Food, shelter and story?

Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock
Thanksgiving, Thursday, November 24, 2005. Old School by Tobias Wolff provoked this riff. (I checked out the audio book from the library perhaps a year ago and returned it after hearing only most of the first disc, going by that’s when its familiarity ended. Having forgotten I had it out once then forgotten I didn’t like it, I got the 2003 novel from the library a couple of weeks ago and loved it. Heard it all and returned it.)

The English teacher Mr. Ramsey says something to the effect of (not having the text in hand to quote exactly): Essays are wonderful but they’re not necessary. They’re like chess. If the world didn’t have them it’d be a sadder place but we’d get along. Storytelling is different; the world needs stories and storytellers.

Old School is so thoroughly a story that a paragraph like that stood out: Was Wolff speaking through a character? Other novelists do that all the time. Perhaps Wolff just thought this is the sort of thing a pretentious but well-meaning teacher like Ramsey would say. Well, that covers what the possibilities of modern novelists, doesn’t it? Real pack-of-lies story or disguised didactics, no?

The world needs stories. The world does not need essays. Hmm. Ramsey was telling the narrator this linked hypothesis when the latter was his teen-age student and had shown aptitude toward both.

(After a day of reflection, I decided Wednesday to disagree with Ramsey and-or Wolff, and wrote this Longhand at Jammin’ Java, on a couple of cups of Kenyan, Clairfontaine pad, Lamy pen, Waterman ink.)

While the essay technically is a rather new genre, formally starting with Montaigne in the 16th century, in other ways the essay is as old as story or myth or history, coming from an oral tradition, even.

Give someone a fish, he’ll eat today. Teach him to fish, he’ll be able to eat the rest of his life. What words do you use to teach?

That is an essay. It’s an essay because the oral tradition likely did not begat instruction manuals or how-to books. Nobody outside of modern technicians ever gave just the facts. An experienced fisherman would, first, spice up the lesson with an anecdote or three, for entertainment or also for emphasis (a lively bit of story helps the memory). Second, the teacher will think his techniques are superior over those of other fisherman and say so, one way or another.

Hence, the basic essay: exposition to persuade. And we could not have survived to the present day without delivery of instructions. You won’t find in the Bible instructions about sparking a flint into kindling, but that got passed down.

I would modify Wolff the Stanford professor thus: Storytelling is suited for the night, essays in the daylight.

The day has hunting and gathering, tending the children, maintaining the village or camp, and warring. Storytelling has the night to itself: It’s when questions come up and there’s time to answer them or speculate. (Metaphorically day and night. There’s night duties and rainy days. Gad!) Essays are mainly “here’s how” with some “here’s why” to justify actions. Stories are “here’s why” with some “here’s how” to ground them. Essays help the body or group survive. Stories help the mind or heart to thrive.

Chess, now we could get along without that.

Postscript: A day after Wednesday, on deciding to make a Brick of the above, I wondered where journalism fit in. It must be lower than chess.

Journalism as we think of it just serves democracy as practiced recently (not Greek democracy). As a thus solely political genre, and dry and relevant merely to housing starts and school population distribution, journalism not only is a short-time but an artificial genre. In journalism publications you might see story and essay; those remain story and essay. Essays can be anything not too strict. Story can be all or mostly fiction, or as close to “just how it happened” as humanely possible, whether the last turns out to be a book of memoirs or an 800-word feature article. Which can be found in journalism. Which yellows with age. -30-