Talk

[sartorias]

I am in lovely Minneapolis, second day of Fourth Street, which got off to an excellent start yesterday. So many Viable Paradise alums here! The writers of each year have been bonding into tight networks of mutual support and inside info. It's great to see

Comments

[whswhs]

Looking at your post, and at the remarks of the panelist you quote, on one hand, I'm not sure that gossip and storytelling come from the same impulse. Doesn't storytelling need a narrativistically satisfying conclusion: an X happened, and then Y happened, and then Z happened? It seems to me that gossip tends to present X and invite emotional reactions, but a lot of gossip is about "stories" that haven't reached any conclusion.

But I'm more puzzled by the distinction between "stories," however defined, and "literature." I don't think I get the point of this distinction; I'm not sure what "literature" is meant to refer to here. Did the panelist say anything about her concept of literature, or do you have a guess what she was thinking of?

[sartorias]

Literature is also about craft, and various other elements, whereas stories can be simple, recited orally and not very well (as gossip is usually related). Also, gossip tells a story, even if there isn't a conclusion through what is reported, gossipers will often supply their own. "Gloria is sleeping with Orland behind Theodoric's back!" "Oh, when he finds out, she will find herself dumped faster than a rock from the castle wall." That's right!" "And he'll turn right around and marry again!"

[whswhs]

Hmmm. I'm not sure, but that sounds as if it is making "literature" not a judgment of kind, but a judgment of merit or quality. Like the people, you know, who will call a story with spaceships and robots and energy weapons "fantasy" if they think the scientific part aren't sufficiently rigorous, or the people who will call something a "poem" if they admire the style, even if it's not in anything you could call "verse."

Though I suppose it could also be said that "literature" includes works that attempt craft and do it badly. There are surely lots of ways to do this: Overblown and pretentious language, technical experiments that hinder comprehension, artificial stylistic rules like the unities of time and place, . . . In that case, you would have purely descriptive uses of both "story" and "literature."

[sartorias]

I was thinking more of form, and mainly written. Gossip can be written, of course, but no one is thinking about form.