Myles’ and Hopkinson’s Stylistic Surprises

Monday I ran into Carlos. We exchanged confusion about the next evening’s event—a science fiction writer? My confusion grew as attendees entered into our seminar room Tuesday afternoon. I feel this event drew the greatest cross-section of the Georgetown community and beyond: a large group of high school students from Kansas, a handful of professors that do not always come to Lannan events, a quorum of graduate students more interested in gender and queer theory than poetry. And then there were the six of us Lannan fellows that had very little idea what to expect. I entered with no knowledge or attachment to either author’s work, but left with a great appreciation for their creative contributions to queer literature.

I was most interested in the personal genealogy Myles presented as to how her writing style evolved in the shadow of the precedent set by other queer writers. She acknowledged the spaces of absence that fill Sapho’s poetry and her challenge to mix the public and private sphere, paid homage to the writing style of a Swiss novelist, Robert Walzer, who constructed novels out of bits and pieces (a technique that aided her transition from poetry to fiction), and referenced John Wieners’ serialization of things in his poetry as an influence in her own voice. Myles approaches art as a grand lust and sees time as the place where the queer past and queer futures meet—she uses this time as a thrift store scouring the racks of history (and futures) for meaningful material and inspiration.

Nalo Hopkinson provided a similar defense of her genre, which was particularly useful for me as a non-science fiction reader. She described science fiction as an exploration of the effects of changing communities and an attempt to use dislocation, alternative realities, reality itself to evaluate social circumstances. She identified time and space as the primary dislocations that create spaces for change. For a style of writing that I am neither familiar with nor a self-identified fan of, I really enjoyed her reading and the objective of her work. Her first short story, “Flying Lessons” was rich with modernity and the nostalgia of childhood. She was a wonderful storyteller, her characters came alive with distinct voices and her prose flew between lyrical descriptions and efficient plot details. I do not know that I will race to read a book of hers, but I loved her performance and the meaning I attribute to her text because of it.

I am however anxious to read Myles’ forthcoming Inferno. It takes gumption to title a novel Inferno, but after the selection I heard I feel it fits. Myles lucidly chronicles the confusion of her protagonist’s inner dialogue and personal experiences. She offers a genuine glimpse into sexual self-identification and creates a language to aptly express those frustrations. During the question and answer session, someone asked about her pauses, a habit I too was curious about. She had a habit in her poetry and prose to read briskly and conversationally and then breathe at the page breaks. These breaths (pauses) gave her reader a moment to process, but then she picked right back up again emphasizing the necessity to continue, to move on, to explore the queer futures she had previously referenced and encouraged we invest in.