The Quincunx Saga - A Divine Masterpiece of Modern Literature

[00:00:00]Not only is Andre Alexis's Quincunx Saga one of the greatest works of 21st century literature, it also almost single-handedly got me on a second date with my now wife. So, this is a very powerful work and I want to use my now 7,000 subscribers, thank you very much, as well as an updated camera and mic setup to hopefully improve my videos to really get you to read one of the greatest works of Canadian literature.

[00:00:26]It is five books, each completely different from the other, but all circling a similar theme by a really engaging and intriguing writer that a lot of you have probably never read and maybe you've read one of these books, but you didn't know it was all part of a larger saga that explores so many facets of the modern world and our search for purpose in it. So, please join me today in this exploration of one of my favorite masterpieces of literature that has meant so much to me not only in my love of books, but in my personal life as we just go through these fantastic works. I'm going to explore the writer Andre Alexis as well. I'm going to go through the books in chronological order, but you can essentially read them in almost any order because the series is set up as a quincunx, which is the five side of a die. So, you've got the four corners and then a center piece and it's actually based on an essay by a Jacobean era writer that theorized that the Garden of Eden was laid out much like a quincunx. And so, this series also deals essentially with encounters with the divine. So, I'm just going to talk about all the different ways that it explores it. It's not necessarily a piece of religious literature. Alexis himself is a lapsed Catholic. It's more a struggle with essentially the unexplained nature of everyday life, particularly in Southwestern Ontario.

[00:01:53]And I think it is a wonderful work that you need to get into, and hopefully by exploring these books with me today, you do. As always, if you like this type of content, please like and subscribe. It really helps me and the videos sort of go out further, and it's been really nice to see the last few videos get thousands and thousands of views and really engage people in new ways. I try to post about bi-weekly author deep dives as well as deep dives on books, as well as some interesting book lists. So, like, subscribe, and let's dig into Andre Alexis's Quincunx Saga, one of my favorite pieces of literature and a masterwork that you've never heard of if you're outside of Canada, probably. So, Andre Alexis was actually born in Trinidad and came to Canada as a boy.

[00:02:35]And coincidentally, the greatest Canadian writer, I think Dionne Brand, who I did a whole video on, was also born in Trinidad and came a bit later in her life. But, we've got some really great Trinidadian-Canadian writers, and Andre Alexis is one of them.

[00:02:49]Interestingly enough, he started out primarily as a playwright and didn't really publish his first novel until he was in his 40s. And he only published, I think, three or four until the Quincunx Saga, which was published in his mid-50s.

[00:03:04]And with this work, he really arrived and found himself as a truly transformative writer. He wrote these five books in under a decade. And if you have heard of any of them, it is probably 15 Dogs, which won the Giller Prize here in Canada, which is our top literary award. I'll talk about that second, but I want to talk about the really interesting first book, which I think is the most indicative of what he started out writing before it became transformed. And what I mean is, it is very much struggling with a Christian faith. And this book, Pastoral, is very much in that vein. It's in this book that you most clearly see the inspiration for the Quincunx, which Alexis says is Pier Paolo Pasolini's fantastic movie Teorema, where a angel visits a family and sort of disrupts their lives in various interesting ways, seducing them and driving them, and it becomes a really interesting examination of how your life changes when you're touched with the divine. And so, in Pastoral, it is a reckoning with a Christian divinity, but as the series goes, that sense of divinity becomes a much more interesting and goes through other faiths as well as a more secular divinity to really explore a crisis of meeting the unknown in our modern age.

[00:04:27]Alexis said that he really wanted to find a way to respond to Pasolini's film, and the way he thought about it was to take five different facets of this and write five different genres of this sort of encounter. And so, Pastoral is a pastoral, which is a sort of idealized rural landscape. And then, we have 15 dogs, which is an apologue, which is a moral story involving animals. We have a quest story inspired by Treasure Island in The Hidden Keys.

[00:04:57]We have a ghost story in Days by Moonlight. And finally, we have a romance in Ring. And all of these are bound by the strictures of their genre, but they all are a bit looser and more literary because Alexis is playing within those sandboxes, and a lot of the characters and settings will overlap between these different books. They're all separate, and usually they're only side characters, but it creates this sense of being separate, yet together.

[00:05:25]Again, that quincunx theme goes throughout. Pastoral follows a priest who goes to a small town and struggles with his faith and encounters with potential divinity because there is a man there whose family members have all died at the same age, 62, 63. And so, he is convinced that that will die, and he wants to make sure that this priest is the right person to convey his soul to heaven. And so, are these miracles, are these constructed by this man? Is this a wrestling with what true divinity and miracles are? And it takes place in this really lovely rural setting with really wonderful characters. There's a whole side story of this almost sort of happy-go-lucky man who is in love with two different women, and he says he loves them equally. And so, one tries to test him as what his true love is. And so, this theme of testing of one's true passions and beliefs flows through this book, and the answer that Alexis arrives at is a really interesting one. I won't spoil it, but it is a really beautiful exploration of personal faith and how you come to accept the world in its faults and disappointments as well as the small miracles that still do exist.

