This has been an exhilarating year for Associate Professor Peter Grandbois. His book “Domestic Disturbances” is a finalist for ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year award, another book, titled “Wait Your Turn and the Stability of Large Systems,” has just been published, and this spring he won two national tournaments to qualify for the U.S. team for the Veteran’s World Championships in fencing.
Grandbois is taking his sword on the road in the fall of 2014 to the Veteran’s World Championships in Hungary, and he is bringing it to the classroom as part of a Denison Seminar titled “Shakespeare by the Sword.” He and Assistant Professor Cheryl McFarren of the theatre department will team-teach a class in fencing and stage combat, while delving into several of Shakespeare’s plays.
“Yes, we will be fencing,” says Grandbois. “But we’ll also be approaching Shakespeare as actors, literary scholars and writers.”
Creative drive pushed Grandbois to pick up his sword after a 17-year hiatus and move back into the fencing world in a serious way. “As I got older and mortality began to figure more strongly in my life, I realized that fencing is a part of who I am,” says Grandbois, who confesses to seeing himself as a swashbuckler when he was a kid. “I wanted to get into shape but more than that, I wanted to feel that joy again.”
Grandbois’ book, “Domestic Disturbances,” is a series of “flash fictions,” a genre of very short stories, generally less than 1,000 words (or about 3-4 typewritten pages). “These pieces are more like poetry than stories, “ Grandbois says. “They rely more on image than plot.”
The brief writings are inspired by the artwork of the Clayton brothers, collaborative artists who produce images that are tightly packed with symbols (and, incidentally, close childhood friends of Grandbois). In a process known as “ekphrasis,” Grandbois uses the paintings as a springboard to develop his narratives. “I think of these stories as a sort of conversation with another form of art,” he says.
Grandbois explores memorable creature-features from the 1950s in “Wait Your Turn,” the first in a series of novellas that spotlight movie monsters. In this book, he reconstructs “The Fly” and “The Creature from the Black Lagoon” in two stories that trace these archetypal horrors to issues still hidden in the closets of our everyday lives. “I use these stories to explore the monsters that lurk in our ordinary domesticity.”
How Grandbois became an English professor is a twisting, turning story of its own. At one point in time, he was the fifth-ranked fencer in the country; he taught high school biology; and he ran a temp service. Grandbois always has had a pen in hand, but it took the birth of his first child to ignite the spark that has produced five books, which include “The Gravedigger” (selected by Barnes and Noble for its “Discover Great New Writers” program), “The Arsenic Lobster: A Hybrid Memoir,” and “Nahoonkara.”
Read here for Bookshots review of Grandbois' latest books: http://litreactor.com/reviews/bookshots-the-glob-who-girdled-granville-and-the-secret-lives-of-actors-a-double-monster-fea