STORIES IN OUR LIVES: The Ways and Whys of Narrative
Presented by Gary Draper
Spring 2017
This series will examine the important roles played by narrative in entertainment, in
literature and the other arts, and in our lives. We will look at a broad range of story
forms, with consideration of their histories and their effects. Why do we tell stories?
How do we tell them, and what difference does that make? And when we read them or
listen to them or watch them, what are we looking for?
INTRODUCTION
The Reader’s Bill of Rights
1.
2.
3.
4,
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
The right to not read
The right to skip pages
The right to not finish a book
The right to re-read
The right to read anything
The right to escapism
The right to read anywhere
The right to browse
The right to read out loud
The right to not defend your tastes
--Daniel Pennac, Better Than Life.
“I’m forced to say that it seems very unsatisfying to me, and simply no story at all, if the
ending is to be left so far in the air,” a New Yorker editor wrote in an internal memo
about Mavis Gallant’s 1961 story “Two Questions.” “Seems to me that something should
be completed, or it’s just a long sketch. . . . It’s like life, and not—to me—like fiction.”
William Maxwell, Gallant’s editor, replied, “The older I get the more grateful I am not to
be told how everything comes out.”
—Deborah Treisman, “Mavis Gallant,” New Yorker, March 3, 2014.
Thus I rediscovered what writers have always known (and have told us again and
again): books always speak of other books, and every story tells a story that has already
been told.
—Umberto Eco, Postscript to The Name of the Rose
Every tiny detail of your experience between birth and death would require an infinite
amount of time to be exhaustively explained. Thus, to give me an idea of who you are—
to ‘tell me the story of your life’—not only do you need to forget millions of things, you
need to omit other millions. Of necessity, you will select the events you deem the most
salient, relevant, or important, and organize them into narratives.
In other words, very innocently you will spin tales. Using the same techniques as
professional novelists, all of us create the novels of our lives.
--Nancy Huston, The Tale Tellers
The modern philosopher Daniel Dennett, whose ideas have been shaped in part by the
discoveries of cognitive neuroscience, echoes Schopenhauer when he suggests we think
of our conscious self as a virtuoso novelist, engaged in drafting and redrafting a story in
which we are the central protagonist—the ‘chief fictional character’.
-- Ian Leslie, Born Liars
She breaks the silence by saying that it’s not healthy to live life as a succession of
isolated little cool moments. “Either our lives become stories, or there’s just no way to
get through them.”
-- Douglas Coupland, Generation X
There is a story, always ahead of you. Barely existing. Only gradually do you attach
yourself to it and feed it. You discover the carapace that will contain and test your
character. You find in this way the path of your life.
--Michael Ondaatje, Cat’s Table
March 21
Connecting with stories:
How we start, Why they matter
I. Introduction – How stories matter, and why
From our earliest years, stories are part of how we understand ourselves and the world
around us. We’ll look at the enormous varieties of ways stories touch our lives.
II. Narratives in Literature 1: Short Stories
Since the nineteenth century, the short story has been an important literary form of
narrative. Given the speed of life in the 21st century, it's a more appealing form than
ever: we'll look at some of the starting points, and some of the current versions of the
short story.
Books about narrative
H. Porter Abbott. The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. Cambridge, 2002.
Robert Fulford. The Triumph of Narrative: Storytelling in the Age of Mass Culture.
Toronto, 1999.
Nancy Huston. The Tale-Tellers. Toronto, 2008
Michael White. Maps of Narrative Practice. New York, 2007.
Books about reading, especially the pleasures of reading
Robert Adams. A Love of Reading: Reviews of Contemporary Fiction. Toronto, 2001.
Robert Alter. The Pleasures of Reading in an Ideological Age. New York, 1989.
Anne Fadiman. Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader. Toronto, 1998.
Nick Hornby. The Complete Polysyllabic Spree. London, 2006.
Alberto Manguel. A Reading Diary. Toronto, 2004.
________. The Library at Night. Toronto, 2006.
Daniel Pennac. Better Than Life. trans. David Homel. Toronto, 1994.
Francine Prose. Reading Like a Writer. Toronto, 2006.
Joe Queenan. One for the Books. Toronto, 2012.
Books about fiction
Wayne C. Booth. The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago, 1961.
James Woods. How Fiction Works. New York, 2008.
Fiction that reflects on narrative
Alan Bennett. The Uncommon Reader. London, 2007.
Italo Calvino. If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler. New York, 1981.
Yann Martel. Life of Pi. Toronto, 2001.
Salman Rushdie. Haroun and the Sea of Stories. London, 1990.
