Thursday, April 13, 2017
A Minute Meditation
The storyteller is the one who tells the story. To say this is to say that the storyteller is preeminently entitled to tell the story. He is original and creative. He creates the storytelling experience and himself and his audience in the process. He exists in the person of the storyteller for the sake of telling the story. When he is otherwise occupied, he is someone other than the storyteller. His telling of the story is a unique performance. The storyteller creates himself in the sense that the mask he wears for the sake of telling the story is of his own making, and it is never the same. He creates his listener in the sense that he determines the listener's existence within, and in relation to, the story, and it is never the same. The storyteller says in effect: "On this occasion I am, for I imagine that I am; and on this occasion you are, for I imagine that you are. And this imagining is the burden of the story, and indeed it is the story."
-- N. Scott Momaday --
from The Man Made of Words
N. Scott Momaday obviously possesses a different philosophy regarding storytelling than do many of his contemporaries. Some commentaries I had read a short time ago imply that there is no such thing as a good book or a bad book, that there is no such thing as a good storyteller or a bad storyteller, that there are only good readers and bad readers.
Sheer unadulterated twaddle.
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depends on perspective, i think... M seems to be toying with universality, a pov which regards the universe from the point of Indra's Net(see Wiki), that includes all constructs, personalities, events, as equivalent phenomena, as "alive" as it were, so that there's no difference between comets, people, space, dark matter, trees, or any other form: just a clumpy spread of fundamental particles...
ReplyDeleteFred, i know you don't go along with stuff like this, but ideas are an expression of pov, and there's an infinite number of them... ideas, i mean... and pov's, also, come to think of it...
Mudpuddle,
DeleteI definitely agree that there are a very large number of POVs and ideas (not sure about infinite though), and I'm grateful for that. Just think how boring it would be without that immense number of ideas and POVs.
At the quantum level or particle level, whichever, I guess all is pretty much "a clumpy spread of fundamental particles...". Fortunately I don't live at that level, so I see a vast difference between you and Donald Trump. If I thought you were the same at DT, I wouldn't be communicating with you. But, as luck would have it, there is a vast difference between DT and others.
You really aren't the same at DT, are you?
HAHAHAHAH (they'll never catch me!!!)
DeleteMudpuddle,
DeleteJust what I thought.
There are undoubtedly readers who distinguish Harlequin Romances from Pride and Prejudice only by preferring the former. But I doubt that they are the the ones who argue that there are no good books or bad books: my impression is that they don't argue much. Those who do argue that could be put on a steady diet of bad books, and there are such to pain all tastes. After a few weeks, they might reconsider.
ReplyDeleteAs for Scott Momaday, he sounds a bit like Heraclitus on rivers: you never step into the same story twice. But "To say this is to say that the storyteller is preeminently entitled to tell the story."? Yes and no: think about all the memoirists called out for making things up, think about the various writers of fiction called out for "cultural appropriation". I should say that the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
George,
DeleteI think that Momaday is arguing that storytellers are entitled to tell the story, just as we are entitled to choose to listen or to ignore, just as some readers ignore Pride and Prejudice while others (me, for example) ignore he Harlequin Romances.
Tim,
ReplyDeleteAre children sublime storytellers? It seems to me that my parents regularly--I thought ruthlessly--edited my storytelling at the dinner table; and that if I can now tell a story without the audience losing track or interest it is mostly because of that stern treatment. Children are good at listening to stories, though, and very willing to tell them.
Tim,
ReplyDeleteI don't know about "sublime." but they definitely are storytellers. I see adult storytellers as those who never got out of the habit of telling stores, and the better storytellers are those who defined their techniques along the way.