Gabriel Tallent

Gabriel Tallent talks about his new book, Crux, drawing from the novels with which it is in conversation: Solo Faces, Madame Bovary, Butcher’s Crossing, Moby Dick, and more. Following the talk, Tallent gives an extended, free-form Q&A about the book and his writing.

In Stephen King’s IT, a ragtag group of losers defeat an ancient evil by use of a ritual in which “you take the devil’s tongue in your teeth, and the devil takes your tongue in his teeth, and stapled together this way, eye to eye, the two of you take turns telling jokes and riddles, until one or the other breaks.”  In this talk, Tallent draws on examples from IT, Blood Meridian, and Trust Exercise to examine the novel as a storytelling game we play with our own worst fears.  This game necessarily entertains a vision of our annihilation, but also presents the opportunity for a retort that makes our lives fuller, funnier, and more fulfilling.

Gabriel Tallent provides a freewheeling, funny, meditative, and vulnerable personal history of how he became a writer — with special attention to the times he failed, despaired, and lost his way—emphasizing that success in writing hinges not on talent but on a willingness to persevere. The result is a primer for aspiring writers that weaves in his highly anecdotal, unscientific thoughts on what it takes to lead a semi-successful (or at least not totally awful) life as a writer.

Today’s students are confronting the rise of fascism, the end of the world, and the annihilation of all attention, compassion, earnestness, and serious thought—and as a culture, we are so benumbed and benighted that we barely care. As a consequence, many young literature students don’t want to read about the ennui of a former high school basketball star. They want stories of heroes with their backs against the wall, facing down doom. Pulling from works like Dungeon Crawler Carl, The Black Company, The Road, and Between Two Fires, Tallent explores the problems and possibilities of nurturing the flickering light of hope in Grimdark Fantasy.

How do writers pick a point of view?

A critique of Gabriel Tallent’s My Absolute Darling is that the third-person point of view is inherently clinical, objectifying, and even anti-feminist. However, Tallent writes, “I chose the close third person because I believed the anguish of the sexually abused child was so vast as to be beyond representation.”

In this talk, Tallent delves into how he used interiority, distance, and perspective to convey the moral arguments of his bestselling novel, and draws on examples of similar literary strategies from Pamela, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, and My Name is Lucy Barton.

Note: Due to the subject matter of My Absolute Darling, this talk may be unsuitable for some audiences.