Bibliotherapy
Della Berthoud & Susan Elderkin. The Novel Cure. Toronto, 2013.
Joseph Gold. Read for Your Life: Literature as a Life Support System. Markham, Ont.,
1990.
Will Schwale. Books for Living. New York, 2017
A somewhat personal list of fine short stories
Sir Walter Scott. “The Two Drovers.” Chronicles of the Cannongate. 2003.
Edgar Allan Poe. “The Tell-Tale Heart.” The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan
Poe. 1938.
Guy de Maupassant. “The Jewels.” Selected Short Stories. 1971.
Joseph Conrad. “The Secret Sharer.” Selected Short Stories. 1998.
Anton Chekhov. “The Lady with the Pet Dog.” Selected Short Stories. 1960.
Rudyard Kipling. “The Man Who Would Be King.” Kipling: A Selection of His Stories and
Poems. 1956.
Somerset Maugham. “An Official Position.” The Oxford Book of Short Stories. 1981.
James Joyce. “The Dead.” Dubliners. Many editions.
Katherine Mansfield. “The Doll’s House.” The Short Stories of Katherine Mansfield.
1937.
D. H. Lawrence. “The Rocking-Horse Winner.” The Best Short Stories of the Modern
Age. 1962.
William Faulkner. “That Evening Sun.” The Best American Short Stories of the Century.
2000.
Jorge Luis Borges. “The Library of Babel.” Ficciones. 1962.
Ernest Hemingway. “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place.” The Short Stories of Ernest
Hemingway. 1953.
V. S. Pritchett. “The Camberwell Beauty.” Collected Stories. 1982.
Morley Callaghan. “All the Years of Her Life.” Morley Callaghan’s Stories. 1959
Frank O’Connor. “Judas.” Collected Stories. 1981.
John Cheever. “The Swimmer.” The Stories of John Cheever. 1978.
Mavis Gallant. “My Heart Is Broken.” The Collected Stories of Mavis Gallant. 1996.
William Trevor. “Cheating at Canasta.” Selected Stories. 2010.
Chinua Achebe. “Civil Peace.” Girls at War and Other Stories. 1972.
Alice Munro. “Meneseteung.” Friend of My Youth. 1990.
John Updike. “Your Lover Just Called.” Too Far to Go. 1979.
Rudy Wiebe. “Where is the Voice Coming From?” Where is the Voice Coming From?
1974.
Andre Dubus. “A Father’s Story.” The Times Are Never So Bad. 1986.
Alistair MacLeod. “The Lost Salt Gift of Blood.” The Lost Salt Gift of Blood. 1976
Isabel Allende. “Clarisa.” The Stories of Eva Luna. 1991.
Isabel Huggan. “End of the Empire.” You Never Know. 1993.
Thomas King. “ A Coyote Columbus Story.” One Good Story, That One. 1993.
Tim O’Brien. “The Things They Carried.” The Things They Carried. 1990.
Amy Bloom. “The Story.” A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You. 2000.
Lorrie Moore. “How to Talk to Your Mother (Notes).” Self-Help. 1985.
John Gould. “Two Things Together.” Kilter: 55 Fictions. 2003.
Michael Crummey. “Bread.” Hard Light. 1998.
Annabel Lyon. “Song.” Oxygen. 2000.
Carrie Snyder. “Rat” The Juliet Stories. 2012
Some anthologies
The Best American Short Stories of the Century. Ed. Updike & Kenison. New York,
2000.
The Best Short Stories of the Modern Age. Ed. Douglas Angus. New York, 1962.
Canadian Short Stories. Ed. Russell Brown & Donna Bennett. Toronto, 2005.
Canadian Short Stories [series 1-5]. Ed. Robert Weaver. Toronto, 1960-1991.
Contemporary Fiction: 50 Short Stories since 1970. Ed. Williford & Martone. New York,
1999.
The Journey Prize Anthology. Toronto, 1989—
The Oxford Book of American Short Stories. Ed. Joyce Carol Oates. New York, 1994.
The Oxford Book of English Short Stories. Ed. A. S. Byatt. New York, 2003.
The Oxford Book of Short Stories. Ed. V. S. Pritchett. Oxford, 1981.
The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories. Ed. Tobias Wolff. New York,
1993.
The World of the Short Story: A 20th Century Collection. Ed. Clifton Fadiman. Boston,
1986.
March 28
Narratives in Literature 2: The Novel
In western literature, the novel has been, for several centuries, the single most
important literary source of narrative. We'll discuss some of the variations on the form,
from its beginnings to the present.
A highly personal—perhaps even eccentric—list of splendid novels
Daniel Defoe. Robinson Crusoe. 1719.
