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Shannon Robinson
2k Plays6 months ago
The Ill-Fitting Skin is layered with surreal storytelling but remains an extraordinarily realistic read, in the sense that even the most solid realities of life—and death—tend to blur and shimmer at their raw edges. The talkative bird that nests in a woman’s womb is as real as the “previous tenant.” The love of a mother for her uncontrollable son is as real as the wildness that is in her too. The women of The Ill-Fitting Skin are real women—who work and grieve and create and destroy, who love and do not love, whether at the roll of the dice or because “the pages are paths, and you will have to choose among them.”
Shannon Robinson’s debut short story collection, The Ill-Fitting Skin, is winner of the Press 53 Award for Short Fiction (forthcoming with Press 53 in May 2024). Her writing has appeared in The Gettysburg Review, The Iowa Review, Joyland, Water-Stone Review, Nimrod, failbetter, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in fiction from Washington University in St. Louis, and in 2011 she was the Writer-in-Residence at Interlochen Center for the Arts. Other honors include Nimrod’s Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction, grants from the Elizabeth George Foundation and the Canada Council for the Arts, a Hedgebrook Fellowship, a Sewanee Scholarship, and an Independent Artist Award from the Maryland Arts Council. She teaches creative writing at Johns Hopkins University and lives in Baltimore with her husband and son. www.shannonrobinson.org
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Transcript
Introduction with Ken Volante and Peter Bauer
00:00:01
Speaker
You are listening to something rather than nothing. Creator and host Ken Volante. Editor and producer Peter Bauer. Shannon, the mic's yours and just ease into it. Here we go. All right.
Shannon Robinson reads 'Dirt' from 'The Elephant and Skin'
00:00:24
Speaker
I'm Shannon Robinson, and I'm going to be reading a story from my collection, The Elephant and Skin, and it's a story called Dirt. The house and all its dirt waited for my touch. It was parked by the curb with the engine running. I wanted to go in because I wanted to get on with it. I also wanted to drive away, go fast and far until I ran out of gas, until I dropped off the edge of the earth.
Reflections on Career and Unexpected Paths
00:00:51
Speaker
The earth is round, so round and round we go.
00:00:54
Speaker
And there I was, back again, in my disintegrating Chevy Malibu, with my rubber gloves, bucket, dollar store cleaning products, all riding shotgun. I switched off the engine and pushed my head against the steering wheel. The pressure just shy of Sam and the corn. It was time to face the filth. I went to college and somehow, never mind my talent for detours, I imagined that I'd have a house of my own by now. That I'd be paying off a mortgage, planting a garden,
00:01:23
Speaker
maybe remodeling a kitchen. That is to say, I didn't expect to end up cleaning other people's houses. While my resume is circulated, like so much debris in an asteroid field, I couldn't have John paying the rent all by himself, having him doling out cash to me, an allowance for his slim salary as an adjunct. I wanted to be a kept woman only in the sense of not being dumped. John didn't laugh at that one. No keep earned there.
00:01:50
Speaker
You're too hard on yourself," he said. You have to say that, I said. There's no penance to be done. You made the choice you needed to make. No call for a martyrdom. He was smiling, but there was a tightness to it. Well, good. Truth be told, I had the kind of cleverness that readily alchemizes into stupidity by way of vanity. Five years in a PhD program,
00:02:14
Speaker
nothing to show for it except a box of rambling notes. So this is indeed my penance for being so ineffectual to tell myself as I scrubbed, wiped, scoured. The idea was that it was a temporary gig, a stopgap, and soon a real job would surface, like a magical island or a dead body.
Encounter with Hartley Spencer and Uncomfortable Situations
00:02:35
Speaker
Hartley Spencer said he'd found me through my Craigslist ad, which I'd more or less forgotten about.
00:02:41
Speaker
Most people seem to hear about me through word of mouth as my name passed through a network of busy people with enough money to outsource the boring, time-burning business of keeping house. My email exchanged with Hart Lewis Terce on his side, little more than a name, an address, a time. I'm one of those people still stuck in the idea that email should resemble the correspondence of yesteryear, the salutations, full sentences, grammar, et cetera. I need to just get over it and stop crafting epistles.
00:03:12
Speaker
The picture I'd formed in my mind of this Hartley, young, maybe a snappy junior executive and a silk tie, began flickering as soon as I saw the house with its unkempt lawn and peeling paint. I wondered if the neighbors ever complained. The buzzer didn't work, so I knocked, knocked again. And finally, the door was answered by a short pale potato-shaped guy of indeterminate age. He was balding on top and his frizzy clown wig hair stood out from the sides of his head.
