Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Liminal by Jordan Tannahill Jordan Tannahill's Liminal plays truth for dramatic effect. In 2014 playwright Jordan Tannahill became the youngest-ever winner of the Governor General’s Award for Drama. Now, still not 30, he has published a semi-fictional memoir. This is what’s known as a fast start for a literary career. The genre Tannahill is working is a hot one, sometimes referred to as the autobiographical novel or autofiction. Think names like Karl Ove Knausgard. The reader is given to understand that the people and events being described are, broadly speaking, real, but they are being presented and arranged in such a way as to heighten their dramatic effect. As Tannahill puts, describing his Toronto theatre project Videofag in terms that could just as easily be applied to Liminal , “it is both art and life . . . a sort of hyper-real portrait of a slightly more mundane reality.” This is having one’s cake and eating it, since we have a tendency to accept that what we’re getting in Liminal is a true story, even if we have no idea how much of it really is. That’s a big part of what makes these books so popular. An enhanced reality may be even better than the real thing. Read more: Tannahill begins with the moment that gives the novel its title and theme. On the morning of Sat. Jan. 21, 2017 he stands in the doorway, on the threshold, of his mother’s bedroom, not sure if she is alive or dead. And so she will remain, suspended between life and death, for the rest of the book. The liminal state between life and death, subject and object, soul and body, self and other, fact and fiction, along with countless other binaries, is frequently returned to (and sometimes has to be shoehorned in). Meanwhile, as Jordan stands waiting in the doorway, he proceeds to tell his story of the life of the playwright as a young man. It is more a personal than a professional life, with the emphasis less on his writing, which he scarcely mentions, than on his most significant relationships. These include his mother, of course, but also a friend named Ana and several different mentors and lovers. These relationships, in turn, are milestones on a journey of self-discovery. As borders break down in liminal space “I am all the bodies through which I’ve known my body and all the people through which I’ve known my person.” It all makes for a fun read, even if it’s not as revealing as one would expect. Tannahill is a good writer, a natural storyteller with a strong sense of narrative rhythm as well as the ability to launch into almost mystical flights of poetic vision, but he’s not into the kind of obsessive self-examination that Knausgard and others have popularized. The book has an immediacy boosted by the fact that what he’s mainly describing are very recent events, unfiltered by mature reflection, but at the same time one gets the sense that a great deal is being held in reserve. To take just one example, it’s never clear how Tannahill (who, as noted, doesn’t talk about his own writing much) makes a living. In North America, for whatever reason, money is a more taboo subject than sex. Our narrator confesses to appearing in some porn films but never says how he pays the rent. I doubt the porn would be enough. At one point his mother comes to visit him and he is relieved that she “she didn’t ask me how I was making my money lately and I think we both knew that was for the best.” The rest is silence. We might agree in considering that silence a relief, at least in this case, but in presenting an autofictional confession certain rules of disclosure apply. One needn’t be explicit, but one can’t be coy. Loading. Liminal gives us little sense that Tannahill is someone struggling to understand his life, but it may be that he hasn’t come to that point yet. Again we’re reminded of how young he is. Instead of thoughts recollected in tranquility, he concludes with a climactic paean to the raw, sensual experience of life, taking us with him as his own liminal state collapses and he rejoices in a new physical contact with the world. This is not someone looking back on his life, but being born again. Alex Good is a frequent contributor to these pages. Liminal. The world’s #1 eTextbook reader for students. VitalSource is the leading provider of online textbooks and course materials. More than 15 million users have used our Bookshelf platform over the past year to improve their learning experience and outcomes. With anytime, anywhere access and built-in tools like highlighters, flashcards, and study groups, it’s easy to see why so many students are going digital with Bookshelf. titles available from more than 1,000 publishers. customer reviews with an average rating of 9.5. digital pages viewed over the past 12 months. institutions using Bookshelf across 241 countries. Liminal by Jordan Tannahill and Publisher House of Anansi Press. Save up to 80% by choosing the eTextbook option for ISBN: 9781487003791, 148700379X. The print version of this textbook is ISBN: 9781487003784, 1487003781. Liminal by Jordan Tannahill and Publisher House of Anansi Press. Save up to 80% by choosing the eTextbook option for ISBN: 9781487003791, 148700379X. The print version of this textbook is ISBN: 9781487003784, 1487003781. Liminal. At 11:04 a.m. on January 21st, 2017, Jordan opens the door to his mother’s bedroom. As his eyes adjust to the half-light, he finds her lying in bed, eyes closed and mouth agape. In that instant he cannot tell whether she is asleep or dead. The sight of his mother's body, caught between these two possibilities, causes Jordan to plunge headlong into the uncertain depths of consciousness itself. From androids to cannibals to sex clubs, an unforgettable personal odyssey emerges, populated by a cast of sublime outsiders in search for the ever-elusive nature of self. Part ontological thriller, part millennial saga, Liminal is a riotous and moving portrait of a young man in volatile times, a generation caught in suspended animation, and a son’s enduring love for his mother. Excerpt. I. I am wary of revelations. I find anyone claiming to have them dubious. They’re usually charlatans, the ultra-religious, or insane (not that these three types are mutually exclusive; in fact they rarely are). And I find any