Story - Not Story

In the way that we rank our senses and neglect to recognise that in certain circumstances certain sense are far better than the usual favourites - we often forget that we are story telling, social animals.

Much of human society is driven by stories, but 'stories' for many are tainted by being 'fiction'.

Please pause and think about the word 'stories' for a moment.

...Storyteller by Bev. [Copyright]

Thank you! What did you get?

For me there are associations with time out, relaxation, children's stuff, escapism, and so on. Generally we are cautious to accept stories are just as much the way we explain the world to each other, or that we use them for good or evil. I'm going to guess you didn't have any of the following:

That in court the lawyers' and the judge summing up are carefully constructing a story to sell an idea to a picked audience within a set of rules, as much as a salesman is selling a product by using a story. History and archaeology only comes into focus for non-statisticians and non-specialists when a story is created to explain it. Music and painting are often telling a story to the audience, but so is the scientist seeking research funding, and (obviously?) the journalist reporting on the ... wait for it ... story. And so on.

It's hard to think of areas where stories don't have a role, yet we rarely acknowledge that's what they really are. They are 'a convincing argument' or 'a good case'.

I was reminded of my belief that we are driven by stories as much as we drive stories through every part of our lives by this article on the BBC website today. Leaving the political stripes aside for a moment, this is interesting as a rare expose of the power of stories over our much vaunted facts and numbers:

Stories not facts

In his book The Political Brain, psychologist Drew Westen, an exasperated Democrat, tried to show why the Right often wins the argument even when the Left is confident that it has the facts on its side.

He uses the following exchange from the first presidential debate between Al Gore and George Bush in 2000 to illustrate the perils of trying to explain to voters what will make them better off:

Gore: "Under the governor's plan, if you kept the same fee for service that you have now under Medicare, your premiums would go up by between 18% and 47%, and that is the study of the Congressional plan that he's modelled his proposal on by the Medicare actuaries."

Bush: "Look, this is a man who has great numbers. He talks about numbers. I'm beginning to think not only did he invent the internet, but he invented the calculator. It's fuzzy math. It's trying to scare people in the voting booth."

Mr Gore was talking sense and Mr Bush nonsense - but Mr Bush won the debate.

With statistics, the voters just hear a patronising policy wonk, and switch off.

And here - for me - is the kicker:

For Mr Westen, stories always trump statistics, which means the politician with the best stories is going to win: "One of the fallacies that politicians often have on the Left is that things are obvious, when they are not obvious."

Every day we are surrounded by stories. For good and bad. Most of them are in disguise. How many do you encounter in a day?

James

From 'Politics & the English Language' by George Orwell

Good writing is for all time. Good, clear writing is rare. Good writers advising on how to write clearly are rarer still.

But one can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:

(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

(ii) Never us a long word where a short one will do.

(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.

(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

These rules sound elementary, and so they are, but they demand a deep change of attitude in anyone who has grown used to writing in the style now fashionable. One could keep all of them and still write bad English...

Politics & the English Language, 1946. Full text here.

Four literary fleas & a louse

Robert Hooke's drawing of a flea in his Micrographia - 1655.

MARK but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is ;
It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.
Thou know'st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ;
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two ;
And this, alas ! is more than we would do.

O stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, yea, more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.
Though parents grudge, and you, we're met,
And cloister'd in these living walls of jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that self-murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it suck'd from thee?
Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou
Find'st not thyself nor me the weaker now.
'Tis true ; then learn how false fears be ;
Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to me,
Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee.
John Donne, 1633.

Here we are, two literary men (pauses to catch flea on waistcoat: throws it into the fire) with the unbounded influence of our pens. Can't we start a Lachrymose Revival?
...
Bunny, when you feel like writing, will you tell me all you know about that great house at which you were staying when you told me that story about the variorum edition of the Pentateuch (or Septuagint)? It was either Penshurst or the other one beguinning with P - Petworth? (Catches second flea on sleeve.) I am passionately addicted to places like Knole and I deeply regret never having cultivated enough dukes to be a constant guest in such.

T.H. White, Ireland, 1944, letter to David Garnett*

The Morgan Library has a very fine 11th-century Lancelot in perfect condition. I was going over it one day and turned to the rubric of the first known owner dated 1221, the rubric a squiggle of very thick ink. I put a glass on it and there imbedded deep in the ink was the finest crab louse, pfithira pulus, I ever saw. He was perfectly preserved even to his little claws. I knew I would find him sooner or later because people of that period were deeply troubled by lice and other little beasties - hence the plagues. I called the curator over and showed him my find and he let out a cry of sorrow. 'I've looked at that rubric a thousand times,' he said' Why couldn't I have found him?'

John Steinbeck, 1962: from A Life in Letters, 1975**.

*Page 207, T H White A Biography by Silvia Townsend Warner.
**Page 394, The Faber Book of Science Ed John Carey.

Words are living

Post 2. Sitting at the table this sunny afternoon, enjoying talking to my husband, relishing the full feeling of a really nice lunch consumed at leisure*.


So he's thinking of a blog, about books and writing, and the process of writing and being an editor. Okay. I do all those things.

But then, then he says -- you could write about food writing and the cookbooks you read all the time. (He carefully does not use the word 'obsessive', for which I've grateful.) And of course, I'm hooked.

Fancy a few wanderings into why? Why are some writers interesting and others a little cloying? I don't pretend to know the answer, but I'll come along to have a look. Why do we get crazy about apostrophes? They sure'ly do'nt count, do they?

So I have accepted my part in this challenge, which is all about reading and writing and what goes on in between. And if you're lucky, there will be lots of cookbook recommendations. Mmm.

Bev

* Take two slices of good ciabatta, drizzle them with olive oil and rub them with garlic and chopped parsley. Then grab a handful of the minced pork you're about to use to make meatballs (the tomato sauce simmering on the back of the stove), add some cooked grated carrot, onion and lemon zest, a pinch of chopped garlic, some salt. Form into patties, and fry nicely in a little pan. Toast the bread, layer it with the hot little patties, a dab of homemade aioli and a slice of a tomato from the garden. My, my!

Serve with thick carrot and cucumber sticks, and plenty more aioli for dipping. Beatific serenity will result.

What are the big ideas?

Post 1. My idea is for this blog to cover all the thinking about reading and writing that hasn't got onto our blog Taccola. As anyone who knows us knows reading has been almost as fundamental to us as breathing, and books as important as oxygen.

The intention is to be posting what we are currently reading, as well as thoughts about books we have read. Magazines, journals and writing on the web may well appear too. There may even be the occasional item that gets accused of capital L 'Literature', or a novel, but I'll try and keep those under control. [And an addition in August - clearly quite a bit about writing, editing and the creative side is appearing too.]

Conversely there may be some musings on the importance of leading the language we use, rather than being driven by literals and the lowest common denominator of comprehension.

As an ex colleague's T-shirt said: "So many books, so little time".

James

So read on...