00:03:42
Speaker
amid the constellation of acne on his chin and unpopped, white-head, charm-like Venus. Hi, I said. Hartley Spencer? He hesitated, as if he were about to be accused. Yes, he decided. It's Sharon. We have an appointment today? Oh, he said. Oh. His eyes looked past me to the street and then zigzagged over me, down and up. Should I pay you now?
00:04:12
Speaker
Sure. And then as I took the bills that he extended to me, stiff armed, I added, thank you. I never knew if that was the appropriate thing to say. I'm going to start in the kitchen, I said. The house smelled of BO, must, and microwave nachos. It looked like it had been furnished with cast off hotel furniture, that weird blend of indestructible and cheap looking, all dull gloss, pleather, and acrylic tweed.
00:04:40
Speaker
Okay, he said, it's through here. He sat down at the kitchen table, presumably to watch me work. So I started with the dirty dishes piled in the sink. Whatever, dude. A little while back, I'd cleaned for an old lady who followed me around the house. She would sit with her tea and a book affecting the premise that she just happened to be there in the background.
00:05:01
Speaker
Whenever I moved on to a new room, she'd come drifting along, teacup rattling, and settle herself within a sight line. You missed a spot. She actually said that. And at first, I thought she might be kidding. Not the case. She was supervising from behind the fourth wall. After a few weeks, she turned me out for using the bathroom. I will have no locked doors in this house, she said. I wondered who she was really talking to. But this guy, he was silent.
00:05:31
Speaker
near silent. Between intermittent blasts from the faucet, I could hear him breathing. I moved on to the counters. I thought you'd be dressed differently, he said. Different how? I was wearing yoga pants and a hoodie with the sleeves pushed up, perfectly presentable. He kept quiet as I sprayed a cabinet and then scrubbed at the goo around the knob. Like wearing a uniform, I said. Maybe. Yes, I think that could be nice. I'm just a freelancer.
00:06:00
Speaker
He'll answer, God, my diction, the vestigial tale of my pretension. I'm not with the company. And just then, it all became very clear and I stopped scrubbing. As I've already admitted, I'm not as sharp as I used to think I was. I heard myself asked, so what kind of uniform? A French maid? Blushing did not become him. He looked like he'd been scalded.
00:06:28
Speaker
I think there's been some misunderstanding, I said. In the film of my life, during the scene, there will be a subtitle underneath my dialogue providing translation. Fuck off, perv. You'd think I would have hightailed it out of there. I did, but not before scheduling another session. Historically, I am terrible at recognizing and making exits. Let me be completely upfront about that.
00:06:54
Speaker
lousy romances, lousy friendships, my shaggy dog, grad school experience. Oh, I stick it out, try to make it work. Blame it on my church-going mother. Who wouldn't leave her shag marriage? Blame it on my private girl school education with its constant subtext of, just who do you think you are? Blame it on Rio. Blame it on the rain. Hartley made me do all the
Bizarre Offer and Negotiation with Hartley
00:07:14
Speaker
haggling. I started at four times my fee and then lowered it in $5 increments until he finally unglued his gaze from the tabletop.
00:07:23
Speaker
I drove home and reviewed the whole episode in my mind, doing my best not to talk to myself while at stoplights. I thought you'd be dressed differently. Why had he expected anything? Why hadn't I thought to ask why? At least he hadn't said, I thought you'd be prettier, although maybe he'd been thinking that.
00:07:41
Speaker
Hell, it's what I think whenever I catch a glimpse of myself. The way he'd scanned me on the doorstep without even trying to be subtle. He was someone, I thought, who didn't have much of a relationship with his mirror, judging from his goofy hair and his unharvested zits. Granted, the lighting in that house was truly awful. My eyes hurt from all the squinting. It wasn't exactly a French maid's uniform, but it was the best I could manage, both in terms of what I had in my closet and what I was willing to wear for Hartley.
00:08:11
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white t-shirt, black pencil skirt, black flats. I looked like catering staff. What have to do? Had I told John about any of this? I wanted to, but every time I tried, I didn't. Didn't actually try, that is. Hartley preferred that I just clean the kitchen, and that was fine because the place seemed to have reverted to extreme filpiness within a week.
00:08:33
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like it passed through a wormhole to a month's worth of splatter, crust, and neglect. Could he really be such a slob? Maybe it was part of his whole fetishistic deal. The cleaning session was a replay of the last time. I cleaned while he watched from his position at the table. Lather, rinse, repeat. Although this time I spot scrubbed the sticky kitchen floor and I gathered he especially liked this activity because I could hear his chair squeaking as he tried to be subtle about adjusting its angle.
