literarydiscussions.myfreeforum.org

Sitaram · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 1079

http://toosmallforsupernova.org/page021.htm

I did promise that I would tell you a story. To be more precise, I
promised to tell you the story of telling all stories.

We begin by telling a story, and then, if it is a good story, it
takes on a life of its own and begins telling us.

The things which humanity creates have a way of taking on a life of
their own and, ultimately, creating us.

I suppose, at first, stories were told by people who had nothing else
to do, time on their hands, and, oh, yes, they could not sleep.
Perhaps they told their stories around a campfire at night when it
was too dangerous to hunt or gather, and when someone had to stay
awake to keep the fire going and defend the group. As time goes by,
which is time's way, the stories become a heritage, and the heritage
becomes a culture which cultured people must study if they are to be
learned.

The best stories are all written by the same person with the curious
name of Anonymous, a distant ancestor of Odysseus' No-Man, whose most
famous descendent is Everyman.

A good story is one which gets told over and over, by many people,
and told from memory. A really good story can be told and retold by
anyone because it tells itself, and the words and language of the
story are not essential to it in any way.

A story is a natural phenomenon and not a human contrivance for the
simple reason that the nature of our conscience is such that it
requires sleep and while it sleeps, requires dreaming. A dream is a
story which we tell ourselves while we don't know that it is our self
telling us a story. A myth is a dream of the sleeping collective
consciousness.

At what point does a story become literature, an epic, a great book
or the Great American Novel? The telling of stories begins as a
pastime, to pass away the time and fill the idleness. Eventually, the
story teller becomes a professional. The pastime becomes a full time
job. A job is work and pressure and can be boring. When we have the
boring job of creating something that is always interesting, well,
that is quite a job to have indeed, and quite a responsibility. The
story teller becomes the writer, the author, the celebrity. A blank
page can be a cruel boss.

Stories start out as something motiveless, without purpose, but
gradually take on some purpose. Nowadays an important purpose is
money and fame, but there were other purposes before that stage was
ever reached.

The word "history" has the word "story" in it. Herodotus was
certainly a teller of stories in addition to being an historian of
the Persian wars. There are so many different kinds of stories; war
stories, creation stories, love stories, ghost stories, teaching
stories and others.

What is the story of all stories? What is the song of songs. What is
the Universe of all universes, if not the Metaverse? Our
word "metaphysics" came simply from the fact that what Aristotle
discusses in a certain book is a book which editors traditionally
placed after the Physics. The word "physics" comes from the Greek
word "phusis" or nature, and "meta" simply means after, or beyond.

Historians of literature tell us that the first novel was written
around 1000 C.E. by the Japanese Lady Murasaki and is entitled "Tales
of Genji." I was shocked to learn that Edgar Allen Poe was the first
to invent the genre of the mystery story with "The Cask of
Amantillado." Poe is such a recent author.

We need an excuse to tell a story. Children are excellent excuses for
they are always begging, "Tell me a story." We need a child to ask us
the perennial question "Why is this night different from all others?"
A pilgrimage or journey is a period of enforced idleness which gives
fellow travelers an excuse to regale one another with stories, but
Chaucer has already snatched up that gimmick. "A Thousand and One
Nights" is a story telling which prolongs life. We are all under a
death sentence and the pressure of a blank page, between the
proverbial rock and a hard place. Well, and what do you have to say
for yourself? Even final judgment days are a narrative process. Is a
trial is a story? You be the judge.

Each person's life is a story, and a good story of a life becomes a
biography or an autobiography. A biography is often an autobiography
written posthumously.

Telling a story is a form of seduction. The spider must arouse a
fly's curiosity. Sometimes, writing is erotic, and other times,
writing is autoerotic, when we fall in love with the sound of our own
voice.

Get your own free IRC Chat room