Lewis Powell

I attended Scintillation!  Many events happened while I was there.  I will recap some of them.

The Final Day of the Con! (6/12)

Part 1: Bagels Don't Even Matter!

I wake up early again, because of course I do. I hop on the bus and head to Fairmont, because I want to try a bagel now that I am braced for the texture and that's the other bagel place. It is...fine.  I mean, it is perfectly good, but it did not change my world in a way that is going to lead me to take a strong stand in the bagel debates.

Here is my stand in the bagel debates: My outsider summary of the intra-Montreal bagel division is that Fairmont has some more innovative/inventive flavors on offer but seems like a slightly smaller operation, while St-Viateur Bagel is slightly more traditionalist in their offerings and is also a bit more of the larger scale juggernaut, businesswise.  In terms of the Montreal vs. New York bagel debate: they are just different things. You'd want them for different purposes, and it would be like asking whether an American muffin is better than an English muffin, almost?  I mean they are closer than those two, but like, I'm not going to make a breakfast sandwich with a Montreal bagel, and I'm not going to do whatever people do with Montreal bagels with a New York bagel.  They just look so similar that it confuses you into thinking there is a debate.  Maybe I would have been more invested in the debate if I hadn't gone to Guillame bakery to try see if they had something more substantive for breakfast, after trying this bagel, and discovered that Montreallers should all be declaring themselves the city of the Brioche Champignon Chocolat Blanc et Vanille.

 So I walk into this bakery and am overwhelmed by the varieties of bread.  There are at least 50 types of bread on offer. I am dazed and trying to make sense of it, and a very friendly clerk offers to help me figure out what I might want.  I explain I just had a bagel and am trying to find something else to fill out my breakfast, and he walks me through what they have. The things that are not just bread are either not ready yet (some sandwiches that would be more lunch-time faire) or appear to be enormous (some egg-inflected preparations that are the size of a loaf of bread, but are maybe halfway to being a frittata?).  Trying not to panic, I order a croissant, two mini pecan tarts to save for later, and one Brioche Champignon which he had said was sort of their specialty.  I then ask if there is somewhere nearby I can sit and eat these items, and am directed to a picnic table/bench nearby. I sit down and eat the croissant, and then try this Champignon, which I have never heard of before, nor do I have any idea what to expect.  MY GOODNESS, IT IS THE SINGLE MOST DELICIOUS THING I HAVE EATEN IN MONTREAL.

I was planning to sit at the table and read for a bit, since I had about two and a half hours before anything would happen, but I had the overwhelming urge to share this delicious baked good with others. I went back inside and the clerk, who must have had experiences like this before, was like "ah, you have returned for more Champignon! How many would you like?"  So I bought a dozen, made my way to the bus, and went back to the benches in front of the Journey to the West relief.  Someone asked me for change as I sat down, and I didn't have any, but I did offer them a Champignon. I let people know on the discord about these things, how delicious they were, and that I had them to share, and sat reading my book for a an hour or so.  I don't think other folks were really up yet, but there was a grandma and her child on the bench behind me as I was getting ready to go, so I offered to them. The grandma encouraged her granddaughter to take one, and I smiled as I went up to deliver some to Anthony and Caroline on my way to my room to get my things for the day, and then I took the rest, which was the grand majority of them still, and put them in the con suite, with the coffee and tea, so that people could get them from a central location. I tried to make sure to mention them specifically to con staff and the people working the book table, but mostly I just really wanted to share these delicious baked goods with other people.  They were so good. I literally could not care less about the bagels. Poutine was fine. But this is the grand emperor of Montreal carbohydrates in my book. A++++++ would eat again.  Also I had no idea until six hours later than "Champignon" meant mushroom, at which point I thought "oh do they have mushroom in them? I don't really like mushrooms! oh it is probably because of the shape, that makes sense!"

Part 2: Genres, Paperwork, and Papal Work!

