Sunday, December 26, 2010
Story Euphoria 11: A Christmas Carol, Staves 4&5
Happy Holidays from Story Euphoria! We've reached the end of A Christmas Carol. Download and listen to the rousing conclusion!
Production Notes:
Creator: Amanda Haldy
Theme Music: Nye Nate by Roger Leighton
Incidental Music: Magical Mystery by Forsonmeyer
In Somber Dreams We Dwell, pt 2, by Ken Smalts
and Amazing Grace arranged and performed by John Chamley
The Transformation Imperative
This week, the Story Euphoria podcast reaches the end of a four-episode celebration of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, witnessing one of the most famous and profound character transformations in popular culture: the hard-bitten and selfish Scrooge reclaims a child-like sense of joy and wonder. Because this transformation is “the point” of the story, the novella could be considered a transformation story.
Of course, the argument can be made that all stories are transformation stories. Students of the literary arts are often told that the characters in their stories must change in the course of the telling. Dynamic characters, we are informed, are much more desirable than static ones. Perhaps minor characters can be static, but hero protagonists must change for a story to be successful.
But is this really true?
Let’s imagine a story where the central character doesn’t change: Frank is unhappily married at the beginning of the story and sees himself as the victim of all the forces in his life—his wife, his job, his ungrateful children. During the course of the novel, his wife leaves him, his son evades a narcotics arrest by burning the garage down, he looses his daughter to an aggressive cancer, he wins a trip to Tahiti but also loses his job. However, at the end of all this, Frank’s outlook is the same. He still sees himself as the victim of these events and is passively dragged through them by his dedicated author.
Reading this, we might be frustrated by Frank and give up on reading his story—that is the risk his author runs. However, can we really say, despite the pains the author has taken to make it so, that Frank is completely unchanged? Maybe the first line of the book is Frank coming back from work, saying, “I’m home.” At the end of the book, he gets back from Tahiti, suntanned, parking his car out in the snow because the garage is yet to be replaced. When he walks in and says, “I’m home,” to the empty house, the very context of all that has happened has completely changed the impact of the words. Frank may be stubbornly entrenched in his self-pity, but he is in a different place at the end of the story than he was at the beginning, and this embodies his own transformation on a subtle level, if not on the grandiose level of Scrooge. We, the readers, can’t help but read him differently than we did at the beginning, no matter how hard the author tries to keep him the same. So, Frank has changed.
My example of Frank may be poor, so let’s look at an example from the literary cannon. Critics have suggested that the heroine of the epic Gone with the Wind is a static character, and that Melanie, as a very dynamic character, is the true heroine. But the book is not written with Melanie as the centerpiece, the vortex around which the other characters and events revolve. From beginning to end, we are emphatically concerned with Scarlet and her point of view. Yet the critics do have a point: after all she goes through—ravaged by the austerities of the Civil War, widowed, punished by the death of her child, et cetera—up to the last page of the book she is still using her same old wiles to snare her man.
Yet, enough has changed in her life and the lives of the other characters that, despite her resilience of spirit (which indeed, is a prominent theme of the story), Scarlet is in a different place. The focus of her affection has, perhaps sincerely, changed from Ashley Wilkes to Rhett Butler. Rhett famously refuses her, and by virtue of leaving the story at this juncture it is easy for the reader to imagine that Scarlet’s infatuation for him is not only sincere now, but is going to grow more tenacious, as it did for the unobtainable Ashley. And if her feelings have changed, then Scarlet herself has surely changed, even if she is also the “same old” Scarlet.
In short, the events of the book have made it impossible for her not to change. All supports her old character relied upon, other than Rhett, are dead or in other ways removed from her, and Rhett himself abandons her on the last few pages. With a change as big as this in all things against which she could be identified, the old Scarlet can no longer exist. It may have taken over 1,000 pages of narrative to do it, but she has no hope at the end but to change, and that change is the tragic taste the last page leaves in the back of the mouth.
To expand the Scarlet Principle to stories at large, just consider what is necessary for a story to be a story. It’s like the old newspaperman’s adage: “Dog Bites Man” is not a story, but “Man Bites Dog” is. A story happens whenever something out of the ordinary happens, something that only happens once in the lives of the characters who figure within it. Anything else is just a character sketch or a situation from which there is no outcome. In other words, the very nature of a story mandates that the principle characters journey through events remarkable enough to trouble an author to write about them. Characters cannot go through such events without being at a different place, physically or emotionally, than they were at the beginning. Being in a different place is just another way of saying that the characters have transformed.
So rather than asking if characters must change for a story to be successful, perhaps it is more useful to ask whether the story takes its characters from one place to another—that is, if anything happens in the story. Likewise, if the characters in a story do honestly feel static throughout (really static, not like Frank or Scarlet), then it is a sign that the story hasn’t become a story yet. Once it blossoms, there is no choice for characters but to change, as surely as the tide is pulled by the moon, for change is the by-product of story.
Of course, the argument can be made that all stories are transformation stories. Students of the literary arts are often told that the characters in their stories must change in the course of the telling. Dynamic characters, we are informed, are much more desirable than static ones. Perhaps minor characters can be static, but hero protagonists must change for a story to be successful.
But is this really true?
Let’s imagine a story where the central character doesn’t change: Frank is unhappily married at the beginning of the story and sees himself as the victim of all the forces in his life—his wife, his job, his ungrateful children. During the course of the novel, his wife leaves him, his son evades a narcotics arrest by burning the garage down, he looses his daughter to an aggressive cancer, he wins a trip to Tahiti but also loses his job. However, at the end of all this, Frank’s outlook is the same. He still sees himself as the victim of these events and is passively dragged through them by his dedicated author.
Reading this, we might be frustrated by Frank and give up on reading his story—that is the risk his author runs. However, can we really say, despite the pains the author has taken to make it so, that Frank is completely unchanged? Maybe the first line of the book is Frank coming back from work, saying, “I’m home.” At the end of the book, he gets back from Tahiti, suntanned, parking his car out in the snow because the garage is yet to be replaced. When he walks in and says, “I’m home,” to the empty house, the very context of all that has happened has completely changed the impact of the words. Frank may be stubbornly entrenched in his self-pity, but he is in a different place at the end of the story than he was at the beginning, and this embodies his own transformation on a subtle level, if not on the grandiose level of Scrooge. We, the readers, can’t help but read him differently than we did at the beginning, no matter how hard the author tries to keep him the same. So, Frank has changed.
My example of Frank may be poor, so let’s look at an example from the literary cannon. Critics have suggested that the heroine of the epic Gone with the Wind is a static character, and that Melanie, as a very dynamic character, is the true heroine. But the book is not written with Melanie as the centerpiece, the vortex around which the other characters and events revolve. From beginning to end, we are emphatically concerned with Scarlet and her point of view. Yet the critics do have a point: after all she goes through—ravaged by the austerities of the Civil War, widowed, punished by the death of her child, et cetera—up to the last page of the book she is still using her same old wiles to snare her man.
Yet, enough has changed in her life and the lives of the other characters that, despite her resilience of spirit (which indeed, is a prominent theme of the story), Scarlet is in a different place. The focus of her affection has, perhaps sincerely, changed from Ashley Wilkes to Rhett Butler. Rhett famously refuses her, and by virtue of leaving the story at this juncture it is easy for the reader to imagine that Scarlet’s infatuation for him is not only sincere now, but is going to grow more tenacious, as it did for the unobtainable Ashley. And if her feelings have changed, then Scarlet herself has surely changed, even if she is also the “same old” Scarlet.
In short, the events of the book have made it impossible for her not to change. All supports her old character relied upon, other than Rhett, are dead or in other ways removed from her, and Rhett himself abandons her on the last few pages. With a change as big as this in all things against which she could be identified, the old Scarlet can no longer exist. It may have taken over 1,000 pages of narrative to do it, but she has no hope at the end but to change, and that change is the tragic taste the last page leaves in the back of the mouth.
To expand the Scarlet Principle to stories at large, just consider what is necessary for a story to be a story. It’s like the old newspaperman’s adage: “Dog Bites Man” is not a story, but “Man Bites Dog” is. A story happens whenever something out of the ordinary happens, something that only happens once in the lives of the characters who figure within it. Anything else is just a character sketch or a situation from which there is no outcome. In other words, the very nature of a story mandates that the principle characters journey through events remarkable enough to trouble an author to write about them. Characters cannot go through such events without being at a different place, physically or emotionally, than they were at the beginning. Being in a different place is just another way of saying that the characters have transformed.
So rather than asking if characters must change for a story to be successful, perhaps it is more useful to ask whether the story takes its characters from one place to another—that is, if anything happens in the story. Likewise, if the characters in a story do honestly feel static throughout (really static, not like Frank or Scarlet), then it is a sign that the story hasn’t become a story yet. Once it blossoms, there is no choice for characters but to change, as surely as the tide is pulled by the moon, for change is the by-product of story.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Story Euphoria 10: A Christmas Carol, Stave 3
Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol continues with Stave 3, The Second of the Three Spirits. Download and listen!
If you missed the first two episodes of this series, check out the previous December podcasts.
Production Notes:
Creator: Amanda Haldy
Theme Music: Nye Nate by Roger Leighton
Incidental Music: Magical Mystery by Forsonmeyer
and a medley on O Come All Ye Faithful, by Larkin Productions
Christmas Spirits
Most of the stories this time of year have something to do with Santa Claus or dysfunctional families finding the Christmas spirit despite their many mishaps, et cetera. Yet there is another kind of spirit that used to haunt the fireside this time of year—the more sepulchral sort that nowadays we more commonly associate with Halloween. But in the 19th century, ghost stories were a staple of Christmas Eve gatherings. Little wonder then, that Charles Dickens made a tradition of writing short stories with ghostly themes around the 25th of December.
