Philip Quinn’s The Skeleton Dance
An online exclusive interview
Recently BP assistant editor Nathaniel G. Moore caught up with Toronto novelist and poet Philip Quinn to discuss his brand new book The Skeleton Dance, a novel which takes place on the mean, formerly clean streets of Toronto before the century ticked over into the new millennium. This dark novel depicts the human casualties and debris piled up around the downtown bank towers in a way only Quinn can deliver.
BP: When did you begin working on The Skeleton Dance and how was it working with Anvil?
PQ: This novel in terms of composition precedes my novel The Double and some other works of fiction. I put it aside but went back to it thinking that it might suit a small press such as Vancouver’s Anvil Press which specializes in ‘grunt literature’. Namely writing that strips away the polite, literary stuff and looks at things in the raw.
BP: Your new novel has noir elements to it. How did you incorporate a dark mood into your character Robert Walker, and successfully reflect that in the city itself which is presented in equally and fitting darkness?
PQ: I wanted to write about murder, not because of the violence or what it said about the city of Toronto but because of what it said about the nature of friendship. The key word for me was elemental. When we give up everything what keeps us sane or innocent?
BP: Your characters are at times vampiric, was this a device you used to help create tension and conflict?
PQ: The characters prey on each other. I don’t think they necessarily see it that way. But that’s what goes on. They all do it, some are better at it than others.
BP: There are musical soundbites throughout the book, what was your ideal soundtrack, if you had one for this novel?
PQ: No piped in sound, just listen to the city, for its John Cage music, how the silence so quickly fills up with a discordant yet at times beautiful symphony.
BP: The seedy lawyer/best friend Klin is the most memorable character outside of the protagonist in the novel, how did you come up with this cold moody flake?
PQ: Klin has everything going for him yet he’s so hollowed out that he’s become this monster. I based him on several monsters I’ve met over the years.