[00:06:46]It's a really wonderful text, I think, for both religious people and non-religious people like myself to really explore what the world is like.

[00:06:54]And I just think the setting is absolutely beautiful. I'll also say about Alexis's writing that it is deceptively simple. As we go through these themes, especially in 15 Dogs, you'll be very surprised by how simple the language is. It flows very much across the page. Alexis is primarily a playwright, so the dialogue always flows very nicely. The language is simple, but the themes that he explores using these relatively short books is fascinating.

[00:07:24]They are so deep, and they sort of sneak up on you. I think no more than in Pastoral, which really uses the quietness of its setting, nature, these characters, and the small struggles that they go to in this more isolated location to explore what family, passion, and all of your identity and belief is truly about. 15 Dogs was published next, and it really put Alexis on the map. It won the Giller Prize. It was actually translated into a really great stage play, actually, not by Alexis himself, which is pretty interesting. But, it was really a cultural touchstone here in Canada. It won our Canada Reads. If you have seen my previous videos about our national literary contest every year, it's just a really interesting story. And this time we're not dealing with Christian divinity. Instead, we have a bet, actually. What happens is they bet about the true meaning of being human, as well as the purpose of life. And so, to discover this bet, they grant human-level sentience to a pack of 15 dogs that is in a little animal shelter.

[00:08:35]And if one of the dogs dies happy, one of the gods wins the bet, and so these animals come, they escape, and they go through Toronto, and they try to make their way. But, they're still very much dogs, and so they have this pack mentality. This large dog, Atticus, begins to be the leader, but you have these sneaky little dogs going about.

[00:08:57]They're very obsessed with smells and chasing animals, but they also begin to explore really deep philosophical concepts. But, again, because Alexis is such a gentle writer, he does it in a very easy way to read through it. It almost is like a philosophy 101. This is a gentle exploration of what it means to be human, as well as our capacity for life and cruelty and love. Majnoun is sort of the main character, who's this really lovely dog who gets adopted and sort of almost falls in love with the woman, but it becomes this really interesting story of the separation between humans and animals and what it means to truly be happy. It's a really lovely celebrated book. It's not my favorite among these stories just because I think there are some that are even better, but if you want a really interesting introduction to Alexis and probably one that's more easily available where you are, I think 15 Dogs is a great way to start because it again shows this encounter with the divine which disrupts your life. In Pastoral, it was the priest potentially doubting or believing very much in the miracles of God which he thought had passed or and here it is this disruption that the gods create where they create all of these problems for these dogs who were just happy dogs before and can one of them achieve happiness by the end of their lives as they wander starving through the streets of Toronto and deal with cars and plots of new hierarchies as well as new joys and new understandings of their interactions with world. Now, if magic and miracles aren't really your thing, of course the Quincunx Saga has everything for you and here we have a secular quest story where the divine is not magical in any way. It is just unimaginable wealth. Here we meet Tancred who's a bit of a gentleman thief and he's always been a bit down on his luck, but he's always been friends with this older woman who is a drug addict and he finds out that she's actually the daughter of a very wealthy businessman and he had given his children a bunch of money, but she was always convinced that he had saved more because he'd given them each a puzzle piece to get through. And so she enlists Tancred into going through this, but unfortunately she passes away early so he could size on his own to go through and try to figure out what this puzzle is and that of course involves breaking into these rich houses in Toronto's rich neighborhoods to try to find these original uh, sculptures and tricks to puzzle out the whole story. You also have an antagonist who's an albino who's needlessly cruel, and you have a friend who's a detective who's also tracking this down. And so, it becomes a really fun police procedural mystery quest through this whole really Toronto landscape. And that is another thing about the Quincux saga, it's very much set in Southern Ontario, and the Hidden Keys is the most Toronto novel. If you've ever been to Toronto, all the ravines, the cemeteries, the big rich neighborhoods, the architecture, it's all beautifully described here, and it really feels like a real place, which is I think really helped because this has no magic or magic realism. Though, Alexis himself does not like to be referred to as a magical realist because it sort of typecasts him as a Caribbean or Central South American writer, whereas he views himself more Canadian.

[00:12:26]I would argue that we have fifth business and a very traditional uh, magical realism here in Canada as well.

