What happens
when we first start reading a story?
Suppose one story begins with the sentence, “Webster sat upright.” Well, the implication is that Webster was lying down prior to our introduction to him, but this still does not tell us much. We are, at this stage, in a state of sparse knowledge. This initial sentence standing by itself is in fact quite perplexing, outside of the context of its status as the initial sentence in a storybook. We do not usually find ourselves with exactly one sentence-worth of knowledge about a person/place/event. And yet, one sentence is in fact all we have—and before we had that one sentence, “Webster sat upright”, we had even less. Before parsing the first word of our story, there was merely an understanding that we were about to begin a story.
This, of course, implies some things on its own--depending on our author and his/her disposition toward literary theory, it may mean that the reader is expected to be cognizant of her position as spectator in the story about to follow—for instance, our author may expect us to be patient as regards the progress of the story, and to accept a little confusion while all details become clear.
Yet regardless of our author, or our own inner state of expectation, we as readers just beginning a story are necessarily in a position incomparable to most of our day-to-day conscious lives, a very unique position. It could be said to be similar in some ways to the position of someone who woke up not knowing who they were, where they were, how they got there, etc. It is not exactly analagous, since neither a 3rd person nor 1st person written perspective is really much like experiencing things oneself, but nonetheless what is at stake is consciousness.
When we are in such a knowledge-poor situation as having just begun a story, since we have been essentially dropped into some foreign environment, or even into a foreign mind, we must be as receptive as possible of information—in the form of names, of knowledge of who is speaking, of associations and relationships, anything at all that can give us, first, a reference point, and second, other things to which to refer. Then we can proceed to further clarify these relations, their environment, and eventually to connect all of us this to things that are familiar or important to us, whether that be our ideals and values, or our sense of place in history, in culture—anything.
Narrative in this sense can be said to be the medium of all learning.
Suppose one story begins with the sentence, “Webster sat upright.” Well, the implication is that Webster was lying down prior to our introduction to him, but this still does not tell us much. We are, at this stage, in a state of sparse knowledge. This initial sentence standing by itself is in fact quite perplexing, outside of the context of its status as the initial sentence in a storybook. We do not usually find ourselves with exactly one sentence-worth of knowledge about a person/place/event. And yet, one sentence is in fact all we have—and before we had that one sentence, “Webster sat upright”, we had even less. Before parsing the first word of our story, there was merely an understanding that we were about to begin a story.
This, of course, implies some things on its own--depending on our author and his/her disposition toward literary theory, it may mean that the reader is expected to be cognizant of her position as spectator in the story about to follow—for instance, our author may expect us to be patient as regards the progress of the story, and to accept a little confusion while all details become clear.
Yet regardless of our author, or our own inner state of expectation, we as readers just beginning a story are necessarily in a position incomparable to most of our day-to-day conscious lives, a very unique position. It could be said to be similar in some ways to the position of someone who woke up not knowing who they were, where they were, how they got there, etc. It is not exactly analagous, since neither a 3rd person nor 1st person written perspective is really much like experiencing things oneself, but nonetheless what is at stake is consciousness.
When we are in such a knowledge-poor situation as having just begun a story, since we have been essentially dropped into some foreign environment, or even into a foreign mind, we must be as receptive as possible of information—in the form of names, of knowledge of who is speaking, of associations and relationships, anything at all that can give us, first, a reference point, and second, other things to which to refer. Then we can proceed to further clarify these relations, their environment, and eventually to connect all of us this to things that are familiar or important to us, whether that be our ideals and values, or our sense of place in history, in culture—anything.
Narrative in this sense can be said to be the medium of all learning.
http://tarquinius-superbus.blogspot.com/2008/07/on-beginnings_03.html
ReplyDeleteVery relevant ... I'd like to believe my writing style us slightly more clear than that contained behind your link, but as I said very relevant. I think that I agree very much with the writer, even that I was essaying to express some of the very same ideas as he was, but... hard to say with certainty. Partially because it was a short passage, and was insufficient to establish its own "beginning", or context.
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