by Kim Zarins
Speaking of layers, Chaucer cultivates this layered quality in his characters and voices. There’s Chaucer the man, Chaucer the author, Chaucer the wallflower narrator, and then Chaucer the author and/or narrator ventriloquizing the pilgrims, who in turn have characters inside their own stories. This is another example of Chaucer’s brilliance, because the stories are more interesting for being matched to the characters telling them. Why does the Wife of Bath tell a story with rape in it, for example? The stories become another peek into these personalities, because the characters are authored yet authors, too.
Chaucer intended to get twenty-nine or possibly thirty pilgrims to Canterbury and back, each pilgrim telling two stories each way. That would have been a massive project, and he didn’t come close to finishing it, only giving us twenty-four stories, counting the fragmented ones. He didn’t even make it to Canterbury. Medieval readers seem to have resented this incompletion. A number of manuscripts leave space for the Cook to finish his abruptly unfinished tale (in my version, he falls asleep), and one fifteenth-century poet even wrote his own ending, because no matter how busy an author is, the least he can do is get the gang to Canterbury. So of course my group gets to D.C., and my Jeff needs to grow over the course of the story. I needed some sort of story arc. I originally thought it would end with Cannon, but Pard sort of insisted on a love story. Either way, it’s not just a love story between two lovers, but the bond Jeff increasingly feels for this community he’s traveled with and the power of stories to get us to see into other lives and our own.
FOR FURTHER READING
Print resources:
Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, second edition, edited by Robert Boenig and Andrew Taylor (Ontario, Canada: Broadview), 2012.
This is a complete and highly regarded edition of The Canterbury Tales used in many college classrooms.
Helen Cooper, The Oxford Guides to Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 1989.
This is my favorite companion to The Canterbury Tales.
Online resources:
Larry Benson, The Geoffrey Chaucer Website.
sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/
A very useful page devoted to Chaucer and his work.
Brantley Bryant, Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog.
houseoffame.blogspot.com
Twitter handle: Chaucer Doth Tweet @LeVostreGC
For readers who want to enjoy Middle English’s relevance in modern life, Bryant takes on Chaucer’s persona in this occassional blog and active Twitter account. It’s fun stuff.
Daniel T. Kline, Geoffrey Chaucer Online: The Electronic Canterbury Tales, kankedort.net and “The Chaucer Pedagogy Page,” kankedort.net/pedagogy.htm.
These sites, useful for students and teachers alike, give context to Chaucer’s work and provide links to many other useful pages.
The Open Access Companion to the Canterbury Tales, edited by Candace Barrington, Brantley Bryant, Richard H. Godden, Daniel T. Kline, Myra Seaman.
opencanterburytales.com
This site (currently in development) will include essays on each of the tales, plus essays with broader themes.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
(corresponding names in Chaucer’s original text, The Canterbury Tales, given in parentheses)
ALISON (the Wife of Bath)
MR. BAILEY (Harry Bailey, the tavern Host)
BRIONY (the Prioress)
BRYCE (the Merchant)
CANNON (the Canon’s Yeoman)
CECE (the Second Nun)
COOKIE (the Cook)
FRANKLIN (the Franklin)
FRYE (the Friar)
JEFF (Geoffrey Chaucer, the narrator)
KAI (the Knight)
LUPE (the Manciple)
MACE (the Summoner)
MARCUS (the Clerk)
MARI (the Nun’s Priest)
MOUSE (the Squire)
PARD (the Pardoner)
PARSON (the Parson)
REEVE (the Reeve)
REIKO (the Physician)
ROOSTER (the Miller)
SAGA (the Shipman)
SOPHIE (the Man of Law)
THE BUS DRIVER (the Monk)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
There are so many amazing people who helped make this book, too many to name them all.
First, thanks to everyone at Simon Pulse for giving this book the best home it could ever have. I’m at the stage right now where the book isn’t in a physical form, but I’ve already fallen for Adam J. Turnbull’s fantastic illustrations and the jacket design by Karina Granda. As the word is starting to go out, I feel gratitude for people who have started chatting up the book and supporting it, including librarians and bloggers, with special thanks to Jess Huang. The book is starting to feel real by all this support, and I appreciate it so much.
This is a Chaucer book, and I have Chaucer debts. Andy Galloway, Pete Wetherbee, and Tom Hill mentored me as a graduate student at Cornell. I’m so grateful for everything you’ve taught me. My high school English teacher Tom Debalski (Mr. D) also deserves special mention, because I didn’t know it at the time, but it’s through him that my pilgrimage with Chaucer began. I also have deep gratitude for my students at Sacramento State, especially my Chaucer students. A couple specific students to thank, though it doesn’t cover my debts by far: Mike Brown’s discussion of veterans helped me shape Kai’s backstory; Catrina Porter gave me the idea for the Greyhound bus, right there in class when I asked for a modern equivalent to Constance at sea—Sophie’s Tale was a breeze after that. My Medieval Literature students were an outstanding group to teach while I was writing this novel. When I announced the book deal, they broke into spontaneous applause, which was sweet. My students are the best part of my job at Sacramento State. I am also very grateful for the sabbatical that helped me complete the novel.
