The whole of this post deals with how we tell stories and who we tell those stories to, and what it means to tell THOSE stories in Those ways. Mostly it’s a handful of audiobook I was listening to this wekeend as I played video games and drove around town.
Aesop’s Fables
I teach Aesop’s Fables to students, especially my English 12 (collab/special education) class because it allows us to look very directly for the ways in which we connect the words of the author to the ideas and concepts we claim a story is “about”. For fables, it’s easy to identify “themes” because they tell us directly these themes. But they also allow us to question whether or not the story actually conveys that theme or not. So when we look at the moral to the story, we can work backward in both what seems clearly what the story seems to want to be saying, but also work toward the idea of whether or not we think the story actually does convey that meaning.
I do something similar with other stories in terms of inferences. We look at stories, we identify what we know for sure, and then we identify what we think we know, and then we identify what we’re making guesses about.
Anyway, I have always loved Fables. There’s a nice little clarity to the whole mess of them. And sure, sometimes you end up with ones that don’t quite work, but this collection had 160 and maybe only one sorta rubbed me the wrong way.
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/Aesops-Fables-Classic-Charles-Santore/dp/1604338105/ref=sr_1_5?crid=2FH6CUG98WH1U&keywords=aesops+fables&qid=1552255594&s=gateway&sprefix=aesop%2Caps%2C152&sr=8-5)
Beowulf
I’ve read Beowulf a few times, and a few different translations. This one was a more or less prose translation. I think about Beowulf a lot as a teacher because it’s one of the UR-texts in English literature, but it’s also one of the UR-texts in teaching English in the United States. To Kill a Mockingbird is another. Great Gatsby is another. Romeo and Juliet is another. And the Odyssey is another. I go back and forth about whether or not it’s a good idea to teach texts like Beowulf. It’s challenging, sure, but also does it still matter to teach “culturally important” texts as much any more? And if so, how many? And if so, which ones? I still think Shakespeare is more or less important, but also I don’t tend to teach Shakespeare in English classes. For one, it’s really hard. For two, I’m not British and the culturally value is less clear. But when I do, I do for a few reasons. It’s not that I really feel that Shakespeare is so important that every one should read him in English class, but more so, I shouldn’t deny students the chance to read him.
Anyway, I’ve never taught Beowulf, and if I never do, it wouldn’t surprise me. While it’s a perfectly knowable text, I am less convinced that it matters that much except to provide a sense of continuity.
But also, I think that teachers teach Beowulf as a nonthinking act, and because it allows you to play the movie.
Just So Stories – 2/5
I rated this one as opposed to the other, because I didn’t want to get too much into different translations and how they change and matter. But with this one, it’s easier for me to deal with the language question because Kipling wrote in English, and I read and write in English (as you can see). So this is a book of “origin” stories or stories that tell mythical/fable-like origins of natural world questions – such as “How did the Leopard get his spots”. And I dunno man, I think I’ve come around to the idea that this book is kind of bullshit. I’ll explain. So there’s a story within this collection and it’s one of two that involve a set of neolithic characters inventing language. And so in this way, there’s a nod to the concept of mythology and oral literature being created. And well, that kind of pulls back the curtain for me. What is Kipling doing here? Is he just telling Children’s tales? But to what end? What is he teaching them?
For one, he invents a history and mythology about language and the development of language that is not only absolutely false (I know it’s fiction, but bear with me) but it’s also oddly offensive. The neolithic people are inventing English. So sure, I get it — he’s British, but this is the kind of Enlightenment thinking that allows for the very colonialism this book constantly steals from. There’s an oral culture and oral history of the people’s of England, Great Britain, and Ireland, but that’s not what we’re getting here. We’re getting and English writer reinventing a mythology for a set of ideas and places that already have their own oral history. And that history is not being collected here, it’s being erased and replaced. So I just don’t find it interesting or charming.
Also, the stories aren’t even that good. And I don’t feel super great about the implication that if they were good, I would be less harsh about them. But there we are.
Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules – 3/5
This is a collection of short stories under what I can only call the ethos of “stories that David Sedaris likes”. And that is NOT a problem. This is a very good collection of stories. But it’s also the same basic set of stories you’ll be given by your writing teacher at college. I like having access to the audio editions of a lot of these stories, but too many, if not almost all of these stories, are part of a received ideas collection of stories. What I mean by this is that when you poll someone who likes stories what stories they like, a bunch of these will be on their list.
So what are we getting here?
The other issue with this collection is simply that it came out about the same time as the New Yorker fiction podcast, which took this idea of writers reading stories they really like and running with it. I think those podcasts are still available, and most of them are great. This might be a launching pad for stories like that.
I reject the criticism I found on Amazon that this book is not funny, because a) it is and b) so what?