00:09:02
Speaker
and I could hear his breathing change. I thought I heard him take a shot from an inhaler, but it's possible I was imagining that. As before, he paid me up front. This time, he offered an envelope that had been sealed with so much scotch tape, you'd have thought the contents included something alive and capable of escape. How canny of him to judge that I wouldn't want to mangle it open in front of him. I did that later, as I sat in my rust mobile parked around the corner.
00:09:30
Speaker
Inside the envelope, along with the cash, was a picture torn from what appeared to be a costume store catalog. He'd circled a picture of a girl in a French maid outfit, and on the picture, he'd double-circled the high heels. A uniform. Fine. I'd worn stupider clothes, by choice and in public, back when I thought it was hot stuff.
00:09:52
Speaker
The next week, I turned up in the outfit, which I'd hidden beneath a jacket. The lace edging on the sleeves was so cheap, it scratched my skin, and the asbestos-like fabric of the skirt had already put a run on my nylons. Yeah, nylons, courtesy of the 1990s. The shoes were just as dated, shiny black cockroach killers from the Goodwill with battle scars and the four-inch heels. I handed Hartley the receipts. You never finished cleaning that first time, he said.
00:10:19
Speaker
By the time I processed this non sequitur, I found that I was already cleaning, the moment of possible protest gone. The kitchen table was sporting a tablecloth, and I thought maybe Hartley was trying to class the joint up. But the tablecloth was, like my dress, sleazy facsimile. The real purpose of the vinyl draping became obvious enough.
00:10:41
Speaker
Obvious is the wrong word. Evident. Maybe there's some change in barometric pressure when a dick gets pulled out of a pair of pants. I sense something. And then yes, it got obvious. And I pretended not to hear the little grunts. Boy, did I make those cabinets sparkle. Every time an image appeared in my brain, I just kept clicking the little X in the corner of the box. His slitty eyes click. His busy hand click. His purple cock click.
00:11:10
Speaker
And I'll stop there.
Themes and Styles in 'The Ill-Fitting Skin'
00:11:13
Speaker
Shannon Robinson, I read your new book.
00:11:25
Speaker
I found that within that particular story of dirt, there's this incredible, incredible vulnerability where as the reader, I think you could feel yourself in that situation. And I found that as you gave details of what was going on, it felt so enraptured by needing those details to understand threat, safety,
00:11:54
Speaker
the relationship that's going on there and enthralled during that reading, but the story as a whole. I'm glad you enjoyed it.
00:12:05
Speaker
Yeah. Tell us. I mean, it's always fun to have a collection. Now the collection, the ill-fitting skin, which I wanted to tell you, I was pleased with reading. Sometimes you get into habits or different forms of writing. You become more attracted to over times. And
00:12:29
Speaker
I've read for long enough where I've had phases in different parts where I read shorter writing, shorter fiction. Recently, I had a guest, Morgan Parker, with essays. I hadn't read essays, just an essay collection for a while. Then with the shorter works collected here in the ill-fitting skin, I got to tell you, it was really
00:12:50
Speaker
It was so well done and so varied with each of the stories that I was like, oh, that's what it's like to read kind of great short work. So it really thrilled me because it had been an amount of time in doing that. Tell us about the ill-fitting skin, you know, having this collection of your works out now and like the book going into the world. What's it mean? What's it like for you right now?
00:13:21
Speaker
It's really exciting. I mean, I've been writing these stories over the course of a little over 10 years and now to actually have them all bound together in a book. I mean, there's something enchanting too about a physical copy of a book to hold in hand, which is thrilling. I mean, sometimes the stories would be published online, but other times they would be in print, so they're not all
00:13:46
Speaker
accessible. So it's just lovely to be able to point people to the collection of my work, what I've been thinking about on and off over the course of a decade. And of course, with a short story collection, you're always looking for what do these stories have in common? What is the thing that binds them together as opposed to it just being kind of a weird potpourri? And I think the themes are
00:14:15
Speaker
Definitely motherhood is there but nurturing trying to nurture other people and trying to nurture yourself I think is there as well and the the figure in the story that I read from I mean she is She's struggling to have a good relationship with herself to be kind to herself And instead there's a line that she feels like metabolizing shame as part of the job
00:14:40
Speaker
I was wondering, too, with the varied content, I was listening very closely to what you were saying thematically. And there was a quality within the stories that I adored, a discomfort in the situations that somebody's an encounter. And part of the discomfort, like you said, has to do with
00:15:06
Speaker
at least in this story, but like grappling with yourself, what should I be doing? Shame. Like, is it worth it? And who's who's tricking who? I wanted to mention one other story just to give you like, like, I try to give raw impressions. I mean, like, I studied literature, you know, when I went to the to the university in literature is my first love. And I now I do
00:15:32
Speaker
I work in labor, you know, within the labor movement. And there's always such a quite thrill in dropping back into, like I said, reading and stories. One of the things with your work, all things bright and beautiful. I got to tell you, like, in reading it, the one quality I found, and I apologize because I'm always like very careful with how to describe things,
00:16:01
Speaker
a literary that I'm trying to like the feel of it. But I felt this in almost in a classic and beautiful way, this like Salinger element to the family, the pieces of the family, the glass family that you find there.
