The Storyteller, or Goodbye campfire stories
To the modern reader, the subject of Walter Benjamin's essay, The Storyteller, may seem quite strange. Especially to the typical high school or college student, novels are the epitomy of stories. All the great stories are novels, right? What, then, is Walter Benjamin talking about when he criticizes the written type, novels and newspapers? In historical context, Benjamin was writing at a time when the novel was becoming the preeminent storytelling format. Sure, there were great novelists to come before, just look at some of Russian and German novelists from the 19th century that he mentions. By 1930, many classics written by "dead white men" had already been written. Benjamin, however, was referring mainly to the decline of the oral tradition, of the move towards reading novels rather than listening to stories. Benjamin characterizes the novelist as a lonely person who writes stories alone, as opposed to the storyteller who tels his stories when people are around to listen. In his essay, Walter Benjamin supports the oral tradition. He claims that the best stories can only be told, through a person's own experiences or others' experiences related to that person. He goes on to elaborate that today (well, in his 1930s days), people read novels and newspapers and when someone wants to hear a story, people are embarassed because they don't know how to tell a good story.
I tend to disagree with Walter Benjamin. I mean, yes I understand that it was a different time and place, and if I compare his situation to today's situation of blogging and books, that I would probably have sided with him in sticking to the old classic tradition rather than embrace the new one, but I think this is a different situation. In my hindsight opinion, novels are better than oral tradition, partially because novels can be read and read again in the same form. The storyteller does not have to be there to tell the story, and the story is the same everytime. In oral tradition, stories are changed with every telling, and certain elements are gained and lost. I'm more worried about what can be lost when a story is retold. The novelist may be a lonely person writing by himself/herself, and the reader may be a lonely person reading by himself/herself, but at least the novelist has sufficient time to write and rewrite his/her story. The novelist can change and edit, revise and tailor the story until everything is there. It is hard for me to imagine a storyteller being able to incorporate deep levels of symbolism, moral values, allegories, and references, simply by telling a story. Sure, there are exceptions, like Homer's Illiad and Odyssey. Supposedly, those stories were told for hundreds of years and refined through oral tradition until someone decided to write it down. But my question is this: if soemone had not written it down, what would that story be today? Could we be certain that only the talented bards continued to pass this story down? It might have changed and mutated and probably have been updated to the times, sort of like the movie O Brother Where Art Thou? Then all that historical perspective would've been lost. Novels preserve historical details that oral tradition would've left out (in your version of the story, would you include references to things you didn't know about? Of course not, you'd add in your own version of them).
That's it.
I tend to disagree with Walter Benjamin. I mean, yes I understand that it was a different time and place, and if I compare his situation to today's situation of blogging and books, that I would probably have sided with him in sticking to the old classic tradition rather than embrace the new one, but I think this is a different situation. In my hindsight opinion, novels are better than oral tradition, partially because novels can be read and read again in the same form. The storyteller does not have to be there to tell the story, and the story is the same everytime. In oral tradition, stories are changed with every telling, and certain elements are gained and lost. I'm more worried about what can be lost when a story is retold. The novelist may be a lonely person writing by himself/herself, and the reader may be a lonely person reading by himself/herself, but at least the novelist has sufficient time to write and rewrite his/her story. The novelist can change and edit, revise and tailor the story until everything is there. It is hard for me to imagine a storyteller being able to incorporate deep levels of symbolism, moral values, allegories, and references, simply by telling a story. Sure, there are exceptions, like Homer's Illiad and Odyssey. Supposedly, those stories were told for hundreds of years and refined through oral tradition until someone decided to write it down. But my question is this: if soemone had not written it down, what would that story be today? Could we be certain that only the talented bards continued to pass this story down? It might have changed and mutated and probably have been updated to the times, sort of like the movie O Brother Where Art Thou? Then all that historical perspective would've been lost. Novels preserve historical details that oral tradition would've left out (in your version of the story, would you include references to things you didn't know about? Of course not, you'd add in your own version of them).
That's it.