lead programmer suggests that he doesn't think that these rich kids will have any problems, leaving the story on a really ambiguous note. So, I wanted to ask you about your, how you came to write this one and, uh, why, why did you end it on the, on that note? Is it, is it sort of a side long slam at at they're not going to have any problems, they're rich? Or what is this?

Andrew:  Well, this one's actually kind of interesting. I mean, I don't know about you kids, but every time I write a story everybody's like, where did you get the idea for stories? I don't know. Two random thoughts were floating in my head. They kind of, through accretion, built into something, and I just happened to notice one day. But this one actually came with a very specific memory. I was watching a TV commercial for Disney. It was like for Disney Resorts TV commercial, and they had this one moment with this little nine-year-old girl who's leaning on the counter up at the concierge. There's this woman, and she's working on the pad, and just behind her, you see fairy wings just flap out and say, fly, flap from it, and go back in. And apparently the kid's the only one to see. I was like, so yeah. they're just going to be pampering to this kid completely, totally. And that's where the idea for the story came from, is like they're pampering to these kids. And it's like the ending is supposed to be very ambiguous. Yeah, why are we worried about pampering these kids when we pamper their parents just as badly? I mean, that's basically the point of the story.  it really seems being that it was a i was kind of a little those kind of little on the nose and maybe like will create a little overly critical sometimes . . . okay because like i mean i was going to wonder about this was like i i'm not i'm not an expert on families i even i haven't even had a second date with anybody like five years so i'm not really sure i should be the one talking about people there their relationships and their children but um... yeah

Marie: say what seemed ambiguous isn't quite the word, but even reading this in preparation for I knew we were going to be doing this conversation on literary versus genre, I still sort of had the baked in genre expectation that something was going to happen with a request to change the program. And so I think the ending of the story, like I don't even mean abrupt, but that's the closest word I can find for it. There was a little bit of a feeling of, oh, we're ending there. Because genre brain, like we are trained by the genres we read to have certain expectations and because most of what I read is less on the literary end of things, I'm like, ah, he's been asked to change the program and because of that, nothing. We're not even going to go there. Like, that's not the point of the story. 

Deborah: Yeah, that was probably why I'm finding it ambiguous, is probably because I felt that something else was going to happen.

Andrew: Okay, okay, yeah, I mean, well, I s- Well, yeah, I mean, I suppose if you're doing this story in, like, more in-genre, for lack of better way- a better way of saying it, it's like, uh, Evil Moriarty would come out and start killing people or something like that. But, um, No, I mean, it's- this was- this is kind of a thing I seem to do every once in a while with my stories, it's just like- this again it's just like what Jennifer was saying earlier about uh nothing happens basically it's a story a story with no big plots no big stakes uh it's something i've done a few times not really tending it's just i'm writing the story i'm like there's not really anything big going on in this story this is kind of there's not really anything in this story there's really no stakes whatsoever the fate of the fate of the neighborhood is even at stake in this one let alone the universe but I like the story. No, it's like, it's the fate of, you know, it's not like, you know, your grand's the fate of the universe. It's like the fate of dinner isn't even at stake in most of my, in some of these stories. It's just something, yeah.

Deborah: And yet the fate of these kids and what they're going to grow up into without any adversity in their lives is at stake. So I do think that there are stakes in this story.

Andrew: sure but they're just gonna grow up to be their parents and just be spoiled by a different group of people you know you know I mean that was the whole idea the ending scene where it's like he's standing in the corner waiting for his bus while he's watching the rich people and like the concierge and his helper just nearly killed themselves to get all their bags into the truck while they're just standing there watching him do it but uh... yeah i don't know it's this one's literary to me because i guess because of the low stakes because like you don't usually see maybe that's one of the that's one of the station to change on rent something that's literally states don't necessarily have to be all that big and something because it's the idea that counts

Marie: Yeah, that's part of what I think I'm getting at when I talk about the relative downplaying of plot in the sense of incident, that exciting things are happening. But also, I think that, as Deborah pointed out, there is something at stake here, which is what those kids are going to grow up into. And what feels to me like it's on the literary style corner is the fact that the story is ultimately about no change happening. that a lot of the stories in science fiction and fantasy, we expect that by the end, something will have changed. And instead, this is just a look at, and things will continue down that path, the end. And I think that's an ending that you can get away with much better in a more literary style.