00:16:19
Speaker
And just this power of these individuals and these characters that you quickly, you do a job where you pull folks into that dynamic. If you're not pulled into that dynamic, the story doesn't work. But to pull people in and say, who's around? What are we trying? We're trying to help somebody, like you said, with nurture. And it had this beautiful,
00:16:44
Speaker
power of capturing the difficulty and the pain and sometimes it's it feels just unflinching and as a writer like when you do that uh i love when it works like that did you i like i said using salinger and saying that type of thing but i was trying to convey the the pieces that were in there and that you find
00:17:10
Speaker
in that piece. What do you think about maybe my reaction to it? Well, it's really a group, really flattering to be compared to Salinger in any way. What a master pro stylist. But yeah, I could see what you're talking about the family in
00:17:30
Speaker
all things bright and beautiful. I mean, they are sensitive and they're intelligent and yet in some ways that intellectual energy gets in the way. They're trying to intellectualize a problem that is really about deep-seated feelings that can defy their ability to kind of like, this is not going to go away because they write eloquent letters because they're witty. This is just deep pain and tries,
00:18:00
Speaker
They may, they can't quite rescue this brother, which is heartbreaking. At the end of that story, this is a spoiler, but she thinks that perhaps they had some success with this intervention and she never hears from them again. I'm not explicit about that, but that's because it could be he disappears from her life.
00:18:23
Speaker
It's because he kills himself. You know, and folks for enjoy it when you do read it, you stuck the landing on that ending, even in the ambiguity.
Journey and Challenges in Writing
00:18:34
Speaker
And there's something with, you know, it's a philosophy and art podcast, right? So there's an aspect where
00:18:40
Speaker
Like that type of ambiguity and difficulty is there's there's a beauty in that the the resolution isn't quite there. All right. So Shannon, you know, obviously talking about your work, but, you know, philosophy program here. So I wanted to drop down and like,
00:18:57
Speaker
and just digging in about your thoughts. About your work, I mean, you dedicate yourself to the writing process and new published edition here. What about yourself as an artist, as a writer? Was there a moment, like, was it...
00:19:20
Speaker
A moment that you're like i'm a writer i'm an i'm an artist as far as you seeing yourself as you're an identity Was was did that happen or what was it like? It took a long time Actually, it took a long time. I I didn't start writing stories until it was in my 30s Um, I had always I mean sometimes a lot of writers they say oh, I was always, you know writing stories even as a little kid, not me um
00:19:47
Speaker
But I used to tell people I didn't write at all. I did write things. I wrote journal entries. I kept journals since the age of 10.
00:19:55
Speaker
funny articles for the student paper. I wrote long letters to people in the days before email. I was a letter writer. There were lots of things I was writing, but they weren't stories. Then when I got married, I moved to the States and I couldn't legally work here because I'm a Canadian. I'm an American now, but I was a Canadian, so I had to. I was at Lucent and I took a creative writing course and I started writing. I thought, oh yeah, I mean, I do. I'd always loved books.
00:20:21
Speaker
but I didn't think I was capable of telling stories. But then it turns out I was, and this is what I'd always wanted to do. But I mean, for some reason, we're always, I think a lot of people are kind of leery about identifying as a writer. For some reason, we feel like being a writer is a constant process of arriving. I think if you're doing it right, you are always taking on projects that you feel you can't pull off.
00:20:49
Speaker
I don't know. How am I going to do this? You're constantly teaching yourself new things. You're constantly pushing towards things that seem to defy expression. You'd mentioned ambiguity earlier. This is classic writerly advice, but always begin with that ambiguity and ambivalence. What do you feel ambivalent about?
00:21:12
Speaker
That's where you have to dive in because that will be the most interesting writer. You don't know something that's been bothering you and you just don't know quite how you feel about it, some memory or image you have that is causing some kind of turbulence in your soul. That is going to make for a good story.
