Information, Progress, & Speed

     “In his 1936 essay ‘The Storyteller,’ (Walter) Benjamin posits that the storyteller, as well as the story itself, has lost primacy in a world that craves information, progress, and speed. The teller of tales is therefore left ‘remote,’ an endangered species. The storyteller, in the oldest sense of the word – ie the one who imparts counsel or wisdom, who carries forth the tradition of tales – has been eclipsed in Benjamin’s mind by the stultifying demands of modern life. ‘Every morning brings us the news of the globe,’ he writes, ‘and yet we are poor in noteworthy stories. This is because no event any longer comes to us without already being shot through with explanation. In other words, by now almost nothing that happens benefits storytelling; almost everything benefits information.’ ”

        Michael Paterniti “The Telling Room. A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World’s Greatest Piece of Cheese.” The Dial Press, NY, 2013.

Les Deux Magots, Paris

What's in a Story?

      “A story is time itself, boxed and compressed. It is the briefest entertainment and simulacrum of real life, which is big and messy and requires a strange kind of endurance. The story is stylized for that flash of laughter and pain, thwarted desire and odd consummation, while life waterfalls with it – all of it – every day; prodigious, cloying, in decay. And when the story is finally over – even if the protagonist survives a spray of gunfire and goes on living – it’s over. Meanwhile, life carries on, river-swift.”

       Michael Paterniti “The Telling Room. A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World’s Greatest Piece of Cheese.” The Dial Press, NY, 2013.

Agricola Street, Halifax, NS