Jonathan Swift. Gulliver’s Travels. 1726.
Henry Fielding. The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling. 1749.
Laurence Sterne. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. 1769.
Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice. 1813.
Mary Shelley. Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus. 1818.
James Fenimore Cooper. The Last of the Mohicans. 1826.
Charlotte Brontë. Jane Eyre. 1847.
Emily Brontë. Wuthering Heights. 1847.
Herman Melville. Moby Dick. 1851
Gustave Flaubert. Madame Bovary. 1856.
Charles Dickens. Great Expectations. 1861
Fyodor Dostoevsky. Crime and Punishment. 1866.
Leo Tolstoy. War and Peace. 1869.
George Eliot. Middlemarch. 1874.
Robert Louis Stevenson. Treasure Island. 1883.
Mark Twain. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. 1884.
Thomas Hardy. The Mayor of Casterbridge. 1886.
Stephen Crane. The Red Badge of Courage. 1895.
Henry James. The Turn of the Screw. 1898.
Joseph Conrad. Lord Jim. 1900.
Rudyard Kipling Kim. 1901.
Kenneth Grahame. The Wind in the Willows. 1908.
D. H. Lawrence. Sons and Lovers. 1913.
Ford Madox Ford. The Good Soldier. 1915.
James Joyce. Ulysses. 1920.
E. M. Forster. A Passage to India. 1924.
F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby. 1925.
Virginia Woolf. Mrs. Dalloway. 1925.
William Faulkner. The Sound and the Fury. 1929.
Aldous Huxley. Brave New World. 1932.
John Dos Passos. USA Trilogy. 1938.
John Steinbeck. The Grapes of Wrath. 1939.
Evelyn Waugh. Brideshead Revisited. 1945.
J. D. Salinger. The Catcher in the Rye. 1951.
Ernest Buckler. The Mountain and the Valley. 1952.
Ralph Ellison. Invisible Man. 1952
Kingsley Amis. Lucky Jim. 1954.
William Golding. The Lord of the Flies. 1954.
J. R. R. Tolkien. The Lord of the Rings. 1955.
Chinua Achebe. Things Fall Apart. 1958.
Muriel Spark. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. 1960.
Joseph Heller. Catch-22. 1961
John Updike. Rabbit, Run. 1961.
Richard Yates. Revolutionary Road. 1961.
John le Carré. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. 1963
Margaret Laurence. The Stone Angel. 1964.
John Williams. Stoner. 1965.
Sylvia Plath. The Bell Jar. 1966.
Gabriel García Márquez. One Hundred Years of Solitude. 1967.
John Fowles. The French Lieutenant’s Woman. 1969.
Ursula K. LeGuin. The Left Hand of Darkness. 1969.
Kurt Vonnegut. Slaughterhouse Five. 1969.
Robertson Davies. Fifth Business. 1970.
Rudy Wiebe. The Temptations of Big Bear. 1973.
Timothy Findley. The Wars. 1977.
Michael Ondaatje. Coming Through Slaughter. 1979
Joy Kogawa. Obasan. 1981.
Salman Rushdie. Midnight’s Children. 1981.
Julian Barnes. Flaubert’s Parrot. 1984.
Don DeLillo. White Noise. 1985
Charles Baxter. First Light. 1987.
Nino Ricci. Lives of the Saints. 1990.
Vikram Seth. An Equal Music. 1991
Cormac McCarthy. All the Pretty Horses. 1992
Penelope Fitzgerald. The Blue Flower. 1995
Neil Gaiman. Neverwhere. 1996.
J. M. Coetzee. Disgrace. 1999.
Ian McEwen. Atonement. 2001.
Yann Martel. The Life of Pi. 2001.
Richard Wright. Clara Callan. 2002
Guy Vanderhaeghe. The Last Crossing. 2002
Susanna Clarke. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. 2004
Jane Gardam. Old Filth. 2004.
John Banville. The Sea. 2005
Joseph Boyden. Three-Day Road. 2005.
Lori Lansens. The Girls. 2006.
Lionel Shriver. We Need to Talk about Kevin. 2006.
Michael Crummey. Galore. 2009.
Helen Humphreys. Coventry. 2009
Hilary Mantel. Wolf Hall. 2009.
Emma Donaghue. Room. 2010.
David Mitchell. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. 2010.
Alison Pick. Far To Go. 2010.
Philipp Meyer. The Son. 2013.
Carrie Snyder. Girl Runner. 2014.
April 4
Listening to stories
I. A Word in your Ear
There's something very special about being read to, or otherwise hearing stories. We'll
explore some of the sources of oral stories, and look at some of the pleasures of spoken
texts.