description of these revelations some combination of sinister and comical, like John Smith receiving golden plates from the angel Moroni in a secret language only he can translate. Even the words “revelation” and “epiphany” are mired in Christian connotations. The first conjures images of John on the island of Patmos having visions of the Whore of Babylon and the Beast, while the second is the realization by the wise men that Christ is the Son of God, rendered throughout art history as the Adoration of the Magi. I suppose the synonym that feels the least corrupted by spiritual chicanery is “eureka,” and yet this word feels burdened by the mythos of masculine scientific discovery, from Archimedes fateful bath to Newton’s gravity-weighted apple (why do I always imagine it hitting his head?) Darwin said he could remember the exact moment during a carriage ride in which he was struck by his “hunch” about natural selection. Nikola Tesla, while recuperating from a recent breakdown brought on by his obsession to solve the mystery of alternating current, was on a walk with a friend in Budapest’s Varosliget Park when he was pierced by his moment of insight. Tesla was looking into the setting sun whilst reciting a passage from Goethe’s Faust (naturally) when a vision of a functioning alternating current electric induction motor appeared to him with such clarity that he grabbed a stick and drew a diagram of it then and there in the dirt. One can almost hear the angelic choral accompaniment. Perhaps because of these bearded white men and their long lineage of eurekas the word has acquired a certain sense of finitude: they each had a question and in an instant it was answered. As if, through years of research and inquiry, their minds were already filled with the necessary information and all that was required was that final synaptic connection to illuminate the network of association. A word that seems part of this revelatory cohort is “vision,” which again has religious undertones, but also the unfortunate limitations of its sensory association. A vision suggests something that is seen, either literally with one’s eyes in a new way, or seen within the mind’s eye. As the ever- favoured child of the senses, we seem inclined to give seeing undo credit as the conduit of discovery. Though as Proust might agree, throughout my life I’ve probably had more ‘visions’ induced by smell than any other sense. For me, a new awareness is rarely an apparition to be seen or viewed; it does not appear to me like Tesla’s motor. It is something that is felt. An awareness that dawns and slowly spreads its light through my body. What I seek is a word that does not suggest a long-sought for answer but rather a deluge of questions. A word for kind of illumination that recalls a caver holding a torch up in an underground chamber and apprehending a few dashes of rock wall at a time, uncertain of how far the cavern extends into darkness. Counter-intuitively, I found something approaching this word in the Bible. The first word in the Book of Revelations — and from which it derives its name — is apokalypsis, which in its original Korine Greek means "unveiling" or “revelation.” I find the notion of ‘unveiling’ — of an encounter, smell, sight, sensation that unveils an infinite system of questions and discoveries (which in turn spur more questions) — to be the most vivid evocation of this I can find. I might be even inclined to use the original Greek apokalypsis, as it seems to contain the possibility of discovery in the moment of destruction. Much like the theatre; an art revealed in the moment of its disappearance. And like life itself, theatre can not be rewound or reread; it exists in the temporal present between being and un-being, in what Plato calls the “something inserted between motion and rest (. . .) in no time at all.” An art conjured in the instant of its erasure. And I like the almost preposterous gravity of the world apokalypsis; how it’s cataclysmic and eschatological associations seem to mimic the way in which one world seems to end and another begins in a moment of newfound awareness. But in this instance, for what I’m about to articulate, “unveiling” is the apt word. It conjures for me the image of a man in white gloves pulling a cloth of a painting; the removal of a covering that concealed that which was there all along — something which has been rendered ever more extraordinary by the very fact of its concealment. Rather than by divine conjuring, “unveiling” suggests a moment of discovery arising from matter- of-fact and mortal circumstances. A new way of experiencing something already in the world. In this way, the world is constantly unveiling itself; a stand of trees seen from a fresh angle, the laugher of a dog, a nameless colour, new patterns of movement, of light, of behaviour, patterns in fabric, in birds, in traffic, in music . . . In this way “revelation” is not something a bearded white man once an epoch apprehends but rather a state of becoming that imbues all things at all times. Of course to be in a state of perpetual unveiling is exhausting and disorienting; it’s essentially the way we moved through the world as babies, when everything was revealed and nothing was legible. Gradually, to make sense of the chaos, we fixed things in place, we fixed meaning, we fixed potential, we fixed objects and people and places as knowable and predictable entities and attempted to reduce the instances of unveiling because those upset the order by introducing new variables into the mix. Unveiling, by nature, un-fixes. Liminal. At 11:04 a.m. on Jan. 21, 2017, Jordan opens the door to his mother's bedroom. As his eyes adjust to the half-light, he finds her lying in bed, eyes closed and mouth agape. In that instant he cannot tell whether she is asleep or dead. The sight of his mother's body, caught between these two possibilities, causes Jordan to plunge headlong into the uncertain depths of consciousness itself. From androids to cannibals to sex clubs, an unforgettable personal odyssey emerges, populated by a cast of sublime outsiders in search for the ever-elusive nature of self. Part ontological thriller, part millennial saga, Liminal is a riotous and moving portrait of a young man in volatile times, a generation caught in suspended animation, and