[00:12:34]But, in Hidden Keys, we don't have any of that. Instead, we have the pursuit of wealth and how that can change your life just as much as being touched by the divine and seeing miracles or having intelligence granted to you. And so, we follow Tancred through this really plot-driven story, but again, it's the relationships and characters that Alexis creates that really solidifies this.

[00:12:57]There's some really beautiful, touching moments between Tancred friends, particularly with his detective friends.

[00:13:03]And it's just a really lovely, entertaining story that's a really elevated genre fiction set in Toronto.

[00:13:10]And you do have these sort of interplays with the other Quincux novels. I think some of the dogs from 15 Dogs show up in the cemetery. It's a really lovely quest narrative. So, if you aren't really into sort of more magical literary fiction, this is a great way to start. A 15 Dogs as accessible and available as it is seems like a bit of a stretch and you don't care about the moral lives of animals.

[00:13:34]Hidden Keys is a really lovely fun quest story. Next we have a ghost story and I think the most interesting of all the novels of the Quincunx cycle which is Days by Moonlight which is essentially a southern Ontario Gothic. I think probably the only southern Ontario Gothic to ever exist and it follows a botanist who has gone through a breakup and goes with his friend who's trying to track down this poet John Skennen who published some poems 20 years ago and then vanished and so they're going on this road trip through rural southern Ontario to see if they can find him and it is this really magical weird dark place where you have a town where they have a ritualized house burning. You have another town which is full of black people who don't speak because it was a way to survive. You have this really almost dark mood as you're going through these odd towns which don't exist here in Ontario but philosophically and historically they speak to our history.

[00:14:35]We were a stop on the Underground Railroad but we also did have sundown towns where black people were not allowed and sometimes they were very close to each other or the railroad stops became sundown towns later on and so it's a really interesting interrogation of what it is like in these more isolated communities, the histories that they have, the prejudices they have. There's another where there's a parade which is for people to go against the colonizers but has been sort of warped and changed where everyone covers themselves. Again, this really interesting story but then they find John Skennen and then the narrative shifts again and we again have an encounter with the divine where our protagonist eats a plant and discovers that he has gained the powers to heal and he examines how his life would change with that and his encounter with Scanlon who's a bit of a ghost and this whole history of Southwestern Ontario melds together almost in a travel story as much as a ghost story through both history and culture and your own moral philosophy of what you would do with your life if it changed so much and if you didn't encounter this and how you would interact with your friends including his friend who has taken him along on this journey whether you would tell your friend that you actually do have these magical powers. I think it's a really interesting lovely book. Some really lovely excerpts again on botany and nature echoing pastoral and I think pastoral is actually referenced as one of the books that is read in this. So it's just again a really wonderful playful work which is very gentle but goes through so much. And if you don't know a much about Canada and Southwestern Ontario, I think this book is a really beautiful exploration of it in a really interesting and unique way.

[00:16:28]Again, like all of these books incredibly accessible, not particularly long. The language is relatively simple.

[00:16:35]The dialogue is great and the relationships that Alexis establishes primarily through dialogue are just really well constructed. It almost reads like a film so much of these because everything is just sort of going through is particularly in this conversations go towards the revelation so much. I think this is just a really wonderful fantastic book. If you want I think the most challenging and the most interesting if you want really something new that you have not read, this is the part of the Quincunx to start with. it's absolutely incredible and one of my favorite books. I think it's just one that I will return to again and again. It's not maybe as cohesive as Pastoral, which I think I liked the most at first reading, but Days by Moonlight just feels so true to Southwestern Ontario, where I was raised, that it just feels like such a great work. And I think if you really want something new that feels really interesting modern Canadian literature, pick this up.

[00:17:40]Finally, we come to the last published book of The Quint Kungs and probably the most controversial. It has the rating on Goodreads. It's the only one without its own Wikipedia article, but it's one that has quite the place in my heart. It's a romance. And so, this is actually what got me my second date with my wife, where we had met and we were talking about our love of books. And she said, "Have you read this really great writer, Andre Alexis?" I said, "Yeah, I've read 15 Dogs, but also a lot of people don't know that he's written these other books." He says, "Oh, I've read those, too." So, you can tell that my wife is incredible, more incredible than me.

[00:18:18]Um and so, this was I was very excited and she said, "Uh did you know he's coming out with the last book?" I said, "No." She's like, "You need to pre-order it because it was coming out in the fall." We'd met in the summer. And so, I pre-ordered it and that sort of interest that I had in Alexis made her more interested in me because I present as a very just sort of very boring person. And she, at first glance, didn't think that I had anything much to offer, but knowing Andre Alexis and being interested in this whole saga that a lot of people had not read made her more interested in me. And then, last year, for those who have been following my channel, we got married. And so, it has been almost a full year of being married to my wonderful literary wife, who has bought most of the books behind me and will probably never appear on this channel, but she is just as literary as I am and this series got me my beautiful wife. And so, reading Ring holds a special place in her heart because it is a book about falling in love and interestingly enough, it actually has the same protagonist as The Hidden Keys.