Many thanks to my academic friends. My Cal State cousin, Samantha Fields, was so generous going over all the ins and outs of asthma attacks. I’m so grateful for her time, because the scene became so much more authentic, and I loved her description of asthmatics being good hiders, which sounded just like Jeff. Poet and Sac State colleague Josh McKinney read Aurelius’s sonnet (I was worried it was a prosodic disaster) and gave scansion suggestions regarding the pesky last line; if anything about that sonnet stinks, it’s all my own doing. My dear friend Katherine Terrell, a medievalist at Hamilton College and a wonderful person to talk to, helped me focus on the Prioress’s perception of what she’s doing, which in turn helped me come up with a plan for Briony’s Tale. I’m lucky to be a medievalist—a Chaucer fan and a card-carrying Gower Girl—and feel such gratitude for my medievalist community for its kindness, brilliance, and even doughnuts. Yes, in a way, #medievaldonut got worked in there too.
My writer friends have been awesome. Fabulous and wise author Katherine Longshore answered my questions about Henry VIII as I was writing Marcus’s Tale, and she’s been a mentor in many ways. I deeply appreciate my local Better Books community and SCBWI friends who have kept me sane and kept me writing. Matt Kirby and Talia Vance gave me moral support and good advice. Bruce Coville and I once had a meaningful chat about how to accept compliments from others (even if you feel insecure, he told me, just say thanks), and I put some of that wisdom in Alison’s mouth. Thanks, Bruce.
My parents Valerie and Barry—Hi, Mom and Dad!—and the whole family have been supportive, even though I know my parents won’t be a fan of the swear words and the scandalous bits. Thanks for buying copies anyhow. Thanks, Emily, for your good advice at a time when I needed some. My little sister, Itsy, is going to help make giveaway prizes, T-shirts and stuff, which will be fun. Writing this book reminded me of the time Itsy complained that even though she read Chaucer in high school and college, the survey classes never covered anything beyond the General Prologue, which is just sad. So here is the whole thing . . . sort of.
I don’t know if this is cheating, but I am dedicating this book to five people, which is kind of a
Wife of Bath number, but I’m not going to analyze that. I have to dedicate this book first off to my husband and son, because watching someone type one hundred thousand words on a computer is a really boring thing to do. That’s dedication right there. Thank you, Mark. I have had really interesting conversations with you to help me write this book, such as what kinds of bad things a high school hacker might realistically pull off. There are also all sorts of references in the novel inspired by you. Thank you, Arthur, for offering to help read over the manuscript. I didn’t take you up on it, because you were ten and only wanted to see what kinds of swear words I put in the story besides that one word you noticed when you read over my shoulder. My love to you both—we’re on this pilgrimage together. This book is for you.
I also wanted to dedicate this book to the three people closest to it: Rachel, Michael, and Emma. My agent Rachel Orr has been incredible from the get-go. Enthusiastic, supportive, helpful in every way. I couldn’t have done this without all the brainstorming, the phone calls that had me pacing all over the backyard. Thank you for writing that e-mail that went, “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA,” and for totally getting my tampon humor. I feel like we bonded there, but seriously, those late-night edit e-mails were totally exciting. You are the best. Thank you so, so much, friend of many years.
This book would have never happened without my two editors, Michael Strother and Emma Sector. Seriously, how many YA editors out there have a passion for Chaucer like they have? I’m just amazed that we connected and that I haven’t dreamed all this up. From start to finish, I felt like I was on a pilgrimage, and Michael and Emma were the Host, tasking me to tell a tale. Of course, they did much more than that—they helped me shape the manuscript and gave me their brilliant, wise perspectives. Their inspiration and guidance took me to a place and a story I never knew I had in me. I can’t even begin to say how grateful I am for the gift they gave me. Thank you.
Finally, it goes without saying I have literary debts—but I’ll say them anyway, with gratitude. To make some of the tales feel like modern fanfiction, to approximate how Chaucer borrowed freely from classical and medieval writers, I wove medieval texts with modern characters and settings from E. B. White, C. S. Lewis, Terry Pratchett (the “justice/just us” pun and other such goodies come straight from him), Stephenie Meyer, and J. K. Rowling. There are other smaller references throughout, Neil Gaiman, John Milton, J. R. R. Tolkien, Rainbow Rowell, and Laini Taylor among them. Thank you, all, for hooking kids (like me) onto reading. I must have read ages ago that bit about the spice jars finally being labeled correctly, but I never could hunt down the attribution. Writers like the ones I named fill our minds with characters and places and tales and spice jars, and it was fun bringing bits of these other worlds to a modern Chaucerian playground. I felt like less of a Muggle than usual, touching that magic however briefly. And of course, the greatest debt of all goes to Chaucer himself. How can I put my feelings and awe into words? I guess I already tried, because this novel pays homage to his incredible yet down-to-earth genius. Six hundred years later, we still crack up from his jokes, and we don’t need footnotes to know they’re funny. That’s immortality right there. As long as people still love stories and laughter, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales will live on.
KIM ZARINS has a PhD in English from Cornell University and teaches medieval literature at Sacramento State University. She lives in Davis, California, with her husband and son. Sometimes We Tell the Truth is her first novel.
Simon Pulse
SIMON & SCHUSTER, NEW YORK
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authors.simonandschuster.com/Kim-Zarins
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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First Simon Pulse hardcover edition September 2016
Text copyright © 2016 by Kim Zarins
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Jacket designed by Karina Granda
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ISBN 978-1-4814-6499-4 (hc)
ISBN 978-1-4814-6501-4 (eBook)
