Students are to post reactions (minimum 250 words each) to the
assigned listening/reading linked below. Students are encouraged (but
not required) to additionally respond to other student reactions.
KELLY LINK Monster Librarian Interview: Kelly Link is the author of the young adult collection Pretty Monsters. She has written two other collections, Stranger Things Happen and Magic for Beginners. Her
novellas and short stories have won a variety of awards. Neil Gaiman
called her "the best short story writer out there, in any genre." She
co-founded Small Beer Press with her husband, Gavin Grant, and edits
the fantasy zine Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet. Click heading to read the interview.
KELLY LINK NPR Interview: Author
Kelly Link says her short stories are inspired by what she calls "night
time logic." In fiction that strives for realism, she says, everything
has a place. Everything makes sense. It's kind of like dream logic, she
tells NPR's Audie Cornish, "except that when you wake up from a dream,
you think, well, that didn't make sense. Night time logic in stories,
you think, I don't understand why that made sense, but I feel there was
a kind of emotional truth to it." Click heading to listen to NPR interview.
THE WEIRDEST STORY IDEAS COME FROM YOUR OWN OBSESSIONS by KELLY LINK: "One
of the most useful pieces of writing advice I've ever come across was
something Kate Wilhelm said. To roughly paraphrase, she suggests that
every writer indirectly collaborates with her subconscious — she calls
this collaborator your Silent Partner — who supplies you with ideas that
you then turn into stories."Click heading to read the rest of the essay.
THE SPECIALIST'S HAT by KELLY LINK:
"When you're Dead," Samantha says, "you don't have to brush your
teeth." "When you're Dead," Claire says, "you live in a box, and it's
always dark, but you're not ever afraid." Claire and Samantha are
identical twins. Their combined age is twenty years, four months, and
six days. Claire is better at being Dead than Samantha. Click heading to read the rest of the story.
12 comments:
I was a bit iffy on The Specialist when it started, but it had me completely hooked by the end. I won’t spoil it, but I really liked it. The way Kelly Link describes her creative process, how she comes up with stories, is so interesting. For quite a while I read stories in more consumptively than thoughtfully but even I have tropes I like. I’ve never thought to list them all down like she suggests in The Weirdest Story Ideas but it’s a neat way of thinking about it. Of the interviews with her, the one that sticks out to me the most is “night time logic”. I’m writing this at night in fittingly dramatic lighting so I can imagine what she means. The Specialist illustrates this perfectly, where things don’t quite make sense but it all follows a mysterious, internal logic that we aren’t supposed to understand. I also liked what she said about writing genre fiction in the Monster Librarian interview. I agree that you need to read a lot of it to understand what you’re getting into, but more interestingly she suggests reading many genres so you can blend elements of them together. A fantasy story with horror elements or a science fiction story with fantasy elements is always interesting. There was another interesting comment about the tension between the established tropes and formula that a genre follows and pushing the limits of that. How far can you take an epic fantasy story before it becomes horror, or vice versa? It’s fun to think about, even if it’s more difficult to implement.
I love fictional realism stories, especially the kind Kelly Link mentions in her NPR interview, where characters are a stand-in for the reader as they figure out their world. In lofty stories, readers can often get bogged down by world specific terms, objects, or concepts. When “dream logic” is used though, as Link calls it, the story feels much more grounded, even when supernatural elements are involved. This concept reminds me of “The Radleys” by Matt Haig, where a family navigates troubles with their marriage, extended family, and identity as vampires. Although it is a vampire story, “everything makes sense” about the world building and character motivations. Even if the reader doesn’t understand why the logic makes sense, as Link also alludes to, a strong emotional reality remains that is enough for the reader to make a connection to the characters. In “The Radleys” example, the emotional reality might be empathy for Clara, the troubled daughter. Link also discusses her love for incorporating romance into her work. I admire her ability to embrace genres she’s drawn to, “even if [she] feels [she] shouldn’t be drawn to them.” I love books that cross genres, especially between fantasy and romance. I think blurring the lines brings new life into existing genre stereotypes, allowing a new type of story to come through. In the same vain, I believe all genres should be embraced equally, without categorizing some as “better” or “more mature” than others. By removing this stigma, writers will feel freer to embrace their favorite techniques and styles, regardless of the categories they belong to.
