"I cannot imagine not being in love with science."

January 3, 2024 10:33 AM

Clarkesword Magazine interviews that most ornery of contemporary writers, Caitlin R. Kiernan.

* if you've ever met Cait, she is truly ornery in the kindest sense.

posted by Kitteh (19 comments total)

Thanks for posting, Kitteh. I have a "Kiernan shelf" and have read an awful lot of what they've written over the years, including blog posts, but I hadn't seen this yet. I understand their leaning toward short stories, but I also love the novels, and I've recommended them more times to first-timers than I can count.
posted by cupcakeninja at 11:17 AM on January 3 [3 favorites]

Gosh, I've been a fan of Cait since the mid-90s and have met her quite a few times either in Athens, GA or Atlanta. (Or the one time I saw her read in Brooklyn in 2010.) I too prefer the short stories myself, but love the long fiction whenever it's released.
posted by Kitteh at 12:08 PM on January 3 [1 favorite]

Nice! I've done so twice in the last decade, but I wish I could have seen a reading back in the early days. :-)
posted by cupcakeninja at 12:20 PM on January 3 [1 favorite]

Another Kiernan fan here. Beautiful writing.

Really enjoyed talking with them at some Necronomicons.
posted by doctornemo at 1:01 PM on January 3 [2 favorites]

So, The Red Tree is really great, and I think The Drowning Girl is a brilliant novel that deserves much wider reading and analysis, but Kiernan is pretty “old person yells at leftist youth” on their blog, failing to understand that antipathy to Trump doesn’t actually mix with constantly punching left and writing things that stink of white supremacy. I can’t tell whether they hold those view or “I’m not political” into them, but the blog is eyebrow-raising here and there and not in a good way.

Basically, I’m conflicted AF about Kiernan.
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:50 PM on January 3 [8 favorites]

I interviewed Caitlin in the 90's in Atlanta on the radio. Always lovely and genuine.
posted by underavenue at 3:39 PM on January 3 [2 favorites]

Up to reading the subject article of this post, I was completely unaware of Caitlin R. Keirnanʻs existence. So can someone explain to me a seeming grammatic anomaly that appeared in the very first line of the piece and continued throughout it -- why are third-person plural pronouns constantly used to refer to (I would assume) a single person named Caitlin? Itʻs confusing me no end.
posted by Droll Lord at 6:47 PM on January 3

obligatory xkcd

Wikipedia

"In their twenties, Kiernan identified as transgender and transitioned to female,[21] further identifying as lesbian.[22] In 2020, Kiernan stated, "I no longer consider myself transgender (or transsexual). I would say that I'm gender fluid, if I had to say anything", explaining that this was not a recognized option in the 1980s.[21] They added that male or female pronouns do not offend them, but prefer "they, them, and their".[21]"

And now, back to a discussion of their works:
posted by sebastienbailard at 8:48 PM on January 3 [1 favorite]

So can someone explain to me a seeming grammatic anomaly that appeared in the very first line of the piece and continued throughout it -- why are third-person plural pronouns constantly used to refer to (I would assume) a single person named Caitlin

from Caitlin's blog:

"sentient globs of plesiomorphies"

"So, there's something I've been getting around to saying for about three years now, and I've finally come to that moment when I feel I ought to get it over with. I no longer consider myself transgender (or transsexual). I would say that I'm gender fluid, if I had to say anything. If the options that are now available to young people had been available to me when I was in my twenties (the eighties), I would likely never have thought of myself as trans, and I likely wouldn't have transitioned. But when I began seeing psychiatrists, there was not some non-binary diagnostic option (and many of us did turn to psychiatrists over gender, sex, and sexual orientation back then). It was all pretty black and white. For better or worse, I chose the box that best described me.

There's nothing intentionally political in this statement. I don't necessarily mean it as a show of solidarity with anyone or any group. It comes with absolutely no political agenda attached. It's personal. It's just who I am, and I'm only really making it public because Wikipedia (and other places) list me as being something I probably never have been. It's also in no way meant as any sort of slight to transgender people. Not in the least. It's just I understand much more about myself than I did in, say, 1985, and I'd like to set the record straight.

I prefer gender fluid because it changes from day to day, sometimes hour to hour. If you want to keep thinking of me as "she," I will not be offended. If you decide to think me as "him," then fine, I won't be offended. But the pronouns I prefer, for what it's worth, are they, them, and their. Anyway, I know this will seem weird to some people, but it needed saying, and I'm tired of being scared to say it."

further reading on non-binary pronouns and their use:

Understanding Nonbinary People: How to Be Respectful and Supportive

Gender-Neutral Pronouns 101: Everything You've Always Wanted to Know
posted by paimapi at 9:05 PM on January 3 [2 favorites]

Is The Red Tree the best place to start with their work?
posted by sebastienbailard at 9:31 PM on January 3

Is The Red Tree the best place to start with their work?

That’s a really good question. It’s a great book, and certainly gives a sense of what Kiernan’s recent writing is like. The last third requires a fair amount of effort on the part of the reader (separating what the narrator reports from what might be “actually happening,” so, if that sounds a little off-putting, you might start with the series that begins with Threshold, which gets to some of the same places, but across 3 books rather than 1. On the other hand, The Red Tree contains some of the best depictions of Rhode Island summers ever put on paper.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:54 AM on January 4

sebastianbailard, different folks like different strains of their work.

