Stories within stories
Jan. 19th, 2007 09:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
khiemtranThere's a curious common factor between The Water Margin, Soul Mountain, The Last Jet Engine Laugh and The Zahir, all of which I've mentioned in this blog.
All of them are embellished with memorable stories - little incidents or anecdotes that stick in the mind. These are sorts of stories that get passed on by word of mouth - short, but gripping and resonant. Some are moral tales, some are tall tales, some are just amazing situations or coincidences.
The interesting thing is the different ways they get sewn into the fabric of each novel. In The Water Margin, the tales are part of the plot itself. Each little episode is a mini story and the setting is suitably unrealistic to allow them to fit in. In Soul Mountain, by comparison set in modern China, the stories are all one step removed - some of them are told by word of mouth - perhaps they are only apocryphal anyway; others are invented by the narrator and clearly portrayed as such. In The Last Jet Engine Laugh, there's a mix of outlandish actual events and unreliable accounts. The author seems to have been careful to keep the wilder stories out of the way of the main plot events (where they might have ben taken for melodrama), but gives them free rein in his digressions. In The Zahir, finally, they barely feature in the plot at all, but they tend to occur in lectures and dialogue from people who deliberately collect and share such stories.
It's got me thinking about whether I've left space for these sorts of stories in my own work. As shown above, it doesn't take much to let them in, and they do add a lot to my enjoyment of the novels. The right sort of narrator perhaps, or the right sort of character. Or the right sort of mood that allows things to be just a bit larger than life when they need to be, without spoiling the rest of the plot.
All of them are embellished with memorable stories - little incidents or anecdotes that stick in the mind. These are sorts of stories that get passed on by word of mouth - short, but gripping and resonant. Some are moral tales, some are tall tales, some are just amazing situations or coincidences.
The interesting thing is the different ways they get sewn into the fabric of each novel. In The Water Margin, the tales are part of the plot itself. Each little episode is a mini story and the setting is suitably unrealistic to allow them to fit in. In Soul Mountain, by comparison set in modern China, the stories are all one step removed - some of them are told by word of mouth - perhaps they are only apocryphal anyway; others are invented by the narrator and clearly portrayed as such. In The Last Jet Engine Laugh, there's a mix of outlandish actual events and unreliable accounts. The author seems to have been careful to keep the wilder stories out of the way of the main plot events (where they might have ben taken for melodrama), but gives them free rein in his digressions. In The Zahir, finally, they barely feature in the plot at all, but they tend to occur in lectures and dialogue from people who deliberately collect and share such stories.
It's got me thinking about whether I've left space for these sorts of stories in my own work. As shown above, it doesn't take much to let them in, and they do add a lot to my enjoyment of the novels. The right sort of narrator perhaps, or the right sort of character. Or the right sort of mood that allows things to be just a bit larger than life when they need to be, without spoiling the rest of the plot.
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Date: 2007-01-19 04:59 pm (UTC)It wouldn't quite stand alone as a short story, but I feel it would make a good bit to read, should I ever be in the position to be doing author readings and wanted a change from the opening pages.