I love the short story by Kelly Link “The Specialist Hat” and at first I didn’t get it, but it's one of those stories you have to look closely just to understand what it really means. It's more of a “haunted” story as it takes place where the girls live in a haunted house. What I realized reading this story and her interview on the “Monster Librarian” where she talks about how she brainstores for stories and such, made me realize her stories are based on what she was obsessed with. She takes things from her childhood, things that she remembers and things that she loves, like horror characters or settings and turns them into a book which I thought was a fantastic way to write books. Every little thing in your life can be turned into a story, everything that is important to you, can be captured into a story. The interview also talks about how she gets in the mindset of teens because with the stories she writes about, she seems to write in the right perspective of teens and the reason she was able to capture that perspective correctly was because of things she remembered as a kid. Its very important to understand as someone who can have trouble writing stories, to understand that stories come from what you already know and what you experienced. Just remembering your childhood, things you experienced can be very important to storytelling. Overally, I did like “The Specialist Hat” story although it was confusing on my end to understand, still a good story.
I wanted to touch on one of Kelly Link’s comments “...that they would boldly read their romance novels. That's one of the things about figuring out what kind of story you want to write, is figuring out the kinds of things you are drawn to, even if you feel you shouldn't be drawn to them.” Romance is often looked down upon as a genre for being mostly consumed, and now, being mostly written by women. Even as an avid reader, and a lover of romance subplots I can’t help but shrink away when the masses point their beefy fingers at ‘the horny romance reading women’. Like most things, women are criticized and ridiculed for having a shared love for something that, especially nowadays, is mostly made for women by women. Of course, not to say that women are the only romance readers or that men face no ridicule for reading romance, in fact, they probably face it more– but I digress. I think that being unapologetic about the books you read, and in turn what you write, should never be criticized or looked down upon. I especially hate the false logic that people employ when they claim that you aren't really reading if you are reading fiction–especially genres like fantasy and romance. At the end of the day, if you are sitting down and reading something you are bettering yourself as a person and working to improve yourself, fictitious or not. Likewise, writing fiction does not make your work any less valuable than a piece of non–fiction. No matter the genre, when you write you open yourself up emotionally, make some sort of commentary on the world, and guide readers through what it means to be human, in one way or another.
One of the comments that Kelly Link made that really intrigued me revolved around whether it was better if characters knew the worlds around them or if they were surprised like the reader. She talked about how she enjoyed writing stories where the readers felt uneasy about what they were reading while the characters were so comfortable in their strange and unsettling environments. She specifically said, "I think there's a kind of useful dissonance, reading a world in which the people in that world are used to that place. And that's because that's true of real life; you often come into situations where everybody already knows what's going on, and you have to sort of piece it together." To me, that was a profound statement from a point of view I had never really considered as a reader or a writer. As a reader, I do think I enjoy reading books that have a premise that feels unfamiliar to me but familiar to characters as it feels like I am truly entering their world. In life, I am always trying new things and going into new "scary" environments that replicate that feeling of reading those of type books. As a writer, I would love to create an environment that replicates real life in that type of way because I feel like that would connect to readers on a much deeper level. I personally love reading books that have topics and characters that are foreign and new to me, yet have feelings that I have felt or didn't even know I related to until I read that book.
I thought Kelly Link’s “The Specialist’s Hat” was interesting—a fairly quick read with a nice build to it—but surprisingly found it somewhat lacking. I normally really like horror, ghost stories, the macabre, etc., and I found there were a lot of good pieces set up within the narrative that I liked: the thread of the father and his literary pursuit mixed with the alcoholism and strange encounters, the dollhouse-like view into the lives of the girls and the smallness they feel both in importance and identity, the teeth on the hat and the allure of the attic. Even typing this now, I just realized the parallel of Eight Chimneys and Samantha’s comments about the number 8 being particularly relevant to the story. But I think that’s my issue—concern? qualm? point of discussion?—there is a latent, underlying narrative being laid out by Link, just under the surface and subtly teased at, that I feel like is not fully gleaned enough of. It makes me think about the question of how much your reader should know, how much your character(s) should know, versus how much you as the author knows, and what balance between the three elicits the best reading experience. Here, I felt like I was mildly disappointed that I didn’t get enough answers—when reading the Monster Librarian interview, which I did prior to reading the short story, Link touches on the suddenness that she typically leaves a story with, usually following the arc of narrative rather than full satisfaction of questions—as if building a window for aesthetics rather than utility or convenience. It may look wonderful, may be pleasing to the eye and enjoyable, but it may not be the greatest at letting the sun in, or might not have a particularly clear view of the outside through its glass. This is how I feel “The Specialist’s Hat” felt to me—too much set up and not enough action or clarification for me to make much meaning. Link mentions wanting to leave her readers thinking forward for “what happens next,” but I feel like I ended up going, “and what did any of that mean?” Which is typically uncharacteristic for me! I love trying to piece together puzzles of narratives, so if anybody feels like they understood the underlying narrative here, feel free to explain it to my achingly tired mind. Overall though I thought it was an interesting reading experience, and at least certainly got me thinking about narrative balance and reader gratification vs. narrative satisfaction!