II. Words and Music
Folksongs, ballads, popular songs, and Broadway: one way and another, they all have a
story to tell—or sing. We'll examine some examples of each, and think about the
difference a tune makes to a tale.
1. Songs that tell a story
a. Folksong
The ballad tradition:
The Great Silkie of Sule Skerrie (traditional)
Lady Franklin’s Lament (traditional)
First-person history: The Poor Little Girls of Ontario (traditional)
Un Canadien Errant (M. A. Gerain-Lajoie)
The narrator’s voice: Springhill Mining Disaster (MacColl & Seeger)
The Last Watch on the Midland (Stan Rogers)
The comic tradition:
Kelligrew’s Soiree (Johnny Burke)
The Poor Little Girls of Ontario (traditional)
The Black-Fly Song (Wade Hemsworth)
b. Popular song
Sentimental narratives: Scarlet Ribbons (Segal & Danzig)
Narratives of passion: Miss Otis Regrets (Cole Porter)
The dark side:
Strange Fruit (Lewis Allen)
Dialogue songs:
Baby It’s Cold Outside (Frank Loesser)
Melodrama:
Tell Laura I Love Her (Jeff Barry and Ben Raleigh)
2. Songs inside a narrative (musical theatre)
Foreshadowing: Something’s Coming (West Side Story, Bernstein & Sondheim)
Plot:
The Rain in Spain (My Fair Lady, Lerner & Lowe)
Character:
Adelaide’s Lament (Guys and Dolls, Frank Loesser)
Dialogue:
Take a Job (Do Re Mi, Styne, Comden, & Green)
Movement:
Shall We Dance? (The King and I, Rodgers & Hammerstein)
3. Music as narrative
Plot:
Au Fond du Temple Saint (The Pearl Fishers, Bizet)
Endings:
Ah, Violetta! (La Traviata, Verdi)
Spirituality:
For Unto Us (Messiah, Handel)
And a few more favourites because I can’t stop….
Songs
Alice’s Restaurant (Arlo Guthrie)
And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda (Eric Bogle)
Bad Bad Leroy Brown (Jim Croce)
Barrett’s Privateers (Stan Rogers)
El Paso (Marty Robbins)
Frankie and Johnnie (traditional)
John Henry (traditional)
Tom Dooley (traditional)
The Canadian Railroad Trilogy (Gordon Lightfoot)
Musicals
Anything Goes (Cole Porter)
Bye Bye Birdie (Adams & Strouse)
Cabaret (Ebb & Kander)
Camelot (Lerner & Loewe)
Crazy for You (George & Ira Gershwin)
Damn Yankees (Adler & Ross)
Guys and Dolls (Frank Loesser)
My Fair Lady (Lerner & Loewe)
The Music Man (Meredith Wilson)
Wicked (Stephen Schwartz)
A few operas that are easy to like
The Barber of Seville (Rossini)
Carmen (Bizet)
Dido and Aeneas (Purcell)
Madama Butterfly (Puccini)
The Magic Flute (Mozart)
Norma (Bellini)
La Traviata (Verdi)
Turandot (Puccini)
Gilbert & Sullivan - Pretty well everything
Many Christmas Carols
And just in case you want to listen to some old-time radio…
http://www.archive.org/details/oldtimeradio
Or some short stories…
https://www.theguardian.com/books/series/short-stories-podcast
April 11
Narratives in Literature 3: Poetry
We need to go back to classical civilization for the western origins of story, especially in
epic poetry. We'll consider some of the notable embodiments and values (then and now,
long and short) of stories in verse.
The Foundations of Narrative Poetry
Anon. Gilgamesh
Homer. The Odyssey
Ovid. Metamorphoses
Anon. Beowulf
Geoffrey Chaucer. The Canterbury Tales
Anon. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
John Milton. Paradise Lost
Some Other Well-known Narrative Poems
Alexander Pope. “The Rape of the Lock”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge. “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
Robert Browning. “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came”
Alfred Noyes. “The Highwayman”
Alfred, Lord Tennyson. “Idylls of the King,” “Ulysses”
Marriott Edgar. “Albert and the Lion”
A Few Shorter Poems with Narrative Dimension
Ben Jonson. “On My First Son”
Percy Bysshe Shelley. “Ozymandias”
Dylan Thomas. “Fern Hill”
Robert Frost. “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”
Henry Reed. “Lessons of the War: Naming of Parts”
Stevie Smith. “Not Waving But Drowning”
Fleur Adcock. “Things”
Some Canadian Narrative Poems
Robert W. Service. “The Shooting of Dan McGrew”
Pauline Johnson. Various poems in Flint and Feather
E. J. Pratt. Brebeuf and His Brethren
Al Purdy. Various poems in Beyond Remembering: The Collected Poems of Al Purdy
Margaret Atwood. The Journals of Susanna Moodie
Lorna Crozier. “The Gardens Within Us,” from Inventing the Hawk
Michael Ondaatje. The Collected Works of Billy the Kid
Michael Crummey. “Discovering Darkness,” from Hard Light
Randall Maggs. Night Work: The Sawchuk Poems
Sherwin Tjia. The World is a Heartbreaker: a pseudohaiku collection
See also: The Oxford Book of Narrative Verse. Ed. Iona & Peter Opie. Oxford, 1983.