Andrew: Okay, so you think that would be an aspect of something that's more, that's in this, I suppose. I really think we need a better term than literary for the genre that we're talking about. But everything else... Yeah.

Deborah: Yes, because literary gives it that prestige sort of, that sort of value added sort of thing to it, which we need another term.

Andrew: Yeah, I mean the tricky thing is, is like, oh sorry, I was just gonna say, that's why I be like, in my life I've always tried to like, mainstream I've tried for awhile, but that doesn't quite work. Straight doesn't work for various reasons. General doesn't work because it's a little demeaning, and I don't wanna have like a distinction that's demeaning to it, it's just like, it's non-genre, but as close as I can come to it, what you would call it.

Marie: Well, and that's why I've been trying to use what I'm talking about this specific type of thing, literary style, because like I said at the beginning, literary can mean a bunch of different things. And we do talk about there being literary fantasy, literary science fiction. And so like that as a descriptor to talk about certain stylistic qualities, I agree that it would be helpful if we had a word that didn't then imply the value judgment and the MFAs and like all the other things that literary can mean. But. It's the word that we've been using historically. And so, you know, until somebody comes up with a, yeah, we need a catchy alternative, but we don't have it yet.

Jennifer: I think it's absolutely true that because if you think even of you know Emily St. John Mandela, I don't know if anyone's read Sea of Tranquility or The Glass Hotel, her latest books which are great actually. But yeah very much they have they're steeped in speculative fiction but They don't have the same kind of stakes. I mean, there are big stakes, but that's not what the book is necessarily about. It's not about the resolution of those stakes. It's not about something happening and things being different at the end. And I keep thinking, Andrew, we were just talking about your last story. I keep thinking about the famous Hemingway story, Hills Like White Elephants, which I don't know if any of you have read.

Andrew: I'm getting compared to Hemingway, awesome!

Jennifer: Yeah. So Hills Like White Elephants is a, it's just a, it's a short story with a man and a woman sitting at a cafe. Yeah. And they're talking, they're having a conversation and they're not talking about the thing that they're actually talking about, actually talking about, which is a pregnancy. And that's the whole story. There's no resolution. There's no acknowledgement of what they're about, which is the pregnancy. There's no change in either of their attitudes even, towards each other or towards their circumstances.

And your story does, it's a way from it with a deeper understanding. Yeah, what I was gonna say, yeah, the notion that what changes is the reader's understanding, because you can have stories where, especially in a shorter form, the longer you get, the harder this is to sustain, but stories where the arc of what happens is the reader figures out what's going on. And, you know, the entire thing is just that reader's journey.

And I feel like in the same way that story playtime, you know, just like you Marie, I kind of was primed to expect something to come of this. And I don't think that I was imagining something going wrong with the coding, but I was thinking like, oh now, like what is going to be the result of this change in terms of the children, right? In terms of the...their relationship with this kind of AI nanny. And the fact that wasn't what the story was about, that it was about something totally different in the end, I think, yeah, that was the story, is our change in expectations.

Andrew: this is just the i like that i don't think i've looked at it's my story i don't think i looked at it like that

Marie: Like, it can be fascinating hearing other people discuss your work as you go, you know, I never thought of it that way, but you're right! That is what I did. I'm sorry.

Andrew: Cool, I'm taking credit for it now.

Deborah: Hey you've been compared to Hemingway. That's not a bad place to be.

Andrew:  I know that's really good. I had one thing one time, just as a really quick side note, I sent something out and I was like, I need comparisons to get to agents because apparently I'm supposed to be able to know these comparisons and people kept telling me, well your book, it's kind of like, it reminds me of the Martian Chronicles, like well I can't use that but I like it anyways.

Deborah: Exactly. We're going to move to our next segment in which we're going to talk about a story that's not one of ours. This is we were talking about Glass Moon Water by Laura Niehoff and Diabolical Plots. It just went live this past month so you can find that very easily. And this is a story in which very little happens but it's still transfigurative in a lot of ways.  It is grounded in realism and detail. And in the story, very simply, a group of children wants to be able to go to the pool and swim, but they can't because there are ghosts there. And their parents are trying to keep them away from the ghosts, so they sneak out at night and they still, none of them drown, none of them become dead, none of them become ghosts. They just swim in the pool in the moonlight and that's it.

Marie: And they remember it forever.