Idk how I feel about ‘The Specialist’s Hat.’ I really liked the beginning and was excited to figure out how these girls were dead, but it turns out that they were only “Dead”, which sort of felt like a cop-out almost. Like, I get it and why it was done like that, but halfway through I kept thinking to myself ‘ok, but how/why are they dead?’ only for it to be revealed that they were just playing pretend kind of felt lame. But, again, I understand that the horror element came from the hat itself and the babysitter who was the poet’s daughter, and *she’s* probably actually dead for real (assuming this takes place in roughly current year, considering Rash wrote his book in 1907). But I felt like the babysitter was sort of incidental and I wish she did a bit more. Idk, she was sort of just there to show them the hat and to establish she was Rash’s daughter, and I feel like they could have found the hat naturally and sort of pieced things together based on their own father’s writings and that may have given them a bit more agency imo. And then the ending just sort of… ends. I know in one of the interviews, the interviewer brings up the abruptness of her stories’ ends and she answers with “When I get to the end of a story, I think of that story as being absolutely over -- the endings are the endings -- in that I hope that the narrative has a coherent and satisfying shape, even if part of what is satisfying about it is that it's a little unsatisfying/unsettling. I also hope that the reader is left with enough forward velocity to go on thinking about what happened next, and that the characters and their situation and their actions will linger in the reader's mind.” And I get that, and the ending did make me think ‘oh, well what happens next?’ but that’s because, I think at least in this story, the dad getting bitten by the hat (?) and the twins thinking he’s the specialist was almost the first time something of consequence happened, but then it just drops it immediately. I love psychological and subtle horror that’s really atmospheric and not overtly horror, but this just didn’t really hit it for me personally.
Personally, I find Kelly Link's "night time logic" philosophy to be fascinating. When reading "The Specialist's Hat" after her interviews, the points at which her process shines through the most become very prominent and difficult to ignore. I must admit that at the beginning of the story, I did not find myself particularly attached or moved due to an initial struggle to wrap my head around the piece. Initially, I had believed it to be a fault on Link's side. But in retrospect, I now have come to understand that this difficulty to absolutely comprehend the story is an intended effect. The story did not completely make sense as I had hoped, but there was also a distinct emotional truth being communicated within the story. I felt that this effect was easiest to recognize near the end of the story, particularly when the story circles back to the idea of "playing Dead." While I will still admit that the story's train of thought still does not feel very coherent in my eyes, witnessing Link put her "night time logic" philosophy into writing has made me feel that "The Specialist's Hat" places focus not into the logistics of the plot, but the underlying message—which is a focus that many writers should emphasize on as they write. While I express interest towards Link's creative process and work, I must also say that I felt that the pacing felt inconsistent. Had Link been faster in communicating her emotional message earlier into the story and trimmed down the exposition, I felt that she could have elaborated on the message more and delivered a more resonating piece.