00:21:32
Speaker
Yeah, wow. No, that helps crystallize it. And I really appreciate your thoughts. And thinking about the identity as a writer, I noticed your comment there about identifying as a writer.
Philosophy and Writing: Serious Questions
00:21:50
Speaker
And for me,
00:21:50
Speaker
You know, and for me, it's a bit of an, you know, I don't want to say outsider perspective, but it feels like a little bit. Sometimes I think about painting and writing in the same way as far as my appreciation of it, where like when you enjoy particular forms of art, there's something that you're really attached to. Like, how do you pull that off? And for me, I think it's like within painting with color, it's like, how is it? How really is it?
00:22:20
Speaker
That you can convey so much you know with this paint and it shows so much and i think about writing in in such a there's a there's an ego there's a stubbornness.
00:22:36
Speaker
uh to trying it that i really think is is really cool you know that that you're like in and there's an odd piece about it like why do you choose um to do that and i think about it with words of like how do you convey ambiguity mixed motivation maybe unreliable narrator and make a coherence out of
00:23:02
Speaker
what's going on or don't make a coherence as a philosopher, I think, yeah.
00:23:09
Speaker
And it's not as if I don't have any notion or writers shouldn't have certain notions or beliefs. John Gardner wrote a book years back called Unmoral Fiction. And it's not about crafting didactic fiction that teaches a lesson. It's more about he thought writing should be about exploring serious questions. How do we behave? What is good for us? What does it mean to love people?
00:23:36
Speaker
all of that. There should be some kind of touchstone within your work that bespeaks values of what you think is important.
00:23:46
Speaker
Yeah, I appreciate you mentioning Gardner, too. I think about sometimes I think about writers who have written about writing or how to write. And Gardner's was certainly one of them in a beautiful craft. But Stephen King talking about writing and how is it that you write. All right. I want to keep it with like the aspect of
00:24:14
Speaker
of art. What is art?
Meaning of Art and Audience Engagement
00:24:19
Speaker
What is art, Shannon? What is art? Yeah. Gosh. That's a big question. I suppose, I mean, what did Oscar Wilde say? All art is quite useless, which perhaps was a reaction against Victorians feelings that art should teach a lesson. Or art, you know, book is either well done or not. That is it.
00:24:42
Speaker
But I guess art is some kind of expression of our experience of reality. Maybe that's what art is. I mean, it's also there to entertain.
00:24:56
Speaker
We engage with art because we want to feel... I mean, at the beginning of the podcast, I said, oh, I'm glad you enjoyed it. But I think you can enjoy my stories, but there's also a sense of being unsettled, hopefully, by stories. So yeah, it's more about engagement. We want to be interested in some way. We want to just not have what we already believe confirmed.
00:25:17
Speaker
We sort of want both recognition and we want to be sort of rattled a little bit and we want Art maybe to ask us some questions as well. Yeah, one of the things I was wondering, and for me it's part of the privilege to have a conversation with the writer and kind of pick into the creative piece of it was
00:25:45
Speaker
In your writing, I'm always really fascinated by writing with an edge or exposing or being strange in trying to handle all these complicated feelings. And one of the things in the bravery of it, as a writer, it's a creative thing that you've made.
00:26:09
Speaker
You know, it always feels like there's pieces of you and what you present. As far as writing these stories over time, and like you said, you had started deliberately doing it in your 30s, did you find like your approach or like getting through life and writing as being
00:26:39
Speaker
Therapeutic, like a process, did it change how you lived when you were able to write this way and publish? Yeah, I guess it did in that you're always looking to, you want people to be heard, right? You want people
00:27:01
Speaker
to recognize in you the things that you find compelling. So to be able to connect with other people in that way is very gratifying. Part of it is also on a cheap level. Yes, I love the attention. That's so much fun. But it's attention for something that I hold dear. It feels like the best of myself is going into these stories. This is me at my most
00:27:29
Speaker
thoughtful and so to be able to present that in a work of art I think is very very gratifying Yeah, and a useful way to connect to people as well.
Influence of Dungeons and Dragons on Writing
00:27:44
Speaker
Yeah, I gotta tell you um
00:27:47
Speaker
The book's cool too. I don't know if that's always the thing. I mean, it's got Dungeons and Dragons in it. That shit was so cool. You had to choose your own adventure trick within one of the stories right up my alley. My head exploded when I saw that. I'm like, I understand.
