"A storyteller is like someone who gives you money in the hope you'll buy with it roughly what he'd want you to."
On Aug 13, 2012, at 7:03 PM, William Conger wrote: > This complexity issue urges me to mention again the new book by Jonathan > Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal. There's much in this book that relates to > our current and past conversations about neurology and mirror neurons, > psychoanalysis, and social science. Gottschall relates all these topics to > storytelling. I'll just mention his idea about description: He says that we > will fill in context when given a bit of description. When authors over > describe they effectively turn off the reader because what readers want to do, > and are set up to do evolutionarily, is to imagine, to create a story. I've > certainly tried to express the same idea (and I know it's not a new idea) when I > say that we are compelled to invent a narrative, or story, for any experience, > including visual experience of seemingly random or irrational or 'meaningless' > images. Gottschall mentions an experiment where people are given utterly > random, made up, nonsense sentences arranged in paragraph form. They will > invent a story with these sentences. When I make a 'meaningless' abstract > painting, I insist that viewers will create interpretations, stories, about it. > I, too, do the same when I make the painting. My title suggests, purposely > very vaguely, the story that came to me. I think the viewer will -- with > sincere looking -- eventually create a story that converges with my own. we > create similar meanings or narratives. I think the same thing occurs in > fiction. The author needs to be careful not to over-describe or insist on a > particular narrative. again, the engagement we love with stories is to how it > enlivens our own imagination within the context provided by the author. > wc > > > ----- Original Message ---- > From: Tom McCormack <[email protected]> > To: [email protected] > Sent: Mon, August 13, 2012 11:26:35 AM > Subject: Re: Complexity > > On Aug 12, 2012, at 7:07 PM, Michael Brady wrote: > >> By contrast, the New Testament parables are the polar opposite, the merest >> sketches of a narrative with barely the sense of character, and thus are > the >> more memorable. Similarly, Athenian tragedies consisted of two or three > actors >> with masks and a chorus of commenators; the plays were more declaimed > stories >> with homilies than enacted narratives. > > The "characters" in Aesop's fables are comparable. They are for children. > > This is true of all "creative" writing where the thing was written to convey a > lesson. By me, such stories, "peopled" by crudely whittled wooden pawns, are > always unsatisfying. > > Note: though you'll notice occasional productions of plays from centuries ago, > you never see any of the Athenian tragedies. They are3 very hard for the > modern sensibility to tolerate. > > Creative works today -- for film, stage, or print -- are the products of > would-be alchemists employing memory, imagination and sensibility. Memory and > imagination abound, in countless people. The rarest of those three qualities > is sensibility.