Perhaps this was merely the consequence of gathering family and friends together on a cold and long winter’s night—what better way to pass the time? People told stories a lot more in those days, rather than letting the television do it for them. Furthermore, Victorians had an appetite for ghost stories, which littered all sorts of publications from magazines to monographs, and no doubt the shelves filled with annual collections when the end of the year rolled around. Moreover, telling scary stories around a fire fit well with other activities and games of the season that likewise have nothing in particular to do with Christmas—charades, cards, and blind man’s bluff—which are simply party entertainments. One version of the ghost story game followed the rule that a new bundle of sticks would be thrown on the fire at the beginning of each person’s story and the tale had to last as long as it took the sticks to burn.
The popularity of Christmas Eve ghost stories is well documented, with Dickens’ stories standing out as the most well-known. Jerome K. Jerome once wrote, “whenever five or six English-speaking people meet around a fire on Christmas Eve, they start telling each other ghost stories.” Also, Henry James’ unnerving ghost story, The Turn of the Screw begins with a frame where friends are trading spooky stories around a fireplace on Christmas Eve. Echoes of this quirky tradition can still be seen today, such as in Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, or as referenced in the lyrics from the 1963 Andy Williams song, It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year: “There'll be parties for hosting, marshmallows for toasting and caroling out in the snow. There'll be scary ghost stories and tales of the glories of Christmases long, long ago.”
It would be a shame to let the tradition vanish. We don’t tell stories nearly often enough as it is. Next time you are at a party on a long dark night, frost encrusting the window panes, saturated with fatty foods and punch, gather round in a circle and give it a shot. You might just be able to conjure the spirit of storytelling back to life.
Perhaps this was merely the consequence of gathering family and friends together on a cold and long winter’s night—what better way to pass the time? People told stories a lot more in those days, rather than letting the television do it for them. Furthermore, Victorians had an appetite for ghost stories, which littered all sorts of publications from magazines to monographs, and no doubt the shelves filled with annual collections when the end of the year rolled around. Moreover, telling scary stories around a fire fit well with other activities and games of the season that likewise have nothing in particular to do with Christmas—charades, cards, and blind man’s bluff—which are simply party entertainments. One version of the ghost story game followed the rule that a new bundle of sticks would be thrown on the fire at the beginning of each person’s story and the tale had to last as long as it took the sticks to burn.
The popularity of Christmas Eve ghost stories is well documented, with Dickens’ stories standing out as the most well-known. Jerome K. Jerome once wrote, “whenever five or six English-speaking people meet around a fire on Christmas Eve, they start telling each other ghost stories.” Also, Henry James’ unnerving ghost story, The Turn of the Screw begins with a frame where friends are trading spooky stories around a fireplace on Christmas Eve. Echoes of this quirky tradition can still be seen today, such as in Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, or as referenced in the lyrics from the 1963 Andy Williams song, It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year: “There'll be parties for hosting, marshmallows for toasting and caroling out in the snow. There'll be scary ghost stories and tales of the glories of Christmases long, long ago.”
It would be a shame to let the tradition vanish. We don’t tell stories nearly often enough as it is. Next time you are at a party on a long dark night, frost encrusting the window panes, saturated with fatty foods and punch, gather round in a circle and give it a shot. You might just be able to conjure the spirit of storytelling back to life.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Story Euphoria 9: A Christmas Carol, Stave 2
Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol continues with Stave 2, The First of the Three Spirits. Download and listen!
Production Notes:
Creator: Amanda Haldy
Theme Music: Nye Nate by Roger Leighton
Incidental Music: Magical Mystery by Forsonmeyer
and Jingle Banjos, by G.H. Wikfors
Author Spotlight: Charles Dickens
Biographies of Dickens abound, and one short blog entry cannot hope to cover all the facets of any man’s life, yet, in tandem with Story Euphoria’s four-week celebration of A Christmas Carol, it’s worthwhile to take another look at the life events that shaped his writing.
Innovations in paper-making and the publishing industry that accompanied the Industrial Revolution allowed a popular author like Charles Dickens to reach a larger audience than any writer before his time, both in England and abroad. It was estimated that one in ten literate adults in Great Britain read Dickens, and that these readers frequently read his works aloud to many others. He was beloved in his own time for much the same thing he is admired for today—a talent for crafting memorable characters, often using natural speech and slang from across all levels of society. Because of these large and diverse casts, Dickens’ stories did indeed appeal to privileged and poor readers alike, no doubt helped along by larger-than-life plots that, while often displaying dark sides, frequently incorporated fairy tale turns of fate, as in the story of Oliver Twist, the orphan who goes from rags to riches, or in the frequent number of happy love matches that protagonists find by the end of the novel. In the 19th century as today, people loved happy endings, and Victorian taste was such that Dickens did not have to worry about coming across as “too sentimental.”
That is not to say Dickens’ tales are all roses and sunshine. Far from it. If protagonists find happiness by the end of the story, it is only after experiencing many trials. Themes of abandonment and betrayal are rampant, frequently embodied as ill-treated children, such as Oliver, David Copperfield, and poor Little Nell, one character who does not survive her story, The Old Curiosity Shop, or meet with any happy end. Dickens himself claimed this was due to the fact that, when he was twelve years old, his father’s financial mismanagement landed the elder Dickens in debtor’s prison. The entire family went to live there with him with the exception of Charles, who was sent to work at a shoe-blacking factory. The jarring transition from his middle-class and genteel upbringing to work as a factory boy was traumatizing to Dickens, and he never could forgive his mother who, even after the family managed to get free of the debt collectors, wished to see Charles remain at the factory. His father spared him the fate, instead sending him to attend a day school. Surely this pivotal crossroads haunted Dickens, for he narrowly escaped an uneducated and mean existence from which he almost certainly couldn’t have emerged as an author.
Whatever the case, it’s clear that this episode became a source of creativity for Dickens, providing an unending supply of material for plots and his colorful characters. This is seen prevalently in David Copperfield, a semi-autobiographical novel, in which the title protagonist goes through experiences that echo young Dickens’ own life. Also, one of the more memorable characters (and an incorrigible mismanager of money), Mr. Micawber, is a caricature of Dickens’ father. Likewise, Dickens drew on these early years when writing Little Dorrit, which begins with the principal family of the story living in debtor’s prison. And it is surely no coincidence that those family members constantly hound and take advantage of the title protagonist, much as Dickens’ own family badgered him for money after he became a successful author.
These characters (often caricatures, exaggerating qualities Dickens observed in those around him) might easily be criticized by the modern literary scholar as “flat.” In fact, Dickens’ minor characters are notoriously affixed throughout the entire course of his novels with repetitive tag lines and characteristics that never change—that’s how we know them. The effect is comical, and students of writing today would be leery to allow simplistic characters to inhabit their stories for the sole purpose of comic relief. Every character should add meaning to the story, should be real and “round,” even minor ones. Writers should know intimately every character who appears, even if they share but one line of dialogue. Caricatures, after all, are predictable and therefore not interesting, not alive.
So why do Dickens’ most boiled down caricatures still manage to resonate, to vibrate with something more? Take, for example, Mrs. Micawber who, in David Copperfield, seems to appear only for the purpose of delivering the laugh line, “I never will desert Mr. Micawber.” This is what she says from beginning to end, and indeed, she never does desert him.
The point, perhaps, is that characters can be flat but still be true and embody something vital about human nature. While many of Dickens characters may be considered “flat” by modern standards, his magic touch lies in his careful choice of what he caricatures. While Mrs. Micawber remains static and predictable throughout the narrative, her character still achieves a funny sort of complexity simply because her catch phrase reveals something about the human condition, and about who she really is: a housewife devoted to publicly maintaining a noble-sounding but deluded standard. This doesn’t make her a “round” character, but it does make her an interesting one.
In short, any student of literature interested in the possibilities of characterization would do well to read Dickens. A commentary on Dickens work, in an 1858 publication of Blackwoods’ Edinburgh Magazine, put it this way: "we are engrossed with a few favorite personages, and are delighted when they appear, look with eagerness for their return, and when the book is closed, we have some vague impression that we may possibly catch sight of them somewhere about the world.”
Innovations in paper-making and the publishing industry that accompanied the Industrial Revolution allowed a popular author like Charles Dickens to reach a larger audience than any writer before his time, both in England and abroad. It was estimated that one in ten literate adults in Great Britain read Dickens, and that these readers frequently read his works aloud to many others. He was beloved in his own time for much the same thing he is admired for today—a talent for crafting memorable characters, often using natural speech and slang from across all levels of society. Because of these large and diverse casts, Dickens’ stories did indeed appeal to privileged and poor readers alike, no doubt helped along by larger-than-life plots that, while often displaying dark sides, frequently incorporated fairy tale turns of fate, as in the story of Oliver Twist, the orphan who goes from rags to riches, or in the frequent number of happy love matches that protagonists find by the end of the novel. In the 19th century as today, people loved happy endings, and Victorian taste was such that Dickens did not have to worry about coming across as “too sentimental.”
That is not to say Dickens’ tales are all roses and sunshine. Far from it. If protagonists find happiness by the end of the story, it is only after experiencing many trials. Themes of abandonment and betrayal are rampant, frequently embodied as ill-treated children, such as Oliver, David Copperfield, and poor Little Nell, one character who does not survive her story, The Old Curiosity Shop, or meet with any happy end. Dickens himself claimed this was due to the fact that, when he was twelve years old, his father’s financial mismanagement landed the elder Dickens in debtor’s prison. The entire family went to live there with him with the exception of Charles, who was sent to work at a shoe-blacking factory. The jarring transition from his middle-class and genteel upbringing to work as a factory boy was traumatizing to Dickens, and he never could forgive his mother who, even after the family managed to get free of the debt collectors, wished to see Charles remain at the factory. His father spared him the fate, instead sending him to attend a day school. Surely this pivotal crossroads haunted Dickens, for he narrowly escaped an uneducated and mean existence from which he almost certainly couldn’t have emerged as an author.