The award-winning The Drowning Girl is one of the most widely read of their recent books, dealing with the author's usual interests in weird fiction, non-linear plot, subjectivity, identity, gender, and mentation (very broadly defined). The Red Tree is the less popular side of that same coin, but wrapped up in a more conventional horror narrative, both in terms of drawing on the documentary strain in horror fiction, and quite extensive "what's actually happening here?" horror biz. The Red Tree is probably my favorite of their more recent novels, and it probably attracted fewer readers because of the inappropriate and hilariously mid urban fantasy cover it had on release.

If you like late-1990s goth biz, check out Silk, their first published novel.

If you like monster-hunting little weirdos, check out Alabaster, their collection of stories about a wandering monster hunter.

If you like Lovecraft-in-the-style-of-James-Joyce, read Threshold. Read the original release. Do not read the later "author's preferred" edition, which strips out the stylistic excesses that the author regretted in later years and are part of why the book won a reputation in the first place.

Do you like The X-Files and Lovecraft? Read Agents of Dreamland.

Do you like weird fiction, and erotica, and want the two to go together but not be yet another idiot joke about tentacles? Read Frog Toes and Tentacles.

Last and definitely not least, Kiernan's short fiction is the thing (as noted in the interview) for which they are best known. There are many volumes you could pick up, including a two-volume "Best of" collection and various strongly themed collections. To Charles Fort, With Love was my first of their collections (though it might have been Tales of Pain and Wonder) which may or may not be their best collection, but which does give a nice sampling of what they were doing around that time.
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:06 AM on January 4 [2 favorites]

There were two versions of Tales of Pain and Wonder--a white covered hardback with the Richard Kirk illos and a later edition with a darker cover, with the removal of two stories Kiernan felt were weak--and there are so so many short story collections. I have most of the Subterranean Press ones. I still have my OG paperback copy of Silk and it is falling apart. I even have the long out of print chapbook Candles for Elizabeth. (As well as their run on The Dreaming, and the more or less standalone, The Girl Who Would Be Death.)

I have a longstanding affection for Deacon Silvey, their reluctant drunk psychic. (I confess that in idle moments I like to imagine whether or not Deke is still alive and if he's doing okay in Providence.)

Posting this prompted me to realize I have so much of their work. But of course, I have done since the 90s and Pandora Station was still in existence (a long defunct website that featured Kiernan, Billy Brite, and Christa Faust).

If I had to pick between The Red Tree and The Drowning Girl, I'd pick The Red Tree. I just like it a lot. I know readers have been frustrated in the past that their stories don't have definite tidy endings, but I agree with them in that life is not neat tidy endings. Sometimes our fiction should reflect that.
posted by Kitteh at 5:14 AM on January 4 [2 favorites]

Pandora Station! <3 Good memories, Kitteh. I was just thinking about it last week and contemplating making a post about '90s literary and/org goth websites.
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:29 AM on January 4 [1 favorite]

One of the strongest pulls for Brite and Kiernan's fiction for me--especially in my late teens and early 20s--is that the South they wrote about was a South I recognized. The weirdness, the outsider feeling when you didn't look like everyone else in a place where appearances are prized. Many a cold night I drove along backroads in upstate SC, smoking cigarettes, thinking of how places like this were possibilities for monsters and other beasties.
posted by Kitteh at 5:58 AM on January 4 [4 favorites]

Kiernan has a gift for describing place. The Drowning Girl is a perfect snapshot of the west side of Providence in the early 2010s. I assume her southern settings are equally well-realized. I mean they feel it, but I haven’t been to the places described.

I would recommend, contra cupcakeninja, leaving the Agents of Dreamland series until later. They are good reads, but very… dreamlike… jumping around in place, time, and reality in a way I’d worry would be off-putting to a new reader.
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:46 AM on January 4

I was curious enough about Quinlan Castle and the Sloss Furnaces of Birmingham that I drove one weekend from Atlanta to see these places for myself.

Kiernan covered Alabama and Georgia pretty well; Brite had New Orleans and North Carolina. As a weird Southerner, I love that. Pandora Station used to have a page called "Sense of Place," and this was something that both authors were extraordinarily good at creating. It felt real, not some outsider's (read: non Southern native) version of the South.
posted by Kitteh at 10:20 AM on January 4 [2 favorites]

Stepping in just to say that The Drowning Girl absolutely scared the shit out of me and continues to occupy a portion of my psyche. I will have to check out The Red Tree.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 11:44 AM on January 4 [2 favorites]

I love literary road-tripping. I've done Providence a couple times (once solo, once attending Necronomicon), but I also spent a few happy hours in Birmingham doing likewise.

I've spent a fair bit of time in Alabama and Georgia, and the setting details always feel right. I think the excellence of Kiernan's ability to capture Providence goes to their quality as a writer. And, of course, their lifelong interest in Lovecraft and related stuff -- by the time you arrive in person, you've inhaled so much of the written place that you're not starting from scratch.

I will say -- I did not understand until I lived in the South just how important it is for weirdos to stick together. Other places I've lived, people could run in their different packs, but here it isn't that way. I just didn't get that when I tried to read Silk around the time it came out, when I'd never even set foot in the South. After I'd been here a while, it clicked.
posted by cupcakeninja at 12:06 PM on January 4 [3 favorites]