a son's enduring love for his mother. ( From House of Anansi Press ) From the book. I am wary of revelations. I find anyone claiming to have them dubious. They're usually charlatans, the ultra-religious, or insane (not that these three types are mutually exclusive; in fact they rarely are). And I find any description of these revelations some combination of sinister and comical, like John Smith receiving golden plates from the angel Moroni in a secret language only he can translate. Even the words "revelation" and "epiphany" are mired in Christian connotations. The first conjures images of John on the island of Patmos having visions of the Whore of Babylon and the Beast, while the second is the realization by the wise men that Christ is the Son of God, rendered throughout art history as the Adoration of the Magi. From Liminal by Jordan Tannahill ©2018. Published by House of Anansi Press. Jordan Tannahill on his debut novel and creative fire. Jordan Tannahill didn’t let anyone know he was writing his debut novel, Liminal , until it was nearly finished; he would even tell his partner he was going to the library to work on something else. This likely wasn’t hard to believe, as Tannahill is known for having multiple irons in many fires. At the moment, the 29-year-old polymath is directing the premiere production of his play, Declarations , which runs from Jan. 23 to Feb. 11 at Canadian Stage; developing a new play with the National Theatre in London, England, where he lives; writing the text for a solo dance piece by choreographer Akram Khan; and working with director Stephen Dunn on a film adaptation of his play Botticelli in the Fire . But the stakes were particularly high with Liminal (due Jan. 23 from House of Anansi), whose main character shares his name. “The second I began thinking about a public reading from what I was writing,” he says, “I was gripped by an unshakable terror and self-doubt. I felt exposed. I was terrified that I would never finish it, or I would take the easier path and completely fictionalize [the story], or excise certain things which were particularly kind of ‘incriminating.’” Liminal ’s Jordan Tannahill certainly resembles the real one: both were born and raised in Ottawa, moved to Toronto, co-founded the Kensington alternative performance space Videofag with then-partner, William Ellis (or just “Will,” in the book), and relocated to London, England. But the real-life Tannahill moved “impulsively, for love,” he says, rather than to intern unsuccessfully at a Japanese theatre company working with androids. He hasn’t had quite the same dubious misadventures as his fictional counterpart. In Liminal , Jordan’s mother calls him a “dilettante” and accuses him of drifting through life, spouting “half-digested philosophy” and carrying himself around “like some know-it-all because really you’re so painfully insecure, so painfully afraid people will see through your act . . . ” And Jordan, eventually, accepts that she’s “absolutely right.” According to the real Tannahill, “for so long, my reality was that liminal space between a protracted adolescence and a stunted adulthood, where you’re not engaged in the life of broader society. . . . My friends and I spent a lot of our youth wondering when our next paycheck will come and from where, and putting on shows initially in garages or abandoned storefronts.” The novel cuts closest to painful reality in the relationship it depicts between Jordan and his mother. Liminal unfolds from its opening image: Jordan sees his mother sprawled out on her bed and wonders if she’s dead. In real life, Tannahill’s mother has stage IV breast cancer. The introduction to the script of Declarations begins, “Two years ago my mother was told she had less than two years to live. The news shattered me.” On the phone from Ottawa, where she still resides, Tannahill says, “She’s still here, thankfully, and is very much filled with a will to live — as we all are, I suppose.” For Tannahill, Liminal , as well as Declarations and his virtual reality piece Draw Me Close (which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2017) “ultimately trace back to this very personal conversation I’m having with my mother about what it is to face down death.” All three works find surprising, brave, and even invigorating ways to approach illness and grief. Draw Me Close enhances the intimacy offered by VR with live performance: an actor guides spectators around an actual space (corresponding to the illustrations they see in their headsets) and hugs them, eventually putting them to bed. Liminal weaves essay-like meditations on mortality and the limits of the body through the picaresque tale of a modern-day Bohemian artist. And Declarations — which Tannahill calls an extension of his novel’s final chapter, about passing through “the membrane that separates life and death” — finds “a composite character comprised of five voices and five bodies” improvising actions to illustrate a long series of declarative statements. The play offers what Tannahill calls a “prismatic portrait” of his and his mother’s relationship, “refracted through the lives of the performers.” Last year, Tannahill’s play Late Company , which he wrote when he was 23, was given a celebrated production in London’s West End, but when he saw it, he felt as if the relatively conventional depiction of five characters having a fraught dinner — while discussing the suicide of a sixth — had been penned by someone else. “When you don’t have resources,” he says, “you’re forced to fit into a much more recognizable model of, ‘OK, I guess I’ll write a play and make it compelling and strong enough that somebody will take a chance on it.’” Nowadays, his work with the establishment at both Canadian Stage and in residence with the National Theatre in London has changed his approach. “Counter-intuitively, I feel like with institutional support has come greater freedom and greater risk-taking. I think that is how you avoid falling into the trap of creating boring, dead work. As long as the creation process continues to scare you and challenge you, you’re drawing close to the flame. That’s where you want to be: sticking your hand towards it.” This story was changed from a previous version which misnamed the Canadian Stage performing arts company.