The first panel of the day was "Reading All the Things" which was about reading in different genres.  I don't have good notes from this panel.  I know that the panelists had different conceptions of how to conceptualize genre in the first place, and that some of the things we call genres overlap with each other, because some of them were being framed in terms of the audience they target, some in terms of particular plot points, some in terms of particular ways they would center themes, and so on, but also whether or not they originated principally as publisher's marketing conventions, they have evolved into distinctive norm-bearing collections of texts in conversation with each other, and so, you can't simply write a story where the characters meet-cute and fall in love and say "ah, it's a romance" (or at least, it won't be any good, if you do) because Romance literature has genre-conventions and so on, that have been developed for a fair amount of time now.  One of the more memorable portions of the panel was a discussion about what kinds of promises are made to readers or what kinds of expectations are licensed for them in different sorts of books.  In a mystery novel, characters may meet and get into a relationship, but if the book is centrally a mystery we don't expect the interiority of the main characters' and their feelings about the relationship to occupy the majority of the attention; we expect the clues and questions about who might have had a motive to commit the crime to occupy the attention (and vice versa).  The Yiddish Policeman's Union was mentioned by Jo as an example of a novel written by someone who normally writes outside of Genre fiction that felt like it was participating in the conversation as though it was actually in the conversation, rather than walking into the room and ignoring the rest of the conversation (and she noted that it had been received warmly by the community and lauded in a way where the community acknowledged that it had accomplished this). 

Earlier in the conversation, there was some discussion of the right terminology for how to capture these categories: the word tropes was used, but people resisted it because (I think) it felt somewhat reductive, or at least, not the right fit.  There was another term proposed, but I don't recall what that was, and then I think Ada proposed "formula" as an option, which resonated a bit better for people.  I am always reminded of this Fernand Leger painting (whose name I do not recall, but it was at the DIA in 2011 or 2012) when words don't carve up the world the way we want them to (i.e. always):


We fashion and refashion categories to serve our purposes; it is not arbitrary or entirely capricious what categories we fashion or where their boundaries are, but neither is it neat and tidy, the way we want it to be.  The world may not cooperate, and the categories will always be messy. We always have to qualify, add exceptions and amendments, and it will always be a bit of a hodgepodge, but the categories are artificial things imposed on the world.  The goal is to adopt the ones that are the most useful frame for what we need to do (this can be difficult because sometimes linguistic inertia will combat our efforts to adopt more useful or productive categories).  But this messy world is the one we live in, even if we tidy things up as we go (high school me would be clawing my own eyes out reading this, because high school me was steadfastly against messy categories).  Anyway, this is just me musing about how it is okay that we may not have a perfect answer to how to categorize every book on every shelf: what's important is that if we take the "what books are in conversation with each other" framing—which is a very useful framing— sometimes lots of conversations are going on at once, and that can help to make sense of why some books might be hard to decisively put in one pile or another, or, why one person (if they care very much about one conversation) would say "oh well obviously it goes with these!" and someone else would say "no no, it goes with these!" And none of this settles whether there is a right or a wrong way to shelve the books or value the conversations, but I certainly learned a lot about how people think about different genres, and will be able to catch myself before arguing about genre, and see if i can spot what the people I disagree with are keyed into, so this was a really interesting and eye opening panel.

After the panel, I got to witness a document for another Scintillator! This is probably not super exciting to most people, but I got to read through the instructions, look over her document from list A, certify that it was what it purported to be, enter my information (under penalty of perjury!) and electronically sign that this person was legally eligible to start working (which they were scheduled to do very shortly after the con ended, in fact!).  The electronic element of it was both simplifying and added some hiccups, so it meant we ran a bit late to the Papal election panel, but it was exciting to a) help someone with important work paperwork and b) certify things, officially!  (Look if it was not clear by now that I am a nerd, I don't know what to tell you).  

We then entered the Papal Election panel, already underway.  The Papal Election LARP sounds amazing.  I cannot imagine what herculean efforts it takes to organize and run it.  I've seen how much work it takes to run LARPS for just regular larpers.  Maybe it helps that the people participating aren't "regular larpers" (actually, come to think of it, some of the difficulty of running larps are the larp-community drama, so maybe running it with students taking a class reduces the number of headaches of the form: "we can't have so-and-so play because of bad blood from the middle ages vampire larp two years ago, and we can't have whosit without what'stheirname, because they only play larps together, and if we have what'stheirname, they will want youknowwho, and youknowwho always tries to meta-game, so we'll need a dedicated storyteller to make sure they don't cheat, and that's a full time job").  Anyway, I was torn for the whole panel between a) "oh my god I wish I could take a class like this, this is amazing" because I would love to be a student in this sort of class, and b) "i cannot imagine having the energy to do 1/15th of this, omg" because I am a professor, and holy gosh, I am so impressed with Ada's ability to run this, and like, seven rounds of applause for her and the people who help her run this.  The students who take this really don't know how lucky they are, even if they think they do.

