TITLE: The Narrative Impulse
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: January 26, 2020 10:23 AM
DESC: 
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BODY:
 Maybe people don't tell stories only to make sense of the world,
 but rather sometimes to deceive themselves?

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
 It was an interesting idea, I said, that the narrative impulse
 might spring from the desire to avoid guilt, rather than from
 the need -- as was generally assumed -- to connect things
 together in a meaningful way; that it was a strategy calculated,
 in other words, to disburden ourselves of responsibility.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

 This is from <EM>Kudos</EM>, by Rachel Cusk.  <EM>Kudos</EM>
 is the third book in an unconventional trilogy, following
 <EM>Outline</EM> and <EM>Transit</EM>.  I blogged on a passage
 from <EM>Transit</EM> last semester, about
<A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2019-10.html#e2019-10-27T10_23_47.htm">
   making something that is part of who you are</A>.

 I have wanted to recommend Cusk and these books, but I do not feel
 up to the task of describing how or why I think so highly of them.
 They are unorthodox narratives about narrative.  To me, Cusk is a
 mesmerizing story-teller who intertwines stories about people and
 their lives with the fabric of story-telling itself.  She seems
 to value the stories we tell about ourselves, and yet see through
 them, to some overarching truth.

 As for my own narrative impulse, I think of myself as writing posts
 for this blog in order to make connections among the many things I
 learn -- or at least that is I tell myself.  Cusk has me taking
 seriously the idea that some of the stories I tell may come from
 somewhere else.
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