Telling stories about telling stories

Krishna makes an interesting point on his thought clusters blog about professions that involve getting paid for talking about the profession itself.

Historically most professions made this impossible. You can’t make a building about making a building, or prepare a meal that’s about preparing a meal. It’d be a real stretch if you tried (“The mashed potatoes represent the mashing of my mind in trying to decide what to make…”). Most kinds of work don’t create a narrative that’s easy for people to follow. But speaking and writing are based on narrative, this happens and then that happens, and on it goes. And you can tell a story about anything, including telling stories. Or telling stories about telling stories. Or blogging about speaking about telling stories about blogging.

The problem of course is that this gets annoying fast. People who hate Wallace’s Infinite Jest or Dave Egger’s A heartbreaking work of staggering genius, hate it because these works are self aware and self involved in a way narratives traditionally are not. But other people love these works for exactly the same reasons. Any kind of story can be made interesting if told well. Master storytellers can get away with a lot of things the rest of us can’t.

Personally I’m interested in writing and speaking for the same singular reason. It’s about making connections between people and ideas. That’s really all I care about. If I thought I could do that better with oil paints or interpretive dance I would. But since I’m pretty sure I can’t, so I’ll stick with things involving words.

Posted Wednesday, February 18th, 2009 at 8:32 pm

in On writing, creative thinking, public speaking | 3 Comments » |

Scott - February 19, 2009 at 11:57 am #

True, but it’s expressed in writing or in talking. Lots of subjects involve talking about thinking about thinking, including philosophy, psychology, therapy, etc.

You could say thinking itself is a kind of narrative, but it’s not a kind of expression. I can’t share my thinking with you without writing or talking about it. I could dance about my thoughts, or do a thousand other things, but they are more abstract ways to express a thought than writing or thinking are.

When I say abstract, I don’t mean worse – sometimes dancing about something is more expressive and effective than writing about it, but it’s harder to do and usually more involved for both the creator and the receiver to figure out what’s being expressed.

arjun - February 20, 2009 at 5:07 pm #

Hi Scott,

What is your opinion on using alcohol as a basis for developing good relationships? How much can alcohol affect one’s thought processes and do you agree with the phrase “vino veritas” (“there is truth in wine”)?

Arjun