Kelly Link's interview was inspiring to read as a lover of horror myself. Her method of talking about things she likes connects back to our classes, where we discuss creating story catchers and placing stuff we are familiar with. Link puts some elements of what she likes in her writing, and reading “The Specialist’s Hat,” you can tell how well-read she is with horror based on the energy that weighed heavily with a sense of dread. The story itself has a very paranormal touch to it because it reminded me of entities called Mimics that use their voice to lure people toward them plus, the specialist itself being represented as some sort of demonic entity that pretends to be the girls father. Kelly Link is inspiring because I would like to write more horror stories. Still, I felt many publishers preferred classic literary fiction over genre fiction, which discouraged me from wanting to write more within genre fiction. When she said to keep sending them out to publishers, it gave me a bit more confidence because while many might not like what I write, there will be one or two publishers that will. I know now that you don’t have to submit only to publishing companies but also to magazines, and I like reading about authors' routines when it comes to writing because it can help me figure out my writing routine. Kelly also writes tons of short stories, and she can write so much in a single story, which is the type of writing I’d like to get better at doing. I would also like to take a look at her story recommendations, hoping it will make me a better horror writer.
I found “The Specialist’s Hat” to be quite disturbing. It also had me hooked, as I was anxious to know how it would end, but the concept of them choosing what they chose (I’m being vague because I don’t want to spoil it) was horrifying in a way that is not entertaining to me. I am not a horror fan, and I don’t think I would read anything else by Kelly Link, but I can see the appeal. She did mention that she was a fan of the uncanny, which is a word derived from un-homelike, and I would say that concept was expertly executed in “The Specialist’s Hat,” as this was a house that sounded like a house but was filled with things that were not part of a home, which I think also ties into her idea of “not-quite-dreamy” logic from the NPR interview.
One thing she mentioned that stood out to me was that I have never heard of a writer starting from the beginning of a piece and revising until they get to the end each time they write, but I found that to be an interesting process, and one I might like to try with the piece I wrote inspired by our museum visit. I was also surprised to hear that she hadn’t written in about a year at the time of the first interview we read, but it seems like that could be due to the fact that she teaches writing, publishes, and probably has other duties to take care of in her own life – it seems like writing and reading are her life, and she still explores many parts of those fields even when she isn’t writing her own pieces.
I must admit I’m not a fan of Kelly Link’s stylistic choices. I don’t enjoy not being given all of the information when I read something, and I don’t want to have to fill in most of the story rather than appreciating what the author intended. Hot take: I don’t like Inception either for that reason. The entire concept of imprecise writing disagrees with me. Her “nighttime logic,” as she describes it, is an interesting idea, but one I find doesn’t work on me very well. There is a quote from Mark Twain, “It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.” People expect fictional stories to make MORE sense than true ones. In true stories, things can happen randomly, by chance. This is what drew people in to George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series: characters get randomly killed. Another hot take: I do not like Martin’s writing either. I agree with Twain; fiction must make more sense than reality. A story should not be reliant on esotericism or as one act at the New York Renaissance Faire described it: “A flying implement of doom.” Credit to the Shakespeare Approves show. He used this term to poke fun at how and why people die in Shakespeare plays. It’s a contrived plot device that accomplishes anything the author wants, and I can’t stand it. I don’t see it as intentional and thought-provoking art, I see it was lazy writing. Not to say Link’s stories can’t be enjoyed, but I dislike the idea of being reliant on a sort of fog clouding readers’ minds, allowing you to do anything you want to accomplish the goal of the story. This is not to say stories can’t be unrealistic, I very much believe they can and SHOULD. Fantastical worlds are designed as escapism, but they should at least make sense TO THAT WORLD. If your world has laws, define and stay within them, otherwise you end up with whatever J.K Rowling did in the later Harry Potter books.
The Specialist's Hat by Kelly Link hooked me in the beginning. I enjoy cold openings that immerse you in some sort of mystery straight away. However, as soon as Link started providing paragraphs of exposition, the book lost me. I think showing, not telling, in any sort of story is what can either make or break it. I wish rather than telling the reader that Claire and Samantha prefer to play inside, she would show us somehow. Showing and not telling in a book is much harder to do than on the screen, but it's not impossible. An abundance of information at the beginning of any story is a surefire way to lose your audience. Why should we care? We barely know these characters, surely we are going to forget that Charles Cheatham Rash ran away to sea when he was thirteen. There's also no implication of that information being relevant to the story whatsoever. There is just *too* much exposition in this story, and not enough story, in my opinion. After a long information-dump, Link proceeds to explain to the reader why Claire and Samantha have a babysitter, rather than showing them. I will say I did enjoy Link's take on "night time logic". I might also just not be fully comprehending the story, and maybe Link intentionally explains to the reader all of the backstory stuff. All in all, I'm not totally sure how I felt about it.
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