00:28:06
Speaker
Those type of paths and that way of moving through a story But just just that that that little touch was just a really cool life. I thought back, you know You know, I'll still pick up those type of books, but I thought back when I was be like
00:28:24
Speaker
11 or 12 and who knows you're a kid bumping around trying to figure out things You know you get one of those paperback books and you're all of a sudden in the middle of a dungeon Wherever the heck you are when you're an imaginative kid, and I'm like
00:28:39
Speaker
Man, I'm glad they had those two sure adventures of battle books because I was in that dungeon. Were they magic? God, I love those books. They were obsessed. I love those books. It's also the sense of like, oh, I am co-creating this story. I don't think the people who wrote those books thought in terms of
00:28:59
Speaker
reader engagement in any kind of high level theoretical way. But yeah, you are in some ways, you feel like you're the co-author, but also there would be those times, right? You'd be reading and you're like, I'm doing everything right and I keep dying. I keep falling down the stairs. There's a loop here, the path out. Isn't this a great metaphor for being in a really crappy relationship with somebody? You just feel like you're just set of caught in these defeating patterns.
00:29:29
Speaker
And yeah, so I wanted to graph that on to a Choose Your Own Adventure. And I also wanted to pull in all the classic kind of Choose Your Own Adventure cheese ball settings of spaceship. Yeah, Haunted Castle.
00:29:43
Speaker
I love that. I love that. And then the piece was, too, is like I can remember being a little bit obsessive and in those books, you know. And when I was younger, because it was such a fascinating place to go, though, in those adventures. And I remember one that I had, and I swear that it was not solvable. And that's what was so funny, I think, and enjoying it. I went through this book. It's like a thick one. I even try to read through it. I'm like, there's a missing...
00:30:12
Speaker
It's like there's a missing multiverse here or a link. They're messing with us. Did anybody ever finish this book from 1985 and complete it successfully? Yeah, that's our Jumanji, right? Oh, that's really good. No, thank you. I did enjoy that.
00:30:37
Speaker
What about, what about the book? You know, it's out from press 53. As far as you having the opportunity to do a little bit of reading here or there and like what's going on, what's going on with the book, like right now?
Literary Scene in Baltimore and Book Launch
00:30:52
Speaker
With the book, I have a, my publicist, Lori Hitler has been really great at that. Hey Lori, thanks for that. Yes, she's great about getting me into venues where, you know, I do interviews.
00:31:04
Speaker
So i've done some of that and i've also been uh doing readings which have been I love doing readings I did them online a bit live. I think is my favorite because just beating off that That energy is really fun. So And i'll just keep setting those up i'll go wherever invited and you know just anytime I mean, you know how it goes you sort of you figure out where you know people and then you sort of you partner with a local author and read in their venue and then at some point you return the favor so maybe
00:31:33
Speaker
I think that's the ecosystem of writers. Yeah, congrats on that. It's great to hear those opportunities. And folks definitely look up the ill-fitting skin, highly recommended short story collection and spanning a range of Shannon's recognized
00:31:59
Speaker
And standing out there in Baltimore is a very distinct city I personally really enjoy. I grew up on the East Coast in Rhode Island. There's a grittiness, industrial grittiness to Baltimore I understand and can inhabit rather easily. But one of the things that's really cool in doing the show is
00:32:22
Speaker
sometimes being able to connect with different artists in the area and I found it so thrilling to discover I'd say in Baltimore and in Philly just being able to kind of run into authors and maybe the scene there and painters and musicians and kind of get a feel of
00:32:43
Speaker
You know the city and just a vibrant place i find i mean it to everybody has their opinions i think about baltimore because it has this edge to it that i understand but creatively i found to be quite the area do you find the experience to be like that as far as creative and thinking within baltimore.
00:33:04
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, Baltimore's got a lot of heart and I feel like, you know, people are just, they are very grateful and up for it whenever there's something happening on the arts scene. And there are great independent bookstores. So two specifically that I have connections to are the Ivy Bookshop, which has a branch near Johns Hopkins campus called Burden Hand and also Greedy Reads. And they have two locations. My book launch will actually be at the Rennington location for Greedy Reads.
00:33:31
Speaker
Yeah, both incredible independent bookstores. Red Emma's is also a cafe. They have a reading series. So there's cool stuff going on. I really enjoy Baltimore. I'm happy to be here. Yeah.
00:33:49
Speaker
Yes, good atmosphere. I like to get a little bit of the feel of it and, you know, I've been around that area and it is fun on the show to be able to drop into and just learn a little bit about, you know, how it feels producing in an
Why is There Something Rather Than Nothing?
00:34:03
Speaker
area. I have the big old fancy question. That's the show's title that it's worth taking a crack at, or at least I tell that it is.
