Every addict knows the feeling. Itching, tickling, scratching away at you. I need another fix. And it’s been too long. I’m not picky any more, I’m willing to go for something less pure, willing to steal a little to get it. Steal a little time from classes; give up on that night out so that I can get up early just to see if the weather is good. I need to get into the mountains. I don’t mind any more if it’s climbing or running, skiing or just walking, but I need to get out. Read More
What happened to telling stories?
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how we tell stories. I enjoy writing, and it is obvious to me that the invention of the written word, and more specifically the invention of the printing press and mass media, has been more or less the most fundamental revolution in the history of what we now know as literature. It is abundantly clear what we have gained by this revolution, and we are quick to cite the many advantages: the mass dissemination of literature; a huge increase in literacy; the preservation of literary and historical texts not only for centuries and millennia, but with the advent of digitisation perhaps infinitely. But how often do we focus on what we most obviously lost: the Oral Tradition. By this I mean the art of telling stories, and reciting poetry not from any book or record, but from memory. Whilst on the face of it this might seem a small distinction (after all, what is the difference between reciting a poem from an anthology and memorising it verbatim?), the real difference lies in how literature is transferred from person to person. Read More »
Subversion / Reversion: The deconstruction and reconstruction of the Western cultural narrative through a Native American idiom in Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water
In Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water, one of the many methods used to create a Native American narrative, rather than a Westernised one, is the radical re-versioning of Western-Christian mythology. In the sections of the novel which detail the various versions and revisions of the traditional western creation myth, King satirises and reinvents many of the cornerstone figures of Christianity, and at the same time muddles them with Native American creation myths, Western literature and popular culture, creating a new story of creation with no sense of time, space or tradition. Furthermore, his use of magical realism to blend this mythology with the everyday throughout the novel demystifies the creation stories, leaving the stories, and perhaps more importantly their protagonists, open to criticism from and comparison to a modern and quotidian point of view. Read More »