Deborah: But I was really struck by the similarities between the way Jennifer writes and the way this lady Laura Niehoff writes, because you both use the intense level of detail to ground people in the reality that you're creating before you start adding in the slipstreamy elements and that makes us more inclined to take the author's hand and go off with them a little bit into the craziness.  There are details like Kool-Aid being drunk and used as hair dye, sprinklers being used instead of the pool, and then yellowing scraps of paper on the community bulletin board left by the dead, incomprehensible to the living. I was just really amazed by this story. It was really good. So what do you guys want to say about it?

Jennifer: Well, I also think that the details that are so specific and so grounded also make the kind of sudden introduction of the dead people, right, as she calls them, even more startling because you're kind of almost lulled into, I mean, at least for a person of a certain age, right? This is definitely was,

Andrew: I love this story.

Jennifer: The details spoke to me 100%, but you're lulled into almost a nostalgic kind of view of childhood. And then to kind of have that speculative element, and there are not just any speculative element, but ghosts are. I mean, I actually, you know. she says, swimming with the dead. The dead are in the pool. And so that's super, super startling, especially when put in conjunction with this very lazy, nostalgic view of kind of summer childhood. And what I loved the most about it was that it's still kind of a lazy, nostalgic story, wistful, even with the dead people, even swimming in the water with dead people. I just thought that it was just incredible. I just love this story so much.

Marie: one of the things that I found distinctly striking about it, because I was reading it with an eye toward, okay, what are some of the literary techniques and such being deployed? And this one is a balancing act, because if you do too much of it, it gets obnoxious. But the repeated invocations of Kool-Aid in a bunch of different ways of the Kool-Aid mustaches and using it to dye their hair and our breath is Kool-Aid sweet and so on. And it keeps coming back. I actually just searched, and there are six references to it in the course of the story.

which you need to have enough that this repeated motif actually comes through as a repeated motif to the audience, but if you do it too much, then the reader's saying they're going, yes, I get it, the Kool-Aid is like a metaphor for something fine. And it just gets so obnoxious if it's overdone.

But let's go ahead and move along to a reading from Marie Brennan from her story, Oak Apple Night.
 .....

Marie reads from "Oak Apple Night."

.....
Deborah: Thank you. That was a lovely reading. Right, so this is just a taste of the story. So this is pretty much an alternate history, which you'll be on a later date. You'll be back for alternate history. Thank you for being on again. What do you want the audience to take away from reading it? Do you think of this as being literary fantasy or historical fantasy or can it do you find it being both at the same time? What do you want the audience to take away from reading it? Do you think of this as being a literary fantasy or historical fantasy or a concept that you find it being both the same?

Marie:  Oh, I see no reason it couldn't be both at the same time because you can put multiple modifiers on the noun basically. And so it is clearly historical fantasy. It's set in 1689. I mean, it's historical. And I think of it as being literary because it is very much, the story exists to deliver effectively a thematic message. Like, again, nothing really happens in it. There's a moment where Joan could do an exciting, like thrilling kind of thing, fight the wild hunt to save the spirit of sovereignty, but she doesn't. Because the thematic message here is that the idea of kingship is beautiful. It is amazing. And human beings can't actually live up to the myth of it and the idea of it. And so she basically gets radicalized in her politics, as we could phrase it now. but she's from a very, very monarchical family. This is taking place right after the Glorious Revolution, for those who know what that is. But yeah, she decides, no, we're gonna have to do something else because we can't make that work like we want it to. It's never gonna be that good. So yeah, the fact that it's just. Yeah. I mean, I'm somebody, I come from a background in like folklore and such. And so I very much like looking at the beauty of these ideas and then the ways in which like reality doesn't have that mythic perfection.

Deborah: Well, that is probably where we're going to wrap it for the night. Thank you all for having agreed to be on the podcast. It was a pleasure talking with all of you. Next week, my topic will be reading and the working writer. If you'd like to get a jump on the stories we'll be discussing together, we'll be talking about A Long Spoon by Jonathan E. Howard, six in his Johannes Cabal series. It's a fun, fast read set in the steampunk world with magic. We'll also talk about Give Us the Swords by Carly St. George, which appeared originally in Kaleidatrope. and The Year of the Rebellious Stars by Tanvir Ahmed, which appeared first in Translunar Javlar's Lounge. My guests will be Chloe Smith and Brian Hugenbruch. Thank you all very much. I appreciate your time, and we'll see you all next time on Shining Moon.