00:34:13
Speaker
I'm like, well, honestly, it's Shannon writer, uh, and, uh, over there from Baltimore. Why is there something rather than nothing? Why is there something rather than nothing? Because we are compelled to make meaning or compelled to create meaning or also compelled to find meaning.
00:34:36
Speaker
So we will compulsively interpret all our surroundings, I think. That's why. I feel your answer. Yeah, I feel your answer.
00:34:59
Speaker
No, I love to talk.
Literary Influences and Impact on Work
00:35:01
Speaker
I love to talk literature. And just writers and readers talking about things they enjoy. Ian mentioned John Gardner. I was just interested in getting a feel for your work and your writing, which I love.
00:35:22
Speaker
Kind of those writers that really made an impact on you, say as a writer, as a reader, that you're like, holy shit, this is writing, this is rock in my world. For you, who's that been over time?
00:35:34
Speaker
Over time, my earliest literary influence is Beatrix Potter. Whatever the ones you like. I'm on Talk Books. This is who I'm going to talk about. All right, cool. Yeah, Beatrix Potter when I was a kid. Yes. Yeah, who I thought she has anthropomorphized animals and yet they're not twee. They're not sweet. They're predators and prey. And so that made a huge impression on me as a kid.
00:35:57
Speaker
huge impression on the game. And later, Margaret Atwood was the first author whose work I read in entirety. I was laid up with Mono as a teenager. Wonderful. That's great. I was given a shopping bag for all her books and I read it and I just thought, this is incredible.
00:36:20
Speaker
Alice Monroe as well, so two Canadian women who is an amazing writer. She described people as deep caves paved with linoleum. It's wonderful, right? It's not like she's writing about things that are- It makes an instant weird sense somehow. I don't know how. She's writing about the everyday and yet I am never bored. I am constantly fascinated and feeling like I'm always discovering things.
00:36:49
Speaker
of a human nature with her. So, yeah, she's been an influence. Kelly Link, I think is wonderful, and Karen Russell, and George Saunders, and Carmen Maria Machado, enjoy all their work, all that sort of constellation of the weird. Toni Morrison is amazing. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, really. I mean, this is the point where I get nervous is like, Oh, I'm gonna leave out like,
00:37:14
Speaker
20 people who are all incredible writers. But yeah, those are the people who are popping to mind. Toni Morrison, I think sometimes in reading Toni Morrison, you think about as a theorist, like how profound her analysis is, but also as a creator too, you don't always see that.
00:37:36
Speaker
somebody breaking down writing and in color and race and what's hidden and what's shown. Like her intellectual work on that is just incredible. And a writer. Yes. Yeah. She has a short story, um, Recite Tattif.
00:37:56
Speaker
which is incredible. You can find it online. Zadie Smith has written an analytic essay of it. I recommend those two things. There's something that I taught recently and the students were just fascinated by it. That's my shout-out recommendation.
00:38:11
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I got just one thing I wanted to mention on the books too. I had this very interesting experience just recently of listening to The Shining by Stephen King.
Ken Reflects on 'The Shining' by Stephen King
00:38:25
Speaker
And I had read this book by Stephen King. I adored the film and I was like the book but was critical of it in my head, but I had read it. Shit.
00:38:38
Speaker
30 years ago, right? So it's this type of thing as you go on in years where you read it at a time and you have an opinion in your head that's stuck in there about it. And I was listening to the shining again. And I gotta tell you, it was the coolest thing because like I had read
00:38:57
Speaker
I remembered it all wrong somehow or there was a piece in a cadence that was so radically different than the film that I'm like, it's even tough to talk about these works of art together because in Listen to Shining, I was like halfway through it. I'm like, he's still working on the background psychology and history and the messiness of going into this hotel. Whereas in the movie, you kind of thrown right into it pretty darn quickly without the
00:39:26
Speaker
psychological bit. So in reading this book, listening to this book again after so much time, it's like a completely different experience and just blown me away as far as the thinking that's been within it. I love when books do that. So interesting. King famously didn't like the film. Right. I know why.
00:39:50
Speaker
I was really moved reading his writing memoir on writing. And when he talks about how he didn't even know it, but he was creating metaphors about his addiction in so much of his writing. He wasn't even really talking about that. And yet there it was over and over and over again. And I think he's very
00:40:13
Speaker
He's very humble as a writer. He's very vulnerable in that book. So he did recommend that book for the nonfiction segment of it. The craft stuff is very nuts and bolts and really good sensible advice, but his memoir section I thought was very moving.