Whatever the case, it’s clear that this episode became a source of creativity for Dickens, providing an unending supply of material for plots and his colorful characters. This is seen prevalently in David Copperfield, a semi-autobiographical novel, in which the title protagonist goes through experiences that echo young Dickens’ own life. Also, one of the more memorable characters (and an incorrigible mismanager of money), Mr. Micawber, is a caricature of Dickens’ father. Likewise, Dickens drew on these early years when writing Little Dorrit, which begins with the principal family of the story living in debtor’s prison. And it is surely no coincidence that those family members constantly hound and take advantage of the title protagonist, much as Dickens’ own family badgered him for money after he became a successful author.
These characters (often caricatures, exaggerating qualities Dickens observed in those around him) might easily be criticized by the modern literary scholar as “flat.” In fact, Dickens’ minor characters are notoriously affixed throughout the entire course of his novels with repetitive tag lines and characteristics that never change—that’s how we know them. The effect is comical, and students of writing today would be leery to allow simplistic characters to inhabit their stories for the sole purpose of comic relief. Every character should add meaning to the story, should be real and “round,” even minor ones. Writers should know intimately every character who appears, even if they share but one line of dialogue. Caricatures, after all, are predictable and therefore not interesting, not alive.
So why do Dickens’ most boiled down caricatures still manage to resonate, to vibrate with something more? Take, for example, Mrs. Micawber who, in David Copperfield, seems to appear only for the purpose of delivering the laugh line, “I never will desert Mr. Micawber.” This is what she says from beginning to end, and indeed, she never does desert him.
The point, perhaps, is that characters can be flat but still be true and embody something vital about human nature. While many of Dickens characters may be considered “flat” by modern standards, his magic touch lies in his careful choice of what he caricatures. While Mrs. Micawber remains static and predictable throughout the narrative, her character still achieves a funny sort of complexity simply because her catch phrase reveals something about the human condition, and about who she really is: a housewife devoted to publicly maintaining a noble-sounding but deluded standard. This doesn’t make her a “round” character, but it does make her an interesting one.
In short, any student of literature interested in the possibilities of characterization would do well to read Dickens. A commentary on Dickens work, in an 1858 publication of Blackwoods’ Edinburgh Magazine, put it this way: "we are engrossed with a few favorite personages, and are delighted when they appear, look with eagerness for their return, and when the book is closed, we have some vague impression that we may possibly catch sight of them somewhere about the world.”
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Story Euphoria 8: A Christmas Carol, Stave 1
It's not much of an exaggeration to say "everyone" knows this story. We are surrounded by various adaptations where Muppets or modern misers in Brooklyn step in to fill familiar roles, yet when was the last time (if ever) you read Dickens' original? Our December-long journey through Dickens' timeless tale starts here. Download and listen!
If you want to follow along this month with a text of your own, you can get a digital copy for free from Project Gutenberg, or check your local library. You might also consider making a gift of it this season (maybe to yourself):
Production Notes:
Creator: Amanda Haldy
Theme Music: Nye Nate by Roger Leighton
Incidental Music: Magical Mystery by Forsonmeyer
and God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen performed by Bob Couchenour
The Makings of a Timeless Classic
In the short story collection, You’ve Got to Read This, John Irving introduces A Christmas Carol by relating a story from a time he spent living with a circus in northwest India. One afternoon he was having tea in the ringmaster’s tent when he was surprised by an overheard snatch of English dialogue from a nearby TV. He at once recognized the voice as that of Jacob Marley’s Ghost, crying out against Scrooge’s compliment on his business skills: “Business! Mankind was my business.” He wandered over to the television to find a troupe of child acrobats seated on rugs, glued to the TV. He was surprised by their fascination, as he writes, “If the principal point of A Christmas Carol is that Scrooge reforms—that he learns ‘how to keep Christmas well’—these child acrobats had never kept Christmas at all; moreover, they never would keep it. Also, they spoke and understood little English, yet they knew and loved the tale.”
Mistaking Irving’s bemused curiosity for unfamiliarity with the tale, one child attempted to explain who the characters were and what was happening. Irving tried to convey his own understanding when he replied to her, “A Christmas Carol.” But the words didn’t seem to mean anything. Then the ringmaster, also not a man who kept Christmas, explained to him, “The children’s favorite ghost story.”
Indeed, A Christmas Carol is a ghost story. It is also a Christmas story. It is both and it is more than either of these things, or how else to explain the popularity the tale has achieved globally, with translations extant in every language group and countless adaptations to stage, opera, film and television. Dickens’ novella has been credited with popularizing the expression, “Merry Christmas,” and of course gave us, “Bah! Humbug!” When Thomas Carlyle, a Calvinistic thinker of the times, read A Christmas Carol, he was, rather out-of-character, “seized with a perfect convulsion of hospitality,” according to his wife. Indeed, so wide is the influence of this little ghost story that it has never been out of print since it first appeared in 1843.
How to explain it?
It helped that A Christmas Carol appeared in a perfect storm of conditions. Victorian England was undergoing a rejuvenated interest in old Christmas traditions, as well as introducing new traditions like the Christmas Tree, providing fertile soil for this tale to blossom. Furthermore, Dickens was already a popular writer and had a veritable mob of loyal fans who would insure the work was not overlooked. Yet these factors alone would not be enough to catapult the novella into the status it enjoys today as a Timeless Classic. After all, if it was just about Christmas Irving would not have had that charming experience in the circus tent, and none of Dickens works is nearly so ubiquitous, though equally loved by his fans, past and present.
I think it comes down to the fact that this tale is a warning, as Marley tells us in the very first “stave,” which all humans, regardless of culture or era, cannot help but heed. Scrooge’s adventure shows us clearly and believably that the greatest wealth is derived in equal proportion to our capacity for sympathy and generosity, and the cost of not cultivating these gifts is to die unmourned and unloved. Interestingly, Dickens conveys all of this through use of the prototypical hero’s journey.
Joseph Campbell, philosopher and mythologist, popularized the theory that all myths across time and culture share common elements, and in particular he thought hero myths exemplified this “monomyth” tendency. Campbell summarized the cycle of the hero’s journey in his 1949 book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces
: “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”
The infamous Ebenezer Scrooge—a geriatric and antisocial “old sinner”—may seem like a bizarre choice of hero, but the elements of the hero’s journey play out to the letter! If Campbell is correct that all cultures have such stories, then it is no wonder the Hindu children in the circus tent loved the tale as much as Christian children in the West. Like all of the greatest stories, A Christmas Carol speaks to the most basic human fears and desires, and furthermore, it offers hope that even the nastiest members of our species can change.
Mistaking Irving’s bemused curiosity for unfamiliarity with the tale, one child attempted to explain who the characters were and what was happening. Irving tried to convey his own understanding when he replied to her, “A Christmas Carol.” But the words didn’t seem to mean anything. Then the ringmaster, also not a man who kept Christmas, explained to him, “The children’s favorite ghost story.”
Indeed, A Christmas Carol is a ghost story. It is also a Christmas story. It is both and it is more than either of these things, or how else to explain the popularity the tale has achieved globally, with translations extant in every language group and countless adaptations to stage, opera, film and television. Dickens’ novella has been credited with popularizing the expression, “Merry Christmas,” and of course gave us, “Bah! Humbug!” When Thomas Carlyle, a Calvinistic thinker of the times, read A Christmas Carol, he was, rather out-of-character, “seized with a perfect convulsion of hospitality,” according to his wife. Indeed, so wide is the influence of this little ghost story that it has never been out of print since it first appeared in 1843.
How to explain it?
It helped that A Christmas Carol appeared in a perfect storm of conditions. Victorian England was undergoing a rejuvenated interest in old Christmas traditions, as well as introducing new traditions like the Christmas Tree, providing fertile soil for this tale to blossom. Furthermore, Dickens was already a popular writer and had a veritable mob of loyal fans who would insure the work was not overlooked. Yet these factors alone would not be enough to catapult the novella into the status it enjoys today as a Timeless Classic. After all, if it was just about Christmas Irving would not have had that charming experience in the circus tent, and none of Dickens works is nearly so ubiquitous, though equally loved by his fans, past and present.
I think it comes down to the fact that this tale is a warning, as Marley tells us in the very first “stave,” which all humans, regardless of culture or era, cannot help but heed. Scrooge’s adventure shows us clearly and believably that the greatest wealth is derived in equal proportion to our capacity for sympathy and generosity, and the cost of not cultivating these gifts is to die unmourned and unloved. Interestingly, Dickens conveys all of this through use of the prototypical hero’s journey.
Joseph Campbell, philosopher and mythologist, popularized the theory that all myths across time and culture share common elements, and in particular he thought hero myths exemplified this “monomyth” tendency. Campbell summarized the cycle of the hero’s journey in his 1949 book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces
: “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.” The infamous Ebenezer Scrooge—a geriatric and antisocial “old sinner”—may seem like a bizarre choice of hero, but the elements of the hero’s journey play out to the letter! If Campbell is correct that all cultures have such stories, then it is no wonder the Hindu children in the circus tent loved the tale as much as Christian children in the West. Like all of the greatest stories, A Christmas Carol speaks to the most basic human fears and desires, and furthermore, it offers hope that even the nastiest members of our species can change.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Story Euphoria 7: Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen
It’s Thanksgiving weekend, and O. Henry lampoons Tradition and treats us to no less than two feasts, both of which must be, heroically, eaten by one man. Download and listen!
In case you are wondering about the Turkey Trust mentioned in the first paragraph, you can check out this New York Times article for a point of reference.
