Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Let the Story Tell Itself

A few years ago, while defending my doctoral dissertation, a committee member challenged me on a statement I made. Actually, he challenged most of my research, but his questioning bothered me most about my statement on the power of stories. I said something about stories having a life and power all their own, such that they'll tell themselves (so to speak). And, as tellers of stories, we need to get out of the way and let them unwind on their own, rather than forcing a conclusion.

It was a leap, I'll admit, but, intuitively, it felt right to say. Perhaps it goes back to Chinua Achebe's point that the story is always in control of the story teller.

"It is only the story...that saves our progeny from blundering like blind beggars into the spikes of the cactus fence.The story is our escort;without it,we are blind.Does the blind man own his escort?No,neither do we the story;rather,it is the story that owns us. " — Chinua Achebe (Anthills of the Savannah)

My point is, we believe too much in ourselves as the creators of story, so, at times, get so far ahead of it that we try to control the ending, the denoument. We do this because, by controlling the conclusion, we believe we are in control of the major events in our lives. We're all guilty of doing this, by trying to figure out how relationships will unfold, what kind of people our children will grow into, how our family members feel about us, what the future holds for us.

One of my favorites examples of this is the mythical character, Orpheus, who tried desperately to bring his wife and lover back from death. (Read a brief description of the story of Eurydice and Orpheus in the Encyclopedia Mythica Online http://www.pantheon.org/articles/e/eurydice.html


Orpheus


Orpheus missed his beloved Eurydice so much that he followed her to the underworld and, after charming the gods with his sweet voice and music, was granted the opportunity to bring her back to life. But, there was a condition. As they ascended from Hell, Orpeus was not to look back at his lover, a promise that he, in his desire to reconnect with his love, broke.

He turned and glanced over his shoulder, and his punishment was to lose her forever. Why, one wonders, did he do this? If he hadn't looked back, would the story have ended differently? Several poets have raised this question, including John Milton, W.H. Auden, H.D. and a contemporary poet, Jorie Graham.

See H.D.'s poem, "Eurydice" http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=182485

Another poem that examines this is Jorie Graham's "Orpheus and Eurydice." http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=176586

Back to the point. Why do we care why Orpheus, in spite of dire warnings, looked back? In my own opinion, Orpheus' plight or tragic loss resonates with us because we struggle with a need to predict the end of the stories of our lives.

Perhaps this is what this blogger is trying to achieve by writing--that is, to write something conclusive about life. Myabe I'll end this post without ending the story.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Story Truth

"Sometimes story truth is truer than happening truth." Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried.

Have you ever told a story or related an event to another person and discovered yourself bending the facts just a little? Have you stretched the truth to make the story end in a more interesting way? Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried raises these questions in such a compelling way that it makes the reader question the veracity of his/her own storytelling practices.


Ostensibly a book about the Vietnam War, TTC is also about the art of storytelling. In O'Brien's opinion, there are rules to telling good stories, one of the most important being to make the story interesting. In fact, he suggests, the story itself is often more important than the facts of the event at the heart of the story. This leads one to question O'Brien's storytelling tactics.


In interviews about the book, O'Brien has insisted the work is fictitious, yet he dedicates it to the men of Alpha Company, and names each one in the introduction. He does another thing to make the reader question his truthfulness. He openly admits to lying in several chapters. He states each event as factual then, contradicts himself in subsequent stories. How can a reader believe an author who admits to using a lie as a narrative technique--this is a rhetorical question, of course.

Personally, I think there's more truth here than he would like us to believe. He'd prefer readers to take the the book at face value and he'll probably never reveal just how much of it has been fabricated, but it's impossible to miss his literary sleight of hand. (Read the now-famous O'Brien interview (about the book) at:
http://www.wooster.edu/artfuldodge/interviews/obrien.htm )

Besides, O'Brien's theory is, readers are story lovers, and we'll accept most anything if the story is told well. Right? My theory is, we live such interesting lives, storied lives that seem to follow plots that aren't always clear to us, that we don't have to fabricate. It's the old notion that truth is stranger than fiction. We are a storied culture--we make sense out of life by casting events into fables, parables, short stories, poems and other literary forms. Most of us create stories out of the very events that comprise our everyday lives.

So, my guess (and I stand pretty much alone with this idea) is, O'Brien's story is grounded in more truth than he'd ever admit. The stories he tells in TTC are so powerful, they don't require fictionalization.

If you've read this book, I'd like to know what you think about it.


Tim O'Brien's website is at http://www.illyria.com/tobhp.html
Read

NY Times Book Review of O'Brien's book. http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/09/20/specials/obrien-carried.html?_r=1