The short version is that students LARP the sociopolitical maneuvering leading up to the Papal election, and their actions actually impact the course of events, which means that they are not being railroaded which means that this is A LOT of work, and requires a lot of central coordination, but also means it is very immersive and gives them a huge amount of insight and memorable learning experience that they probably will retain in a way like no other class.  Jealous/Impressed.  Riley had a fantastic story about an appeal to integrity that (unbeknownst to Riley) no one had ever tried before, which led to a drastically different game outcome, if I recall correctly. 

Part 3: LUNCH AT A TABLE!

One thing I had not done much of this weekend was eat meals at tables.  Most people wanted to eat outside, not many restaurants possessed their own terrasse, and so, we had been eating on benches.  But I had heard of a taco restaurant that had a terrasse. In fact, I walked past it on the way back from the Tiki bar the night before.  I had heard good things about it from Liz and Jon. I told people that I wanted to go there for lunch, because I had a civilized amount of time, but not, you know, unlimited time for lunch. I got a group, and we started walking. A few minutes into the walk, someone noticed that it was overcast.  Carrie and someone else had brought umbrellas.  The table on the terrasse had an umbrella, though it only covered half the table.  The restaurant had the set up where the whole front of the building opened up.  The offered to move us inside four times, I think, but we were all pretty set on staying outside since the open table was not near the front of the restaurant, and it was clear that not everyone was comfortable eating indoors. My only real preference was that my chair have a back and that my food sit on a table.  Between the two umbrellas people had brought and the umbrella built into the terrasse, things were mostly dry.  There was occasional spillover from umbrella onto me or the table, but I did not care. My tacos were good! My horchata was good! My seat had a back! My food was not on my lap!  I explained that I was excited and nervous because the Steerswoman panel was coming up next! I was recommended the Logogryph as a book that evokes similar levels of passion and dedication, by Isabelle, whose name I hope I am spelling correctly (that book is out of print, but you can buy the PDF!).  I shared the pecan tarts with some people at the table, a tres leches cake was ordered and shared, though I passed on that, having had my fill of the pecan tarts, and then made our way back to the hotel (some folks stopped at Harmonie Patisserie to get buns, but I had to change into dry clothes).  I should clarify it did not rain through all of lunch, it just rained hard through about 5-10 minutes of lunch, I think.

Then I headed downstairs to talk about books I had been waiting my entire life 11 months to talk about.

Next time: The Steerswoman Panel, More Steerswoman Conversation, A Raffle! A Picnic! Saying Goodbyes! (And Yet There Will Be Another Post After That One!)

 

BONUS:
 

I said this post had an ode to the Champignon in it, and ambyr said she'd be disappointed if there was no ode in the post, so:

Ode to Brioche Champignon from Guillame Bakery

 

Hear, o muse, my praiseful song,

that this brief poem may right a wrong,

the carb that gets such great esteem,

is not the one that tastes a dream,

In Montreal, breads are at war,

each bagel has its loyal corps,

and let’s not forget dear poutine,

whose legions are at least as keen,

to see their starch defeat all foes.

The true contender? None of those!

 

A sweet brioche with comic shape,

more substance than a simple crepe,

its flavor simple, its name a pun,

I am pretty sure it’s not a “bun”

But the taste is so pure and divine,

One is astonished there is no line

running up the street,

while people wait to eat,

a single bite of Champignon,

Fistfights for their very own.

 

The clear and simple winner,

be it breakfast, lunch, or dinner

for starchiest pride of place,

in any bakery’s display case

Ought obviously to be

this brioche, I plea.

So, please hear my praise,

and let this begin a craze:

Champignon Chocolat Blanc et Vanille

A baked good good enough for any meal.