April 18
Looking at Stories: From Still Life to Video
Narratives aren't always told—they may also be seen (a picture, you'll remember, is
worth a thousand words, at least in some people's minds). Visual stories can appear in
the most unexpected places, from cartoons to high art: we'll take a look. Drama and
film are made to be watched.
Some films based on or inspired by poems
O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000)
From “The Odyssey”
Beowulf & Grendel (2005) From “Beowulf”
Some films based on or inspired by short stories
Bringing Up Baby (1938) From “Bringing Up Baby” by Hagar Wilde
3:10 to Yuma (1957; remade 2007) From “3:10 to Yuma” by Elmore Leonard
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) From “The Sentinel” by Arthur C. Clarke
The Swimmer (1968) From “The Swimmer” by John Cheever
The Man Who Would Be King (1975) From “The Man Who Would be King” by Rudyard
Kipling
The Dead (1987) From “The Dead” by James Joyce
Smoke Signals (1998) From "This is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona" by
Sherman Alexie
Brokeback Mountain (2005) From “Brokeback Mountain” by Annie Proulx
Away from Her (2006) From “The Bear Came Over the Mountain” by Alice Munro
Some films based on or inspired by novels
Tom Jones (1963)
The Last of the Mohicans (1992; also 1920, 1932, 1936…)
Rob Roy (1995)
The English Patient (1996)
Mrs. Dalloway (1997)
About a Boy (2002)
Children of Men (2006)
Slumdog Millionaire (2008)
True Grit (2010; also 1969)
Life of Pi (2013)
Some of my (other) favourite films (or, Confessions of a middle-brow)
Metropolis (1927)
Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid (1969)
M (1931)
Midnight Cowboy (1969)
Trouble in Paradise (1932)
Patton (1970)
It Happened One Night (1934)
McCabe and Mrs Miller (1971)
Top Hat (1935)
Mon Oncle Antoine (1971)
Modern Times (1936)
Deliverance (1972)
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
Cabaret (1972)
Citizen Kane (1941)
The Godfather (1972)
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
American Graffiti (1973)
Casablanca (1942)
The Sting (1973)
To Be or Not to Be (1942)
The Conversation (1974)
The Ox-Bow Incident (1943)
Taxi Driver (1976)
Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
Apocalypse Now (1979)
Double Indemnity (1944)
The Black Stallion (1979)
Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)
Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)
It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
The Elephant Man (1980)
Out of the Past (1947)
Raging Bull (1980)
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
Chariots of Fire (1981)
The Third Man (1949)
Das Boot (1981)
Sunset Boulevard (1950)
Blade Runner (1982)
High Noon (1950)
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
On the Waterfront (1954)
The Dead (1987)
Rear Window (1954)
Babette’s Feast (1989)
Seven Samurai (1954)
The Last of the Mohicans (1992)
The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
Unforgiven (1992)
Wild Strawberries (1957)
Damage (1993)
Black Orpheus (1959)
Schindler’s List (1993)
Some Like It Hot (1959)
Shakespeare in Love (1998)
Psycho (1960)
Toy Story 2 (1999)
Tunes of Glory (1960)
Best in Show (2000)
Viridiana (1961)
Memento (2000)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Shrek (2001)
Tom Jones (1963)
Wit (2001)
Dr Strangelove (1964)
The Lives of Others (2006)
Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964)
No Country for Old Men (2007)
A Shot in the Dark (1964)
Rendition (2007)
Zulu (1964)
WALL-E (2008)
A Man for All Seasons (1966)
An Education (2009)
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
The Artist (2012)
Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
Midnight in Paris (2012)
Cool Hand Luke (1967)
Stories We Tell (2012)
In the Heat of the Night (1967)
12 Years a Slave (2014)
Two for the Road (1967)
Dallas Buyers Club (2014)
Wait Until Dark (1967)
Philomena (2014)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Boyhood (2015)
The Lion in Winter (1968)
The Theory of Everything (2015)