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.