To read from The Trimmed Lamp, and other Stories of the Four Million for free, visit Project Gutenberg, or else borrow an O. Henry collection from your local library. Of course, you can always dress out your home library with a copy of your own:
Production Notes:
Creator: Amanda Haldy
Theme Music: Nye Nate by Roger Leighton
Incidental Music: Rag by David Alberto
The Perils of a Twist Ending
To be honest, I’m not a fan of twist endings. There are just too many things that can go wrong, like maybe it will be obvious from a mile away, or it’s the same cliché twist found in a hundred other stories, or it just doesn’t add anything to the story and is therefore anti-climactic. Those problems can potentially be avoided if the twist is inspired and clever, but even then there is a big risk: the story itself relies upon the sudden revelation at the end to inform all of the events that have come before, so the only pay off of reading the story is the twist and re-readability is zilch. In short, a good twist ending is hard to pull off and probably not worth it, so I doubt I would ever attempt one myself.
Twist endings and related varieties of dramatic ends were quite a bit more popular in the 19th and early 20th centuries. For example, it was more common to have your protagonist suddenly die or kill themselves in the last few paragraphs, perhaps because of a greater sense that ends really had to be final, whereas contemporary tastes not only find such conclusions melodramatic but are more apt to find satisfaction in stories that continue past the last pages of the manuscript, inviting our imaginations to linger upon them. Twist endings tend to feel as worn-out as last-page-protagonist-suicides, and I am hard-pressed to think of any authors who use them today—though there are probably a few out there.
However, there is a distinguished modern literary award that bears the name of perhaps the greatest twist-ending writer of them all: O. Henry. Because O. Henry incorporated a twist in the ending of basically every story he wrote, one almost wonders if some of the supposed unpredictability of the twist is compromised. Yet, while many people love O. Henry for just this very reason, I think what really makes him worth reading is his use of humor. Fortunately, there is more to his writing than the twist endings, which tend to work rather like the punch lines of jokes, and the characters he brings to life have an unpolished honesty and intimacy evocative of another American Everyman, Mark Twain.
What a fitting choice for America’s Thanksgiving weekend podcast story, when something as down-home and friendly O. Henry makes a proper addition to the comfort food on our tables. Of course, this story also comes with a patented twist ending. Do you think the ending works and adds to the story? Do you love twist endings and think I got it all wrong, or do you agree that such flourishes of the pen are all too fraught with peril?
Twist endings and related varieties of dramatic ends were quite a bit more popular in the 19th and early 20th centuries. For example, it was more common to have your protagonist suddenly die or kill themselves in the last few paragraphs, perhaps because of a greater sense that ends really had to be final, whereas contemporary tastes not only find such conclusions melodramatic but are more apt to find satisfaction in stories that continue past the last pages of the manuscript, inviting our imaginations to linger upon them. Twist endings tend to feel as worn-out as last-page-protagonist-suicides, and I am hard-pressed to think of any authors who use them today—though there are probably a few out there.
However, there is a distinguished modern literary award that bears the name of perhaps the greatest twist-ending writer of them all: O. Henry. Because O. Henry incorporated a twist in the ending of basically every story he wrote, one almost wonders if some of the supposed unpredictability of the twist is compromised. Yet, while many people love O. Henry for just this very reason, I think what really makes him worth reading is his use of humor. Fortunately, there is more to his writing than the twist endings, which tend to work rather like the punch lines of jokes, and the characters he brings to life have an unpolished honesty and intimacy evocative of another American Everyman, Mark Twain.
What a fitting choice for America’s Thanksgiving weekend podcast story, when something as down-home and friendly O. Henry makes a proper addition to the comfort food on our tables. Of course, this story also comes with a patented twist ending. Do you think the ending works and adds to the story? Do you love twist endings and think I got it all wrong, or do you agree that such flourishes of the pen are all too fraught with peril?
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Story Euphoria 6: Longhouse Stories
It’s American Indian Heritage Month, and seeing as how these nations have a rich oral tradition, Story Euphoria brings traditional storytelling to the forefront. Learn how Chipmunk got his stripes, why Rabbit has long ears and how Owl got such big eyes. Download and listen!
If you want more, check out this free online library of American Indian stories and legends.
Production Notes:
Creator: Amanda Haldy
Theme Music: Nye Nate by Roger Leighton
Incidental Music: Flight of the Arrows by Kathy Reynolds
Oral Origins
The Odyssey, as (presumably) created by Homer was composed primarily in dactyllic hexameter, which was very much the thing at the time. This means the lines of poetry had six beats each, with each measure being a triplet, so the rhythm would have been: BUM-da-da BUM-da-da, BUM-da-da, etc., wash and repeat. This might very well be musical in Greek, but in English the result tends to be awkward at best, or, as one anonymous translation reviewer put it, akin to “pumpkins rolling on a barn floor.”
So, over the years, translations of The Odyssey have taken strange forms, such as putting the tale in rhymed iambic pentameter, as George Chapman did in 1616 (which was very much the thing in his time), and though quite entertaining, it’s not considered very accurate to the original. In 1961, Robert Fitzgerald received wide acclaim for a translation that did away with attempts at rhythmic symmetry, casting Homer’s words into unrhymed poetry with lines of unequal length. Then there are plenty of translations that throw out poetry altogether, weaving the tale as a piece of prose. In fact, more than 24 translations of The Odyssey into English are available on the market. Would Homer recognize any of them as his own work?
This question is not just about what gets lost in translation. The epic ballad had to get written down in Greek before it could even be translated hundreds of years later into a tongue that didn’t even exist in Homer’s time. And in fact, the idea of fixing in print a story intended for oral performance, the presentation of which probably would have been tailored to the audience and the taste of the performer, would very likely seem alien or even ghastly to Homer and his contemporary bards. When the notion of putting information in writing first took root in Greece, with the introduction of the Phoenician alphabet, Socrates argued against it as a meaningless crutch that would seem to give students information without actually giving them knowledge. He believed discourse to be a far superior tool, describing it in dialog with Phaedrus as the “...living word of knowledge which has a soul and of which the written word is properly no more than an image...”
Nowadays we take writing for granted. Our society is surrounded and shaped by text, which is our primary means of storing information. Yet, for the bulk of human history, knowledge and culture were passed on orally through story and song, from teacher to student.
Few societies survive today that maintain an operating oral tradition, but interest in the oral packaging of information is more than a historical or anthropological side-track. A great deal of excitement has appeared over the past couple of decades as social scientists, communications experts and philosophers contemplate the future of the written word, some of whom predict that writing is on the way out to be replaced by oral tradition 2.0—a heady cocktail of sound and image-based hyper-media accessible through the internet, wireless devices and even chips implanted in our brains that allow us to communicate telepathically (yes, this has been done).
At first glance, the way we store and transmit information may not seem to matter, so long as the information is transmitted. However, since Marshall McLuhan first argued that “the medium is the message,” an increasing number of communications theorists and historians, such as Elizabeth Eisenstein and Dene Grigar, have suggested that the way we handle information has more impact on our society and culture than the information itself. This can be explored by studying the impact of writing on society, which Leonard Shlain argues in The Alphabet Versus the Goddess gave rise to patriarchy over mother-goddess traditions by favoring word-signs over image-signs. Another example is the fascinating transformative power of the printing press on everything from national economies to religious reform. If this train of thought interests you, I highly recommend William Sonn’s book on the subject, Paradigms Lost: The Life and Deaths of the Printed Word
.
If we truly are headed to a revival of oral and audio-based information fluency, what might our society be like in the future? Will the written word become an obsolete technology, or will it continue to coexist with the new, being incorporated in unforeseen ways, as most old technologies do? As we contemplate these questions, let’s take another look at the oral tradition of storytelling. This week’s podcast features two American Indian stories told the traditional way—completely from memory. Because human memory is imperfect and limited, there has been a tendency in modern Western culture to look at oral information as inferior to text, which maintains fixity. Yet because of this same quality, I suspect orally-oriented cultures are more comfortable with change and improvisation.
So, if contemplating the death of the written word pierces you with the cold dagger of dread and dystopia, it may be a result of text-based socialization. We are a product of our time and place, and perhaps the stories of the future would seem as bizarre to us as Fitzgerald’s translation of The Odyssey would seem to Homer. Change is inevitable; the real question is whether the change will maximize benefit to civilization, and how much we can do to insure it does. On that note, I also recommend taking a look at the work of Marshall McLuhan:
So, over the years, translations of The Odyssey have taken strange forms, such as putting the tale in rhymed iambic pentameter, as George Chapman did in 1616 (which was very much the thing in his time), and though quite entertaining, it’s not considered very accurate to the original. In 1961, Robert Fitzgerald received wide acclaim for a translation that did away with attempts at rhythmic symmetry, casting Homer’s words into unrhymed poetry with lines of unequal length. Then there are plenty of translations that throw out poetry altogether, weaving the tale as a piece of prose. In fact, more than 24 translations of The Odyssey into English are available on the market. Would Homer recognize any of them as his own work?
This question is not just about what gets lost in translation. The epic ballad had to get written down in Greek before it could even be translated hundreds of years later into a tongue that didn’t even exist in Homer’s time. And in fact, the idea of fixing in print a story intended for oral performance, the presentation of which probably would have been tailored to the audience and the taste of the performer, would very likely seem alien or even ghastly to Homer and his contemporary bards. When the notion of putting information in writing first took root in Greece, with the introduction of the Phoenician alphabet, Socrates argued against it as a meaningless crutch that would seem to give students information without actually giving them knowledge. He believed discourse to be a far superior tool, describing it in dialog with Phaedrus as the “...living word of knowledge which has a soul and of which the written word is properly no more than an image...”
