Sourdough & Other Stories
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Sourdough & Other Stories: A Story Told in Parts (A Mosaic Novel and Exegesis) By Angela Slatter BA UQ, Graduate Diploma Creative Industries (Creative Writing) QUT, MA (Research) (Creative Writing) QUT Creative Writing and Literary Studies Discipline Creative Industries Faculty Queensland University of Technology Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2012 Slatter/Sourdough and Other Stories/1 Slatter/Sourdough and Other Stories/2 Keywords Angela Carter, City of Saints and Madmen, Creative writing, Fairy tales, Fantasy, Fiction, Folktales, Genre, Kissing the Witch, Memory, Alan Moore, Mosaic Texts, PhD, The Fantastic, Short Stories, Sourdough and Other Stories, Speculative Fiction, Structure, The Orphan‟s Tales, Thesis, Voice of the Fire, Jeff VanderMeer, World- building. Slatter/Sourdough and Other Stories/3 Abstract The mosaic novel – with its independent „story-tiles‟ linking together to form a complete narrative – has the potential to act as a reflection on the periodic resurfacing of unconscious memories in the conscious lives of fictional characters. This project is an exploration of the mosaic text as a fictional analogue of involuntary memory. These concepts are investigated as they appear in traditional fairy tales and engaged with in this thesis‟s creative component, Sourdough and Other Stories (approximately 80,000 words), a mosaic novel comprising sixteen interconnected „story-tiles‟. Traditional fairy tales are non-reflective and conducive to forgetting (i.e. anti-memory); fairy tale characters are frequently portrayed as psychologically two-dimensional, in that there is no examination of the mental and emotional distress caused when children are stolen/abandoned/lost and when adults are exiled. Sourdough and Other Stories is a creative examination of, and attempted to remedy, this lack of psychological depth. This creative work is at once something more than a short story collection, and something that is not a traditional novel, but instead a culmination of two modes of writing. It employs the fairy tale form to explore James‟ „thorns in the spirit‟ (1898, p.199) in fiction; the anxiety caused by separation from familial and community groups. The exegesis, A Story Told in Parts – Sourdough and Other Stories is a critical essay (approximately 20,000 words in length), a companion piece to the mosaic novel, which analyses how my research question proceeded from my creative work, and considers the theoretical underpinnings of the creative work and how it enacts the research question: „Can a writer use the structural possibilities of the mosaic text to create a fictional work that is an analogue of an involuntary memory?‟ The cumulative effect of the creative and exegetical works should be that of a dialogue between the two components – each Slatter/Sourdough and Other Stories/4 text informing the other and providing alternate but complementary lenses with which to view the research question. Slatter/Sourdough and Other Stories/5 Table of Contents Abstract .................................................................................................................................... 3 List of Illustrations ................................................................................................................. 7 Statement of Original Authorship ........................................................................................ 8 Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................ 9 Preface .................................................................................................................................... 10 Creative Work: Sourdough and Other Stories ................................................................. 13 The Shadow Tree ............................................................................................................. 13 Gallowberries .................................................................................................................... 20 Little Radish ...................................................................................................................... 45 Dibblespin ......................................................................................................................... 57 The Navigator ................................................................................................................... 68 The Angel Wood. ............................................................................................................. 76 Ash ..................................................................................................................................... 88 The Story of Ink ............................................................................................................... 95 Lost Things ..................................................................................................................... 105 A Good Husband ........................................................................................................... 120 A Porcelain Soul ............................................................................................................. 131 The Bones Remember Everything .............................................................................. 155 Sourdough ....................................................................................................................... 166 Sister, Sister ..................................................................................................................... 176 Lavender and Lychgates ................................................................................................ 204 Under the Mountain ...................................................................................................... 234 Exegesis: A Story Told in Parts − Sourdough and Other Stories ............................... 251 Part One: Introduction .................................................................................................. 252 Part Two: Memory ......................................................................................................... 270 Slatter/Sourdough and Other Stories/6 Part Three: Mosaic ......................................................................................................... 282 Part Four: Conclusion ................................................................................................... 303 Appendices .......................................................................................................................... 308 Appearances of Main Characters or Recurring Characters ...................................... 308 List of Publications ........................................................................................................ 309 Third Party Copyright Permission Request ................................................................ 315 Bibliography......................................................................................................................... 316 Slatter/Sourdough and Other Stories/7 List of Illustrations Stephen J. Clark, Sourdough Homunculus, 2010 (Third Party Copyright Permission Request located in Appendices) Slatter/Sourdough and Other Stories/8 Statement of Original Authorship The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted to meet requirements for an award at this or any other higher education institution. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made. Signature: ______________________________ Angela Gaye Slatter Date: ______________________________ 6 March 2012 Slatter/Sourdough and Other Stories/9 Acknowledgements Dr Vivienne Muller Ms Ann VanderMeer Dr Susan Carson Mr Peter Ball Dr Donna Hancox Ms Lynne Carol Green Dr Lisa Hannett Ms Angie Rega Dr Helen Klaebe Ms Penelope Davie Dr Diane Waters Mr Jack Dann Mr Ron Serdiuk Ms Kate Eltham Mr Robert Shearman Mr Robert Hoge Mr Jeff VanderMeer Tartarus Pres And always and especially thanks to my family: Betty, Peter, Michelle and Matthew Slatter, for all their love and care Kae Martin, who tolerated 6 years of paper towers David Pollitt, who keeps me on the path. Slatter/Sourdough and Other Stories/10 Preface As a writer and as a researcher I have previously interrogated the fairy tale form. My Masters (Research) produced a collection of reloaded fairy stories, Black-Winged Angels, and an exegesis that dealt with issues of agency in reclaimed tales, specifically the works of Angela Carter and Emma Donoghue. This previous research contended with thematics such as the retrieval of the female voice and whether or not reworking a fairy tale to be a „feminist‟ fairy tale could be more than a matter of creating a simple inversion. This PhD project, Sourdough and Other Stories: A Story Told in Parts, while still working with the fairy tale form, looks instead at issues of structure in storytelling which engage with the workings of memory and the dynamic relationship between text and reader. Fairy tales thread through life, from birth to death, they are our first − our oldest − stories, which is one of the reasons I am so fascinated by them, both as reader and writer. The stories in Black-Winged Angels were all reworked tales − recognisable, traditional fairy tales that I had „reloaded‟ to bring out alternative, deeper meanings,