Off to teach, but #WritersOfCoSo might enjoy this read, on how "story" sometimes clashes with life.
"When I read most work that’s out now—let alone most movies—what I see, basically, is fear. A fear of boring an audience. A fear of alienating an audience. And so there’s an obsession with a clever style. There’s an obsession above all with economy—with making sure that there is nothing extraneous in a work of art, nothing that detracts from the optimized story structure."
https://open.substack.com/pub/samkahn/p/against-stories
Not to mention Moby Dick, Clarissa (digressions and repetition in this case), and A Series of Unfortunate Events (if you've ever had the pleasure of reading this cynically comic and highly digressive children's series)...
Oh, great choice, Stephen! Thanks so much for sharing.
The other delight of Tristram Shandy is knowing that it was expressly making fun of conventions of its time by stymying reader expectations for a proper autobiography.
Sometimes silly self-centred 20th & 21st century people have been surprised to discover how "post-modern" it is, but that reaction only speaks to how little we're willing to believe that our ancestors had rich, playful narrative traditions all their own. 👌
@MLClark "making sure that there is nothing extraneous in a work of art." That sort of thing just reminds me of the time I read Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman in college (for fun). I was blown away by it, and still regard it with a certain amount of awe, mainly because it's primarily composed of digressions. It's one extraneous thing after another, and a great delight because of that.