[00:19:26]We have Tancred, but he's also uh in a sort of paired protagonist with Guinevere who is the real true protagonist because she falls in love with Tancred. But again, we have to have our encounters with divine where she learns that her family has a ring that is passed down from generations and generations where you can change three aspects of your one true love. But sort of in a monkey's paw way where there will be some unintended consequences.

[00:19:53]So, her mom changed her father, but now she's trapped in her small community of Brights Grove. Again, this rural Ontario theme goes through. So, you follow Tancred and Gwen's love story and what would you truly change about your partner who you really love, but might have a few little things about them that bother you. And would you regret it?

[00:20:15]What would you do? How that all unfolds is really beautifully done. The book itself takes a while to get started.

[00:20:22]There is a bit of playfulness where you've got some really real Toronto writers, some great poets, and a little epilogue in cottage country. I think it becomes a bit more of a gentle ride, but if you read this book while you were falling in love with the love of your life, it is going to change you and that's what it did for me. I think it's just a really beautiful character study.

[00:20:44]Again, Alexis's use of characters is lovely. You really fall for Guinevere and Tancred. They're both just like really lovely people. You want them to succeed. Alexis has said that this is the center of his Quinn Cook series around which all the stories revolve.

[00:21:01]And I think it really works as that because again, you have these characters that have appeared in the other stories appear again and I think love is the most profound connection that we have with people and it feels like being visited by the divine in yourself or the divine in this other person and through yourselves you create this divinity. And so while you have been touched by the divine of this ring like in all of these stories you have someone being touched by something that can't explain. Love you can't really explain either and so I think this book being the source of love and that being the divine just as much as the ring really hinges around the relationships that make these novels work because they're just as much about the connections that we make with those around us. The inexplicability of the world that troubles us that we try to make sense of is the relationships that we build with others that can destroy us because we've have our botanist going through a breakup. We have all of these things happening to us but they also the relationships build us together none more so than in the romance in ring and it's a beautiful story that is guarded by a romance genre so there's not really a whole lot of drama but I think that's what makes it work because it's trying to create that divinity within ourselves and I think that's why it works so well.

[00:22:34]So if you followed along through this whole video I really hope that you pick up at least one hopefully two of the Quincunx Saga books. I think each of them is a tremendous work in itself but I think as five novels published in less than a decade that examine our struggle to piece together this wide confusing world and things that just feel like the world is coming to get you and disrupt your whole life. I think there are really wonderful and subtle commentary on everything that we deal with and read together, they form one of the greatest works of 21st century literature, I think across the world and the greatest work of 21st century literature, I think in Canada. So, please pick it up. If you have read the whole saga, please let me know cuz I have never met anyone other than my wonderful wife who has.

[00:23:31]Um if you've only read a few of the books, please let me know your own thoughts because I think this series speaks to itself so well. It examines what you think of divinity, whether it's Christian, whether it's just secular wealth, whether it's love and the human spirit itself. Anything can disrupt your life, but anything can also build it and heal it and make everything so much better. And I think that these connections and the loose connections that the novels themselves have really show this power of literature and the power of these sorts of texts to really help your imagination and understanding of the world and make all of this rottenness feel a little better. As always, I'll talk to you soon about some more books. I think my next video is going to be on the more than 70 books I will have read uh 6 months through, so I'll have some highlights there. So, stay tuned for that and we'll do some more author and work deep dives because there's always more wonderful books to talk about. But, what I most want out of this channel is to inspire people to read and to engage with books. That's why I always encourage you to comment. I really like having conversations with people uh in the comments. There were some really interesting comments I got last week from someone who watched my video where I didn't particularly like Stoner or A Little Life and it really caused me to change my opinion and nuance it a little bit because I'm always open to changing things as they go. Also, on my Yoko Ogawa video, someone said they picked up uh Hotel Iris in Reddit in like a day uh from my video. So, I just really encourage you to get out there and get out of your comfort zone for books. None more so than I think this under read work of Canadian literature that's a masterpiece that I hope maybe some more of my international audience will pick up. And if you're Canadian, definitely check it out. You need to read some Andre Alexis, particularly if you've only read 15 Dogs because there's some really beautiful works out there. And I hope to talk to you soon about more books. Please like, subscribe, comment because I keep adding more books that you guys keep recommending to me, too. So, it's always lovely and keep reading and I'll talk to you soon.