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Photo Credit Jeep Wheat
"The rhetorical moves are unbelievable."
—Susan Stinson
Sitting down to talk with Susan Stinson about 'Spider in a Tree' resulted in one of those great conversations that you just don't see coming. I loved the novel, and as Stinson and I talked we simply found a great joie de vivre speaking about her book, the history and Jonathan Edwards himself. It was like a tent revival for historical fiction writers and readers.
Of course, I have a rather peculiar take on the novel, as to me it reads like a historical fantasy. That is, the characters perceived their world as filled with beings and based on notions that we would find outlandishly fantastic. In a sense, they saw the world as the characters in a Tolkein novel might. They forest that surrounded them was the forest that terrified "Young Goodman Brown," filled with demons and temptations. As I explained my oddball take to Stinson, I could see that she had put those pieces in there deliberately for her readers.
Stinson has a lot of unexpected affinity with her subject. She lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, across the street from the graveyard where many of her fictional characters reside. Surprisingly, Northampton has not remembered Edwards kindly, and most of the first sources are elsewhere. Stinson and I talked about the research she did for this, which did involve consulting a lot of experts.
As I write this, readers can consult many of Jonathan Edwards' materials online from Yale, but that was not the case for most of the time when Stinson as writing the book. To my mind, being in the presence of the paper makes a difference, one I would suggest is apparent when reading the book.
08-21-15: Agony Column Podcast News Report : Senator Claire McCaskill is 'Plenty Ladylike' : Internalizing Determination to Overcome Sexism [Incudes Time to Read EP 211: Claire McCaskill, Plenty Ladylike, plus A 2015 Interview with Senator Claire McCaskill]
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Emily Schultz Unleashes 'The Blondes' : A Cure by Color [Incudes Time to Read EP 210: Emily Schultz, The Blondes, plus A 2015 Interview with Emily Schultz]
07-05-15: Commentary : Dr. Michael Gazzaniga Tells Tales from Both Sides of the Brain : A Life in Neuroscience Reveals the Life of Science
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with Michael Gazzaniga : "We made the first observation and BAM there was the disconnection effect..."
04-21-15: Commentary : Kazuo Ishiguro Unearths 'The Buried Giant' : The Mist of Myth and Memory
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with Kazuo Ishiguro : ".... by the time I was writing this novel, the lines between what was fantasy and what was real had blurred for me..."
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with Marc Goodman : "...every physical object around us is being transformed, one way or another, into an information technology..."
Agony Column Podcast News Report UPDATE: Time to Read Episode 199: Marc Goodman : Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It
