The Big Idea: Marissa Lingen

Does a weapon want to hurt people? What if it had opinions on the type of people it was used to slay? Author Marissa Lingen had these sorts of questions rattling around in her brain long enough that a story formed from them. Take up your (opinionated) sword and follow along in the Big Idea for A Dubious Clamor. MARISSA LINGEN: Some big ideas form in an instant, an explosion of brilliance, totally ready to write down and go–the Big Bang of idea formation, if you will. Others are more like planetary accretion. There’s a whole massive whirling disc of random crap, and over time it runs into each other and eventually you have an entire planet with rings and moons. A Dubious Clamor was definitely in the second group. Twenty-five years ago I read the Francis Peabody Magoun translation of the Kalevala. This is my recommended translation. Rather than trying to preserve rhyme or structure, it preserves weirdness, which for my money is the exact right thing to preserve. Catch me at a con…