Author Notes: rob mclennan

rob at the Louvre.Contributor rob mclennan discusses his work in Issue XIX of The Puritan.One of the triggers for the short story, “The Matrix Resolutions,” was the disconnect I saw between the second and third films in The Matrix trilogy, a disappointing and surprising bafflement that occurred amid two films that were supposedly constructed as a near-single unit. Much like the second film of the Back to the Future trilogy, the second film of The Matrix trilogy existed only to lead into the third and final installment.The core narratives of the three films moved through a series of mythos that attempted to wrap themselves into a kind of self-contained layering of worlds and perceptions, and the end of the second film led me towards a narrative direction that the third not only ignored, but managed to completely confuse. Basically: the third film made no sense.This is but one thread through “The Matrix Resolutions” where a through-line of film critique (or, complaint) tries to bring other threads alongside, exploring a series of deceptively-secondary steps, including abandoned newspapers, and the narrator’s daughter. What the story is about is far less interesting to me than what the story is doing.I’m interested in crafting fiction as a series of interlocking narrative threads, especially if the connections between those threads aren’t obvious. Some might never be, and might deliberately suggest something entirely outside of what is directly stated (it is possible to write something into a story by not writing it). In our own lives, everything impacts upon everything else and everything connects even if we don’t entirely understand it. It feels like it does, even if it actually doesn’t.Lately, I’ve been re-reading Kristjana Gunnars’ novel The Prowler (Red Deer AB: Red Deer College Press, 1989), and was reminded of an idea sketched out on the inside flap that has stayed with me since I originally read it, more than twenty years ago:“I have sometimes thought: it is possible there is no such things as chronological time. That the past resembles a deck of cards. Certain scenes are given. They are not the scenes the rememberer chooses, but simply the deck that is given.”Over the course of the past decade, I’ve realized that much of my prose has been focused on the smaller, seemingly most insignificant incidents of human interaction that become a kind of turning point. For example: a girl discovers she’s adopted when she is eight years old and somehow this causes her to break up with her boyfriend when she’s thirty.This oversimplifies, but the point remains: how does any human make it from point A to B? What choices we make and what things impact upon who we are later on: often these things happen in ways that we neither understand nor are we consciously aware of them. I am interested in cause and effect—no matter the order. There are no singular points but a series of dozens, if not even hundreds, of tiny points; perhaps any number of which could change the flow of someone’s life. The film Sliding Doors (1998) attempted to explore the point but in such a facile way that it was rendered sterile.In my first novel, white (2007), my initialed Persephone had to return home before she finally understood that she was not actually a victim, and that any change required was as much hers to make. In my second novel, Missing Persons (2009), the main character spends months struggling to move beyond a single event to the point that it blinds her to the lives and requirements of the people immediately around her.For a good deal of 2012 and much of 2013 so far, I’ve been working to complete a collection of shorter stories, each story roughly three manuscript pages in length. Including “The Matrix Resolutions,” I’m around nearly a dozen stories finished, with a further half-dozen still in progress. I’m interested in what is possible in a very short space and how a seeming-collage of facts and threads can weave themselves into a narrative that could only make sense in that particular form. Not all in a story requires spelling out, but can be placed, quickly and quietly in the right place, and still speak volumes.This means that stories often take weeks to compose, but more likely months, crafting and carving and pouring over daily until every word makes sense.From the same manuscript-in-progress, I’ve a story forthcoming in The Atlas Review that blends the zombie apocalypse, pregnancy, the death of Neil Armstrong and Count von Count. A story recently published in Matrix Magazine blends failed artworks, Samuel Beckett, busking, the World Trade Center and Hurricane Sandy. A story in Numero Cinq fictionalizes my parents before I was born, and discusses silence, the 401 Highway, Ontario history and Robert Creeley, singularly sketched out over the space of a drive. Another story forthcoming in Grain magazine, shapes a portrait nearly as point-form of the narrator through important moments throughout the length of his life, both immediate and far-flung, however large or impossibly small.Part of what I’ve admired about the novels of Milan Kundera is his talent for including every aspect of living in the space of a single scene or character, from the political, social, sexual and personal, without one overtaking the other, or appearing less important or contradictory. He writes (or, at least, he used to) the way we live, with all things happening concurrently, and without contradiction, simply because it is happening. Our lives are often confused, complex things (so why can’t fiction be as well?); not everything requires explanation, nor direct lines.Fiction is about perception, as much as anything else. You, the reader, absorb a story, and are asked to take on faith even the elements that can’t possibly be true. I want to say as much as possible with less.Since I began this particular manuscript in December 2010, during our Christmas holiday in Toronto, my fiction has been largely influenced by writers such as Sarah Manguso, Lydia Davis, Ken Sparling, Etgar Keret, Sheila Heti and Lisa Robertson. Each teaching from example and with their different consideration of the narrative and the line. This is a tale told in sentences. What are they telling you?Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives there. The author of more than twenty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, his most recent titles are the poetry collections Songs for little sleep, (Obvious Epiphanies, 2012), grief notes(BlazeVOX [books], 2012), A (short) history of l. (BuschekBooks, 2011), Glengarry (Talonbooks, 2011) and kate street (Moira, 2011), and a second novel, missing persons (2009). An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground pressChaudiere Books (with Jennifer Mulligan), The Garneau Reviewseventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics (ottawater.com/seventeenseconds) and the Ottawa poetry .pdf annual ottawater. He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com.

Back to blog Next