Nowadays we take writing for granted. Our society is surrounded and shaped by text, which is our primary means of storing information. Yet, for the bulk of human history, knowledge and culture were passed on orally through story and song, from teacher to student.
Few societies survive today that maintain an operating oral tradition, but interest in the oral packaging of information is more than a historical or anthropological side-track. A great deal of excitement has appeared over the past couple of decades as social scientists, communications experts and philosophers contemplate the future of the written word, some of whom predict that writing is on the way out to be replaced by oral tradition 2.0—a heady cocktail of sound and image-based hyper-media accessible through the internet, wireless devices and even chips implanted in our brains that allow us to communicate telepathically (yes, this has been done).
At first glance, the way we store and transmit information may not seem to matter, so long as the information is transmitted. However, since Marshall McLuhan first argued that “the medium is the message,” an increasing number of communications theorists and historians, such as Elizabeth Eisenstein and Dene Grigar, have suggested that the way we handle information has more impact on our society and culture than the information itself. This can be explored by studying the impact of writing on society, which Leonard Shlain argues in The Alphabet Versus the Goddess gave rise to patriarchy over mother-goddess traditions by favoring word-signs over image-signs. Another example is the fascinating transformative power of the printing press on everything from national economies to religious reform. If this train of thought interests you, I highly recommend William Sonn’s book on the subject, Paradigms Lost: The Life and Deaths of the Printed Word
. If we truly are headed to a revival of oral and audio-based information fluency, what might our society be like in the future? Will the written word become an obsolete technology, or will it continue to coexist with the new, being incorporated in unforeseen ways, as most old technologies do? As we contemplate these questions, let’s take another look at the oral tradition of storytelling. This week’s podcast features two American Indian stories told the traditional way—completely from memory. Because human memory is imperfect and limited, there has been a tendency in modern Western culture to look at oral information as inferior to text, which maintains fixity. Yet because of this same quality, I suspect orally-oriented cultures are more comfortable with change and improvisation.
So, if contemplating the death of the written word pierces you with the cold dagger of dread and dystopia, it may be a result of text-based socialization. We are a product of our time and place, and perhaps the stories of the future would seem as bizarre to us as Fitzgerald’s translation of The Odyssey would seem to Homer. Change is inevitable; the real question is whether the change will maximize benefit to civilization, and how much we can do to insure it does. On that note, I also recommend taking a look at the work of Marshall McLuhan:
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Story Euphoria 5: Rothschild's Fiddle
This week’s podcast features a man who is hardly the sort you’re likely to invite over for tea. Yakov is a coffin maker whose existence is perpetuated—as well as tortured—by the losses he sees all around him. Anton Chekhov was a master at capturing the harsh and ironic voices of the Russian peasantry, and this is certainly the case in Rothschild’s Fiddle. Download and listen!
If you would like to read the same text I used, check it out at Project Gutenberg. Otherwise consider your local library, or snag a collection of Chekhov’s tales for yourself:
Production Notes:
Creator: Amanda Haldy
Theme Music: Nye Nate by Roger Leighton
Incidental Music: Gotta Go by Wicker Basket
We Wouldn't Be Friends
The first week of Story Euphoria looked at how stories slip us into the skins of others, including people we might not like very much. There’s a certain breed of character with whom, realistically, it’s hard to identify, and yet writers get us to sympathize with them anyway, sometimes against our will. In fact, writing from the point of view of an unlikeable character has been a popular ruse since the birth of modern literature and one does not need to cast far to find examples.
Even in the pre-dawn of modern literature we can find examples, with characters like the overly-ambitious Faust, willing to sell his soul for knowledge and power, or Shakespeare’s complex and tragic Othello who, when tricked into believing his wife adulterous, murders her. As the novel matured as a literary form, more contemporary types emerged, like Dostoyevsky’s young and impoverished protagonist, Raskolnikov, who early in the novel, Crime and Punishment, murders an old woman, which deed becomes the catalyst for the rest of the book. A more lighthearted example could be Emma, from Jane Austen’s novel of the same name, who is about as self-satisfied and self-interested as young ladies come, and hardly a good friend—until she matures. Notably, Emma is a character who, as Austen herself put it, "no-one but myself will much like,” and a great deal of our entertainment comes from watching Emma get her comeuppance.
But not all authors are so obliging. While many unlikeable characters do transform during the course of the story in some way that makes us more inclined to sympathize, there are plenty of others who remain ambiguous, or whose crimes are so distasteful that little could ever be done to exonerate them. An excellent example might be Humbert Humbert, the pedophiliac and murderous narrator of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. For some readers, this is enough to make them give up on a book, but others are more easily swayed by the author’s plot devices or pretty narrative, and indeed, in Nabokov’s hands, Humbert’s tale is full of hypnotic poetry—as he jokingly admits in the first page, “you can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.”
Indeed, what makes us put up with these despicable people with whom, if they weren’t confined to fiction, we probably wouldn’t be friends? Is beautiful execution and brilliant authorship alone to blame? One theory is that such characters make us feel superior, and an opposite theory is that we feel secretly relieved that we are not alone with the darkness inside us. But I’m not sure I buy those explanations. When I find myself in the shoes of an unlikeable character I am most captured by the sheer variety of the human spectrum. It is a psychological fascination. Watching such characters may be akin to watching a dissection—gruesome, fascinating and revealing.
Even in the pre-dawn of modern literature we can find examples, with characters like the overly-ambitious Faust, willing to sell his soul for knowledge and power, or Shakespeare’s complex and tragic Othello who, when tricked into believing his wife adulterous, murders her. As the novel matured as a literary form, more contemporary types emerged, like Dostoyevsky’s young and impoverished protagonist, Raskolnikov, who early in the novel, Crime and Punishment, murders an old woman, which deed becomes the catalyst for the rest of the book. A more lighthearted example could be Emma, from Jane Austen’s novel of the same name, who is about as self-satisfied and self-interested as young ladies come, and hardly a good friend—until she matures. Notably, Emma is a character who, as Austen herself put it, "no-one but myself will much like,” and a great deal of our entertainment comes from watching Emma get her comeuppance.
But not all authors are so obliging. While many unlikeable characters do transform during the course of the story in some way that makes us more inclined to sympathize, there are plenty of others who remain ambiguous, or whose crimes are so distasteful that little could ever be done to exonerate them. An excellent example might be Humbert Humbert, the pedophiliac and murderous narrator of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. For some readers, this is enough to make them give up on a book, but others are more easily swayed by the author’s plot devices or pretty narrative, and indeed, in Nabokov’s hands, Humbert’s tale is full of hypnotic poetry—as he jokingly admits in the first page, “you can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.”
Indeed, what makes us put up with these despicable people with whom, if they weren’t confined to fiction, we probably wouldn’t be friends? Is beautiful execution and brilliant authorship alone to blame? One theory is that such characters make us feel superior, and an opposite theory is that we feel secretly relieved that we are not alone with the darkness inside us. But I’m not sure I buy those explanations. When I find myself in the shoes of an unlikeable character I am most captured by the sheer variety of the human spectrum. It is a psychological fascination. Watching such characters may be akin to watching a dissection—gruesome, fascinating and revealing.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Story Euphoria 4: Daughters of the Late Colonel
After the death of their father, Josephine and Constantia must contend with a household haunted by the decades of their lives spent devoted to his care. Even more perplexing than this untrustworthy world, in which they are confined and embattled in the viewpoint of the colonel's children, the two women are confronted with the impossible question of what comes next. Download and listen to The Daughters of the Late Colonel, by Katherine Mansfield!
Production Notes:
Creator: Amanda Haldy
Theme Music: Nye Nate by Roger Leighton
Incidental Music: Emil Waldteufel’s The Skater’s Waltz by Trick T Olly
More Than Words Can Say
It’s been said that writing a story is the art of trying to put into words that which cannot be put into words. This thing which cannot be put into words is often summed up with the pat phrase, “the human condition,” and capturing this condition is the artist’s constant labor. The big, foggy idea of the experience of humanness, in turn, comprises a number of slippery notions such as mortality, love, confusion, joy and, well, a lot of things that are hard to put into words. In fact, the words I just listed don’t mean a whole lot. Words like “love” and “mortality” feel especially worn thin: flimsy. They don’t hold.
So what is it that takes hold of us when we read a compelling story? What makes a story live? Is it the theme of the story? One way of identifying a story's theme is to look for a pattern of bright images throughout the story, pictures that keep cropping up or changing as the climax mounts. These images work their way into our subconscious and we translate the story using the lexicon of our own life experiences to give meaning to the imagery.
Of course, the theme of a story would not impact us as soundly if we did not get wrapped up in the events of the story itself, and the characters that populate it, so these elements must excite our imagination and sympathy. Also, the way a writer chooses to tell a story may be more effective in some cases than in others, either engaging our senses in the story’s world…or not. Ideally: The poetry of the story’s language plays like sunlight over the waters of our senses, illuminating surprising depths.
Honestly, it’s hard to isolate the various aspects of craft that turn a story from a mere collection of words into a work of art. The easy answer would be to say that all of those things I mentioned above (and more) are necessary if a story is to bash us over the head and grab us by the heart—in a good way, of course. Yet, there is no denying that some stories have a more lasting impression than others, and some stories speak to us more loudly than others. If you are following Story Euphoria, chances are, right now you are carrying around inside you precious stories that have shaped your life and the way you see the world.
We are treading murky waters now. We have entered the realms of dream and myth. There are no concise answers, no literary terminology that explains this mystery. Yet this mystery is perhaps the greatest power that can define a “good story”—that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts—and to impart such a power is no doubt the ultimate ambition of all who create stories.
