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:
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