Comments on: Why we love a good yarn http://sedgemore.com/2008/09/why-we-love-a-good-yarn/ journalist and science writer Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:12:52 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Francis Sedgemore http://sedgemore.com/2008/09/why-we-love-a-good-yarn/comment-page-1/#comment-1167 Francis Sedgemore Wed, 01 Oct 2008 18:44:46 +0000 http://sedgemore.com/?p=2202#comment-1167 As long as you introduce me as "esteemed cultural critic Herr Doktor Francis Sedgemore". As long as you introduce me as “esteemed cultural critic Herr Doktor Francis Sedgemore”.

]]> By: Anja http://sedgemore.com/2008/09/why-we-love-a-good-yarn/comment-page-1/#comment-1166 Anja Wed, 01 Oct 2008 18:43:01 +0000 http://sedgemore.com/?p=2202#comment-1166 "... but what a miserable bugger is Graham Swift". May I quote you on that when I teach the book? “… but what a miserable bugger is Graham Swift”.

May I quote you on that when I teach the book?

]]> By: Francis Sedgemore http://sedgemore.com/2008/09/why-we-love-a-good-yarn/comment-page-1/#comment-1165 Francis Sedgemore Wed, 01 Oct 2008 18:35:03 +0000 http://sedgemore.com/?p=2202#comment-1165 Anja - Waterland is a disturbing text, and to my mind one that is warped by the author's own twisted melancholia. So the Atkinsons made history while the Cricks spun yarns? The Atkinsons are few while the Cricks are legion, in which case stories not replacing the world is neither here nor there. The quoted passage is great writing, but what a miserable bugger is Graham Swift! Anja – Waterland is a disturbing text, and to my mind one that is warped by the author’s own twisted melancholia. So the Atkinsons made history while the Cricks spun yarns? The Atkinsons are few while the Cricks are legion, in which case stories not replacing the world is neither here nor there.

The quoted passage is great writing, but what a miserable bugger is Graham Swift!

]]> By: Anja http://sedgemore.com/2008/09/why-we-love-a-good-yarn/comment-page-1/#comment-1164 Anja Wed, 01 Oct 2008 17:18:36 +0000 http://sedgemore.com/?p=2202#comment-1164 It's odd, the pervasiveness of the topic of narrative. Once you're hooked, you find it everywhere. I'm currently rereading Graham Swift's novel Waterland (still as disturbing as it was when I first read it a while ago), and came across the following passage: "To live in the Fens is to receive strong doses of reality. The great flat monotony of reality. Melancholia and self-murder are not unknown in the Fens. Heavy drinking, madness and sudden acts of violence are not uncommon. How do you surmount reality, children? How do you acquire, in a flat country, the tonic of elevated feelings? .... If you have become prosperous by selling fine quality barley, if you can look down from your Norfolk uplands and see in these level Fens - this nothing-landscape - an Idea, a drawing-board for your plans, you can outwit reality. But if your are born in the middle of that flatness, fixed in it, glued to it even by the mud in which it abounds ...? How did the Cricks outwit reality? By telling stories. Down to the last generation, they were not only phlegmatic but superstitious and credulous creatures. Suckers for stories. While the Atkinsons made history, the Cricks spun yarns." I underlined this passage when I first read it, commenting upon it in the margin: "perspective!". Today,this pompous token of my former misguided radical constructionism ("Reality is all stories!") really seems to miss the point of the novel - which emphasises that although we make stories out of reality, and for many reasons, these stories can't replace the world. Anja It’s odd, the pervasiveness of the topic of narrative. Once you’re hooked, you find it everywhere.

I’m currently rereading Graham Swift’s novel Waterland (still as disturbing as it was when I first read it a while ago), and came across the following passage:

“To live in the Fens is to receive strong doses of reality. The great flat monotony of reality. Melancholia and self-murder are not unknown in the Fens. Heavy drinking, madness and sudden acts of violence are not uncommon. How do you surmount reality, children? How do you acquire, in a flat country, the tonic of elevated feelings? …. If you have become prosperous by selling fine quality barley, if you can look down from your Norfolk uplands and see in these level Fens – this nothing-landscape – an Idea, a drawing-board for your plans, you can outwit reality. But if your are born in the middle of that flatness, fixed in it, glued to it even by the mud in which it abounds …?

How did the Cricks outwit reality? By telling stories. Down to the last generation, they were not only phlegmatic but superstitious and credulous creatures. Suckers for stories. While the Atkinsons made history, the Cricks spun yarns.”

I underlined this passage when I first read it, commenting upon it in the margin: “perspective!”. Today,this pompous token of my former misguided radical constructionism (“Reality is all stories!”) really seems to miss the point of the novel – which emphasises that although we make stories out of reality, and for many reasons, these stories can’t replace the world.

Anja

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