In one way or another, this mystery is at the heart of all we explore at Story Euphoria. What makes a story come alive for you? What are some of your favorite stories, and how do they express “that which cannot be put into words?” Fortunately, we live in a world brimming with powerful stories, and one such I share with you today. Katherine Mansfield’s The Daughters of the Late Colonel is a tale that sneaks up on you and strikes when you least expect it—delightful, funny, compelling and surprisingly vast for a story told from such limited perspective: Through Josephine and Constantia, Mansfield speaks to us all, placing her finger on that awkward little something inside us so commonly called “the human condition.”
If you want more Mansfield, read from the text I used at Project Gutenberg, or fetch a collection of her stories for yourself from your local library. You can also buy a copy you’ll be sure to return to time and again over the years:
So what is it that takes hold of us when we read a compelling story? What makes a story live? Is it the theme of the story? One way of identifying a story's theme is to look for a pattern of bright images throughout the story, pictures that keep cropping up or changing as the climax mounts. These images work their way into our subconscious and we translate the story using the lexicon of our own life experiences to give meaning to the imagery.
Of course, the theme of a story would not impact us as soundly if we did not get wrapped up in the events of the story itself, and the characters that populate it, so these elements must excite our imagination and sympathy. Also, the way a writer chooses to tell a story may be more effective in some cases than in others, either engaging our senses in the story’s world…or not. Ideally: The poetry of the story’s language plays like sunlight over the waters of our senses, illuminating surprising depths.
Honestly, it’s hard to isolate the various aspects of craft that turn a story from a mere collection of words into a work of art. The easy answer would be to say that all of those things I mentioned above (and more) are necessary if a story is to bash us over the head and grab us by the heart—in a good way, of course. Yet, there is no denying that some stories have a more lasting impression than others, and some stories speak to us more loudly than others. If you are following Story Euphoria, chances are, right now you are carrying around inside you precious stories that have shaped your life and the way you see the world.
We are treading murky waters now. We have entered the realms of dream and myth. There are no concise answers, no literary terminology that explains this mystery. Yet this mystery is perhaps the greatest power that can define a “good story”—that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts—and to impart such a power is no doubt the ultimate ambition of all who create stories.
In one way or another, this mystery is at the heart of all we explore at Story Euphoria. What makes a story come alive for you? What are some of your favorite stories, and how do they express “that which cannot be put into words?” Fortunately, we live in a world brimming with powerful stories, and one such I share with you today. Katherine Mansfield’s The Daughters of the Late Colonel is a tale that sneaks up on you and strikes when you least expect it—delightful, funny, compelling and surprisingly vast for a story told from such limited perspective: Through Josephine and Constantia, Mansfield speaks to us all, placing her finger on that awkward little something inside us so commonly called “the human condition.”
If you want more Mansfield, read from the text I used at Project Gutenberg, or fetch a collection of her stories for yourself from your local library. You can also buy a copy you’ll be sure to return to time and again over the years:
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Story Euphoria 3: Ghost Stories
It's Halloween, and this week's podcast features two old ghost stories with spooks looking for help in the world of the living--and scaring the wits out of their would-be-rescuers in the process. Download and enjoy!
Production Notes:
Creator: Amanda Haldy
Theme Music: Nye Nate by Roger Leighton
Incidental Music: Swamp Music by Lydia Kavina
The Allure of the Creeps
The “creeps” I’m talking about are those fascinating tingles you get when you hear tales of headless Anne Boleyn walking the halls of the Tower, or catch a sound bite from that kitschy “documentary” show, Unsolved Mysteries on the TV. There’s long been something about ghosts, goblins and sinister deeds that holds our imaginations enraptured. But what is it?
Anyone who has been in a truly frightening situation—a victim of a crime or a near-death accident—can attest that really, there is nothing fun about being terrified, and traumatic experiences may even lead to long-term psychological pain. So, why is it we all enjoy a good scary story? Even if the average blood-dripping horror film is not your choice entertainment, chances are you once sat passing a flashlight around a circle, sharing the most bone-chilling tales you could imagine—probably some you even claimed were true! There were at least two stories about a menacing hitchhiker. And another where someone ended up hung from a tree.
If you don’t believe that fear “sells” itself, just look at the headlines in the papers. There’s nothing like a disaster to keep us glued to our TVs and radios. Perhaps this more serious form of fear is related to the pleasure we derive from scary stories: in both situations, we are tucked safely in our homes and can give long leash to the deep, primordial parts of our brains that thrive on intense emotion. I can think of no other handy explanation to affix to the eagerness with which we turn the pages of a thriller, even when the shadows in our own little bedroom begin to leap at us.
On that note, in honor of All Hallows Eve, I’d like to share two little ghost stories with you, so that I might make the shadows leap—at least a little—for you. These two stories are quite different, but in more ways I find them similar, especially in their structure, which makes them “classic” ghost stories.
For example, both of these stories utilize a frame, which is a common device. This technique sets us up with a narrator who is going to tell us the “actual” story, usually proclaiming that they don’t pretend to understand it and can only relate what happened to them (or to the person who told them the tale, in the third-party version)—to let the facts stand for themselves, as it were. Presumably, this structure makes the supernatural events seem more credible because they are being related by a witness. In other words, it forces us to approach the story as an “account” rather than as a “story,” as such.
Furthermore, the outside layer acts as a gateway that forces us to come “into” the story in a way that is not necessary when the “real story” starts in the first sentence, the aim being to immerse the reader more deeply in the world of the story through the application of layers. This might make the ghost story have greater impact because it has real impact on the frame story characters. This is similar to the magical effects of the Arabian Nights stories (see the October 17 discussion), which must indeed be something magnificent if they are enough to keep the sultan from executing his command!—i.e., the mystical power the inner story has on the frame characters may be transmitted to us.
Lastly, a frame story sets the stage. Usually, the characters at the beginning will warn us that what we are about to hear is so terrifying it remains indelibly in the mind, often driving the narrator to terrors whenever he thinks of it. Well, in that case, of course we must keep reading!
As mentioned, this frame technique has been used in innumerable ghost stories, from Edgar Allen Poe’s common use of retrospective-first-person narration to Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, where we begin gathered around a fire (as the best ghost stories often do). Perhaps the most complex use of the scary-story-frame I’ve yet seen was achieved by Mark Z. Danielewski in House of Leaves, where our narrator is telling a story that yet another character was attempting to archive (but died in the process—mysteriously, of course), and in the effort of relating events, the outermost frame character is gradually driven mad, apparently approaching a similar fate to his predecessor. There are a lot of remarks that could be made about this eccentric and noteworthy novel, but they are beyond the scope of this post.
As for other similarities between the two ghost stories featured this week, you’ll just have to listen and judge for yourself—though personally, I think it’s in the use of details at just the right moments: The clinging black hairs, for example, or poor Mrs. Bird, washing the dishes all over again…
Read more creepy stories from Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman and Guy de Maupassant online, or else check out your local library or buy something for your home collection:
Freeman's Collected Ghost Stories
Anyone who has been in a truly frightening situation—a victim of a crime or a near-death accident—can attest that really, there is nothing fun about being terrified, and traumatic experiences may even lead to long-term psychological pain. So, why is it we all enjoy a good scary story? Even if the average blood-dripping horror film is not your choice entertainment, chances are you once sat passing a flashlight around a circle, sharing the most bone-chilling tales you could imagine—probably some you even claimed were true! There were at least two stories about a menacing hitchhiker. And another where someone ended up hung from a tree.
If you don’t believe that fear “sells” itself, just look at the headlines in the papers. There’s nothing like a disaster to keep us glued to our TVs and radios. Perhaps this more serious form of fear is related to the pleasure we derive from scary stories: in both situations, we are tucked safely in our homes and can give long leash to the deep, primordial parts of our brains that thrive on intense emotion. I can think of no other handy explanation to affix to the eagerness with which we turn the pages of a thriller, even when the shadows in our own little bedroom begin to leap at us.
On that note, in honor of All Hallows Eve, I’d like to share two little ghost stories with you, so that I might make the shadows leap—at least a little—for you. These two stories are quite different, but in more ways I find them similar, especially in their structure, which makes them “classic” ghost stories.
For example, both of these stories utilize a frame, which is a common device. This technique sets us up with a narrator who is going to tell us the “actual” story, usually proclaiming that they don’t pretend to understand it and can only relate what happened to them (or to the person who told them the tale, in the third-party version)—to let the facts stand for themselves, as it were. Presumably, this structure makes the supernatural events seem more credible because they are being related by a witness. In other words, it forces us to approach the story as an “account” rather than as a “story,” as such.
Furthermore, the outside layer acts as a gateway that forces us to come “into” the story in a way that is not necessary when the “real story” starts in the first sentence, the aim being to immerse the reader more deeply in the world of the story through the application of layers. This might make the ghost story have greater impact because it has real impact on the frame story characters. This is similar to the magical effects of the Arabian Nights stories (see the October 17 discussion), which must indeed be something magnificent if they are enough to keep the sultan from executing his command!—i.e., the mystical power the inner story has on the frame characters may be transmitted to us.
Lastly, a frame story sets the stage. Usually, the characters at the beginning will warn us that what we are about to hear is so terrifying it remains indelibly in the mind, often driving the narrator to terrors whenever he thinks of it. Well, in that case, of course we must keep reading!
As mentioned, this frame technique has been used in innumerable ghost stories, from Edgar Allen Poe’s common use of retrospective-first-person narration to Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, where we begin gathered around a fire (as the best ghost stories often do). Perhaps the most complex use of the scary-story-frame I’ve yet seen was achieved by Mark Z. Danielewski in House of Leaves, where our narrator is telling a story that yet another character was attempting to archive (but died in the process—mysteriously, of course), and in the effort of relating events, the outermost frame character is gradually driven mad, apparently approaching a similar fate to his predecessor. There are a lot of remarks that could be made about this eccentric and noteworthy novel, but they are beyond the scope of this post.