00:40:31
Speaker
I completely agree. And I think there was an experience of it where, you know, through life and when it's one thing with a book, when you drop into again, when I dropped into again, like there was a piece where I felt it was just like alcoholic screed, like at it's like somewhere at its core of being like, this is madness. This is the madness. And like you said about the personal piece within that, it was like,
00:40:57
Speaker
Whoa, the power of that and it's horror, of course it's horror and it's seeing things in the future and it's repetition of history and it's murder and it's mayhem and it's all of that.
00:41:12
Speaker
Yes, those are his demons. Oh my goodness. Now I get excited about books. I was listening to The Shining and also going into a riveting, the ill-fitting skin. So I just wanted to say,
Encouragement for Aspiring Writers and Embracing Vulnerability
00:41:28
Speaker
Really, congratulations on having us pull together and just telling you listeners and talking to Shannon Robinson here. Just a really, a collection for me that just got me excited about reading and in particular this, the shorter form and the excitement that you get in a collection being like, okay, like I dropped into that one.
00:41:52
Speaker
This one's different and moving through that whole experience. I wish you really good luck with getting the book out there. And I did have just one more question before I let you go. And high regards for the institution and working with Johns Hopkins and teaching and such and the working on the craft for you.
00:42:22
Speaker
the big question of like teaching or helping folks how to write is there something you run into something that is just you know maybe is where people don't see themselves as writers or something that's just in the way that that that you see to kind of like I don't know not like this like hack or anything but just you as an instructor of
00:42:48
Speaker
If somebody wants to write, how do they get at that gosh darn thing? Someone asked me about this recently, and I think what can stand in your way, particularly you're this undergraduate, you've been a high achiever, you've done everything right in high school. Here you are. They can be inhibited. I guess they're used to writing a three-paragraph essay. There's an emphasis on tidiness and order, and then here you are. You're writing a story.
00:43:19
Speaker
be crazy, be vulnerable, be wild, don't be inhibited. I think people can be very inhibited. They don't want to expose themselves because they know their peers are going to be reading this and their professor is going to be reading this. But take risks and don't worry about this draft maybe being
00:43:41
Speaker
melting trouble on a stick. That is okay. It's a story. It's a draft. We'll work with it. We'll work with it. Don't be so cautious, I would say. And I think that can hold people back. So that's my main advice. It's just, yes, be reckless. Go for it. That helps a lot. I'm glad I asked the question and kind of clumsily like moving through it a little bit. But there's
00:44:07
Speaker
That's a big thing and I find that for me hearing it from you is the big thing of the vulnerability of showing or even presenting or creating a record of weird feelings and things like that. That jump in writing is super exciting but an incredible vulnerability which I think you work.
00:44:30
Speaker
Finally, tell folks where to maybe find you, the book, about the press, coming in contact with maybe physically in the area. Just make sure folks know and hear about and encounter your work.
00:44:49
Speaker
Yeah, my book is with press 53. So if you just Google them on press, you can buy the book from them, but it's also available wherever books are sold. And if your independent bookstore doesn't have it, you can ask them to stock it because you always want to support your independent bookstores.
00:45:07
Speaker
I you can find me online at Shannon Robinson org by some miracle that was available as a website Yeah, Shannon, right solutions. Thank you. So that's me and I have listings there of you know, whatever press I've done and some some stories and also some whatever events are coming up, so That's it
00:45:33
Speaker
Well, wonderful. And hey, everybody for something rather than nothing, www dot something rather than nothing dot com is available to share. How good is that? Thanks the world for that. There is it's good to it's good to have a website in a place to define the work that you do. I wanted to thank you so much for coming on the show. I really love
00:46:01
Speaker
talking about writing and talking to writers. And especially when I really enjoy, I get a thrill and I get moved by writing. So again, congrats on doing the work that you do and the collection. Folks, check out the ill-fitting skin. It's a nice looking volume, everybody, just so you know.
00:46:22
Speaker
Just a nice design, well put together. One of those books you enjoy to hold. So Shannon, thanks for coming on to the Something Rather Than Nothing podcast. Thank you so much for having me. It's been a lot of fun. Heck yeah, it's a lot of fun talking about art, philosophy, and thanks for your writing. Truly impressive. This is Something Rather Than Nothing.
00:46:58
Speaker
and listeners to stay connected with us in our guests, visit something rather than nothing.com. Join our mailing list for exclusive updates and access to guest created art. If you enjoyed this episode or any episode, please like, subscribe, leave a review on your podcast platform. People really read that shit.
00:47:19
Speaker
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00:47:47
Speaker
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