As for other similarities between the two ghost stories featured this week, you’ll just have to listen and judge for yourself—though personally, I think it’s in the use of details at just the right moments: The clinging black hairs, for example, or poor Mrs. Bird, washing the dishes all over again…
Read more creepy stories from Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman and Guy de Maupassant online, or else check out your local library or buy something for your home collection:
Freeman's Collected Ghost Stories
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Story Euphoria 2: A Painful Case
This week I read "A Painful Case," by James Joyce, a short story from The Dubliners that explores the consequences of a well-ordered life. Download and listen!
Production Notes:
Creator: Amanda Haldy
Theme Music: Nye Nate by Roger Leighton
Incidental Music: The Lonesome PicStrum by PicStrum
In Their Own Words
Last week I was interested in the idea of “sympathy”—the way a story invites us into the world of its characters, how we naturally identify with protagonists, even those who are not “likeable,” and even when they are very different from ourselves. Arguably, the process of identification, the sense that we are immersed the story, is what makes a story fun. However, not all stories excel equally in this department, and there are many different tools an author can use to get us into the skins of their characters.
One of my favorite techniques is the free indirect style, sometimes called the “close third person.” This is quite different from the objective or omniscient third, can be thought of as both subjective and limited, but is distinctive in the degree to which it allows the character’s own language to infect the author’s—to such an extent, in fact, that the narrative becomes fluid, moving between the character’s language and the author’s (often more poetic) language, without barriers like quotation marks placed between. Such an approach provides that intensity most often associated with first-person narration while still leaving room for the author’s insightful observations or turns of phrase to shed light on the character that the character himself might not choose: Inelegant characters, for example can still be expressed elegantly without sacrificing closeness.
There are certain situations where this is a particularly useful storytelling technique. Right now I’m working on a story told largely from a dog’s point of view. I elected to write in the third person and use a number of free indirect moments because my goal is both to minimize barriers between human readers and the canine characters while at the same time give these creatures a form of expression they themselves are extremely unlikely to employ (that is, the dogs are relatively realistic dogs, not cartoon dogs). I am hardly the first person to do this; Paul Auster does a very similar thing in his “dog book,” Timbuktu, although his mangy protagonist is gifted with exceptional acumen and sensibility.
Another situation where a free indirect third can be quite useful is when the story’s point-of-view character is a child, allowing us to inhabit the world of children without sacrificing a sophisticated literary style—which would be difficult to swallow if the story was told instead in the first-person. A famous example can be found in Henry James's novel, What Maisie Knew, a tangled web of a tale about divorce and adultery told from a child’s perspective. James pulls off the stunt by confining his observations to things the child herself directly observes, often employing her own interpretations and words, without sacrificing any of that sensitive and concentrated style that is so distinctly his own.
For example, on hearing the Captain speak kindly of her mother, Maisie bursts into tears, as James describes it:
“She became on the spot indifferent to her usual fear of showing what in children was notoriously most offensive—presented to her companion, soundlessly but hideously, her wet distorted face. She cried, with a pang, straight at him, cried as she had never cried at anyone in all her life. ‘Oh do you love her?’ she brought out with a gulp because that was the effect of her trying not to make a noise.
“It was doubtless another consequence of the thick mist through which she saw him that in reply to her question the Captain gave her such a queer blurred look.”
The first sentence describing Maisie’s tears is James describing with an adult perspective the effect of her weeping, but the second sentence is all Maisie, feeling the cry inside herself and the motion of her cry “at” the Captain. That “at” is Maisie’s word, as is the “noise” she’s trying not to make. You can almost imagine an adult in Maisie’s memory admonishing, “Oh don’t make such a noise!” Finally, the “queer blurred look” is Maisie’s innocent perception which James knowingly leaves his readers free to interpret with their more nuanced understanding of the Captain’s position.
James’s voice and Maisie’s have completely overlapped and become inseparable. Of course, this is not unusual for this writer, considering the frequency with which James employs a “stream of consciousness” throughout his stories, where a series of thoughts, winding ever deeper, erase the lines between author and character: their voices meld and become one. Other authors employ a similar technique and to an even greater extent allow the characters to completely take over during such moments. Virginia Woolf, for instance, certainly mastered the “stream of consciousness” technique, and I would consider her use to be one form of free indirect style.
James Joyce is another, more subtle master of the free indirect narrative. When reading Joyce there is a sense that every word was selected in deliberate reflection not only of how his characters perceive the world, but of how they assume their own purpose (or loss of purpose) within that world. A transformation of these perceptions almost always forms the dramatic climax in Joyce’s short stories. This week's podcast is one such short story, “A Painful Case,” which appears in Joyce’s iconic collection, The Dubliners. You can get the same text I read for free from Project Gutenberg, or, if you'd rather have the collection in hand, try your public library, or buy a copy of The Dubliners for your home library:
One of my favorite techniques is the free indirect style, sometimes called the “close third person.” This is quite different from the objective or omniscient third, can be thought of as both subjective and limited, but is distinctive in the degree to which it allows the character’s own language to infect the author’s—to such an extent, in fact, that the narrative becomes fluid, moving between the character’s language and the author’s (often more poetic) language, without barriers like quotation marks placed between. Such an approach provides that intensity most often associated with first-person narration while still leaving room for the author’s insightful observations or turns of phrase to shed light on the character that the character himself might not choose: Inelegant characters, for example can still be expressed elegantly without sacrificing closeness.
There are certain situations where this is a particularly useful storytelling technique. Right now I’m working on a story told largely from a dog’s point of view. I elected to write in the third person and use a number of free indirect moments because my goal is both to minimize barriers between human readers and the canine characters while at the same time give these creatures a form of expression they themselves are extremely unlikely to employ (that is, the dogs are relatively realistic dogs, not cartoon dogs). I am hardly the first person to do this; Paul Auster does a very similar thing in his “dog book,” Timbuktu, although his mangy protagonist is gifted with exceptional acumen and sensibility.
Another situation where a free indirect third can be quite useful is when the story’s point-of-view character is a child, allowing us to inhabit the world of children without sacrificing a sophisticated literary style—which would be difficult to swallow if the story was told instead in the first-person. A famous example can be found in Henry James's novel, What Maisie Knew, a tangled web of a tale about divorce and adultery told from a child’s perspective. James pulls off the stunt by confining his observations to things the child herself directly observes, often employing her own interpretations and words, without sacrificing any of that sensitive and concentrated style that is so distinctly his own.
For example, on hearing the Captain speak kindly of her mother, Maisie bursts into tears, as James describes it:
“She became on the spot indifferent to her usual fear of showing what in children was notoriously most offensive—presented to her companion, soundlessly but hideously, her wet distorted face. She cried, with a pang, straight at him, cried as she had never cried at anyone in all her life. ‘Oh do you love her?’ she brought out with a gulp because that was the effect of her trying not to make a noise.
“It was doubtless another consequence of the thick mist through which she saw him that in reply to her question the Captain gave her such a queer blurred look.”
The first sentence describing Maisie’s tears is James describing with an adult perspective the effect of her weeping, but the second sentence is all Maisie, feeling the cry inside herself and the motion of her cry “at” the Captain. That “at” is Maisie’s word, as is the “noise” she’s trying not to make. You can almost imagine an adult in Maisie’s memory admonishing, “Oh don’t make such a noise!” Finally, the “queer blurred look” is Maisie’s innocent perception which James knowingly leaves his readers free to interpret with their more nuanced understanding of the Captain’s position.
James’s voice and Maisie’s have completely overlapped and become inseparable. Of course, this is not unusual for this writer, considering the frequency with which James employs a “stream of consciousness” throughout his stories, where a series of thoughts, winding ever deeper, erase the lines between author and character: their voices meld and become one. Other authors employ a similar technique and to an even greater extent allow the characters to completely take over during such moments. Virginia Woolf, for instance, certainly mastered the “stream of consciousness” technique, and I would consider her use to be one form of free indirect style.
James Joyce is another, more subtle master of the free indirect narrative. When reading Joyce there is a sense that every word was selected in deliberate reflection not only of how his characters perceive the world, but of how they assume their own purpose (or loss of purpose) within that world. A transformation of these perceptions almost always forms the dramatic climax in Joyce’s short stories. This week's podcast is one such short story, “A Painful Case,” which appears in Joyce’s iconic collection, The Dubliners. You can get the same text I read for free from Project Gutenberg, or, if you'd rather have the collection in hand, try your public library, or buy a copy of The Dubliners for your home library:
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Story Euphoria 1: The Arabian Nights
This week's podcast features an excerpt from the frame story of the Arabian Nights Entertainments, Aldine Edition, translated by Dr, Jonathan Scott. Right-click download and listen!
Production Notes:
Creator: Amanda Haldy
Theme Music: Nye Nate by Roger Leighton
Incidental Music: Ishtar by Per Rinaldo
Identity and the Arabian Nights
Alf Layla Wa-Layla, the One Thousand and One Nights, better known in the West as the Arabian Nights, is a work with even more faces than it has titles, which makes sense considering it can claim many authors, as the living and fluctuating result of many hands toiling over many centuries, compiling Arabic, Persian, Indian, Egyptian and Mesopotamian tales. However, the diversity of story elements comes close to making the work contradictory: Women are portrayed as wicked adulteresses who deserve to be killed or beaten for impudence, while the central heroine is unquestionably wise, brave and virtuous. Genie are strong and terrifying beings, though the child of one such is so weak as to be killed by getting hit in the eye with a date pit. The contradictions coexist in a fantastic dance, cavorting one around the other until the laws of the book’s world become uncertain.
Much like these examples, images of the Middle East have long been contradictory in the West. On the one hand, there is the “exotic” and magical Middle East, influenced by the Arabian Nights since medieval times, with flying carpets, genies and caverns of riches that “open sesame.” The other image, more prevalent today, is of a land torn by unrest and terrorism. One popular explanation for the prevalence of these two mixed images is the concept of orientalism, as posited by Edward Said in his 1978 book of the same title, which has greatly influenced academia since the late 20th century.
For a solid grasp of Said’s conjectures, one ought to read his book, but in a nutshell, orientalism is Said’s term for describing a perceived tendency of Western political (and cultural) forces to caricature the Middle East out of an imperialistic need to place the “Other” at a disadvantage and to exonerate military aggression. Furthermore, Said is very specific that he does not suggest orientalism to mean a misrepresentation of the “True Orient,” as he is skeptical of such an idea. In fact, he notably remarked in an article called On Orientalist Scholarship that no American or European scholar can ever “know” the Orient.
But perhaps any goal to know the Orient is nonsensical anyway, because on the human and individual level, boundaries between Oxidant and Orient are fluid, even meaningless—borders that only exist in maps and ideologies, and stories have never been confined by them, as the universal popularity of the Arabian Nights can testify. The appeal of this unconventional body of work is more than simple curiosity for that which seems “exotic;” there is something immediately exciting and familiar in the power of a cliffhanger: in this case, a cliffhanger that can cause the most powerful man in the book’s world to put off an official execution so that he can hear the next installment.
Of course, there are many examples of stories that excite the imagination and sympathy of people the world over, regardless of cultural origins, from A Christmas Carol to Like Water for Chocolate to Musashi. The cultural context of great stories informs the characters without preventing us from identifying with them. Maybe it’s the ego that always puts I at the center of the story, or maybe it is the empathy inherent in imagination; whatever the case, a story, by concern for its inhabitants and the power to place us in their skins, is humanistic by nature. As George Eliot in her essay, The Natural History of German Life, explains it: “The greatest benefit we owe to the artist, whether painter, poet or novelist, is the extension of our sympathies… Art is the nearest thing to life; it is a mode of amplifying experience and extending our contact with our fellow-men beyond the bounds of our personal lot.”
All who read stories have on multiple occasions identified with people very different from themselves. It is no coincidence that Scheherazade’s wisdom is attributed to her learning and manifest in her wide knowledge of stories. The characters of the Arabian Nights often use stories as ambassadors to make their points, such as Scheherazade’s father telling her the tale of the ox and the ass, or the multiple instances where stories are told in an effort to save lives. The Arabian Nights isn’t merely a collection of tales, the tales are currency in the book’s world; they are alive and impact the events of the narrative at large.
And it is a large narrative. The centuries have seen multiple versions of the Nights, by scholars of both East and West, and the stories themselves come in multiple layers, with characters inside stories telling stories about characters who again tell stories. These complex mirrors of narrative are truly the signature of the Arabian Nights, and perhaps are appealing because an infinity of stories feels like an honest reflection of the infinite possibilities of real life, no matter how fantastic the tales themselves. Like these stories, life is complex and often appears paradoxical. Though it may on the surface be easy to look at these stories and identify a decadent and “otherly” Ottoman Empire, or a “mystical East,” the real paradox is that this collection of folktales has lived so long because it excites our sympathies, invites our imaginations to wander through a mirror tunnel of adventure after adventure until, in the end, we see only ourselves.
We are the Other, and always have been. As an idea, we are Its creator; as a fear, It dwells inside us. As Joseph Campbell’s studies of folktales led him to surmise, this theme dwells in legend and lore the world over as an essential aspect of the Hero’s Quest, organic to the human experience. Think of Luke Skywalker training on Dagobah with Yoda: when he enters the darkness and confronts an apparition of Darth Vader, cuts off the hated villain’s head, whose face does he find beneath the helmet? This is one trick stories can play on us: we meet characters who excite both affection and revulsion, and for the duration, we see ourselves inside each, see the world through their eyes and apply our own world to their circumstances.
As a story about the sympathetic and enlightening power of stories, the Arabian Nights is the perfect point of departure for our own journey of one thousand and one tales. Story Euphoria will release a new article on the power and art of story every week with an accompanying podcast reading. You can download this week’s excerpt from the Arabian Nights Entertainments to listen at your leisure. To learn more about the “version history” of this work, see Daniel Beaumont’s article, "The Medieval Arabic Nights." If you would like to read the complete tales, you can get the text I read (or a different version) for free from Project Gutenberg, but if you’d prefer to read your own on the beach or in bed, see if your local library has a copy, or buy one:
Much like these examples, images of the Middle East have long been contradictory in the West. On the one hand, there is the “exotic” and magical Middle East, influenced by the Arabian Nights since medieval times, with flying carpets, genies and caverns of riches that “open sesame.” The other image, more prevalent today, is of a land torn by unrest and terrorism. One popular explanation for the prevalence of these two mixed images is the concept of orientalism, as posited by Edward Said in his 1978 book of the same title, which has greatly influenced academia since the late 20th century.
For a solid grasp of Said’s conjectures, one ought to read his book, but in a nutshell, orientalism is Said’s term for describing a perceived tendency of Western political (and cultural) forces to caricature the Middle East out of an imperialistic need to place the “Other” at a disadvantage and to exonerate military aggression. Furthermore, Said is very specific that he does not suggest orientalism to mean a misrepresentation of the “True Orient,” as he is skeptical of such an idea. In fact, he notably remarked in an article called On Orientalist Scholarship that no American or European scholar can ever “know” the Orient.
But perhaps any goal to know the Orient is nonsensical anyway, because on the human and individual level, boundaries between Oxidant and Orient are fluid, even meaningless—borders that only exist in maps and ideologies, and stories have never been confined by them, as the universal popularity of the Arabian Nights can testify. The appeal of this unconventional body of work is more than simple curiosity for that which seems “exotic;” there is something immediately exciting and familiar in the power of a cliffhanger: in this case, a cliffhanger that can cause the most powerful man in the book’s world to put off an official execution so that he can hear the next installment.
Of course, there are many examples of stories that excite the imagination and sympathy of people the world over, regardless of cultural origins, from A Christmas Carol to Like Water for Chocolate to Musashi. The cultural context of great stories informs the characters without preventing us from identifying with them. Maybe it’s the ego that always puts I at the center of the story, or maybe it is the empathy inherent in imagination; whatever the case, a story, by concern for its inhabitants and the power to place us in their skins, is humanistic by nature. As George Eliot in her essay, The Natural History of German Life, explains it: “The greatest benefit we owe to the artist, whether painter, poet or novelist, is the extension of our sympathies… Art is the nearest thing to life; it is a mode of amplifying experience and extending our contact with our fellow-men beyond the bounds of our personal lot.”
All who read stories have on multiple occasions identified with people very different from themselves. It is no coincidence that Scheherazade’s wisdom is attributed to her learning and manifest in her wide knowledge of stories. The characters of the Arabian Nights often use stories as ambassadors to make their points, such as Scheherazade’s father telling her the tale of the ox and the ass, or the multiple instances where stories are told in an effort to save lives. The Arabian Nights isn’t merely a collection of tales, the tales are currency in the book’s world; they are alive and impact the events of the narrative at large.
And it is a large narrative. The centuries have seen multiple versions of the Nights, by scholars of both East and West, and the stories themselves come in multiple layers, with characters inside stories telling stories about characters who again tell stories. These complex mirrors of narrative are truly the signature of the Arabian Nights, and perhaps are appealing because an infinity of stories feels like an honest reflection of the infinite possibilities of real life, no matter how fantastic the tales themselves. Like these stories, life is complex and often appears paradoxical. Though it may on the surface be easy to look at these stories and identify a decadent and “otherly” Ottoman Empire, or a “mystical East,” the real paradox is that this collection of folktales has lived so long because it excites our sympathies, invites our imaginations to wander through a mirror tunnel of adventure after adventure until, in the end, we see only ourselves.
We are the Other, and always have been. As an idea, we are Its creator; as a fear, It dwells inside us. As Joseph Campbell’s studies of folktales led him to surmise, this theme dwells in legend and lore the world over as an essential aspect of the Hero’s Quest, organic to the human experience. Think of Luke Skywalker training on Dagobah with Yoda: when he enters the darkness and confronts an apparition of Darth Vader, cuts off the hated villain’s head, whose face does he find beneath the helmet? This is one trick stories can play on us: we meet characters who excite both affection and revulsion, and for the duration, we see ourselves inside each, see the world through their eyes and apply our own world to their circumstances.
As a story about the sympathetic and enlightening power of stories, the Arabian Nights is the perfect point of departure for our own journey of one thousand and one tales. Story Euphoria will release a new article on the power and art of story every week with an accompanying podcast reading. You can download this week’s excerpt from the Arabian Nights Entertainments to listen at your leisure. To learn more about the “version history” of this work, see Daniel Beaumont’s article, "The Medieval Arabic Nights." If you would like to read the complete tales, you can get the text I read (or a different version) for free from Project Gutenberg, but if you’d prefer to read your own on the beach or in bed, see if your local library has a copy, or buy one:
.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Update
Progress on the Story Euphoria is about as slow as I expected, now that the fall semester has started (read: I haven't gotten anything done since August 18th!). However, I am still optimistic about launching this fall. My current target date for the first official article and podcast is October 17th. The goal of Story Euphoria is to release a new installment celebrating Stories every Sunday evening, so stay tuned for further updates!
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Coming This Fall...
This coming fall, Story Euphoria aims to release our first article and podcast. Since this is a site devoted to All Things Story, what better tale to talk about than The One-Thousand and One Nights? This medieval Arabian work is a series of stories framed within stories, and features one of the greatest storytellers of all time: Scheherazade. I hope you'll join me in contemplating the popularity of The Arabian Nights in the West, the complexity of multiple narratives and how Story informs how we think about The Other--and ourselves.
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