You see me sitting at my desk-or at least you can see me if you care to call-with pen and ink, and simple nothingness before me, and if you come again in a few hours you will (in all probability) find a creation!' I am afraid, Salisbury, you haven't a proper idea of the dignity of an artist. 'Though! What a satire upon a noble profession. You seem in pretty comfortable circumstances, though.' ![]() I reflected, then, on my want of prospects, and I determined to embark in literature.' Let us have Chianti it may not be very good, but the flasks are simply charming.' Do you know, I have heard people describe olives as nasty! What lamentable Philistinism! I have often thought, Salisbury, that I could write genuine poetry under the influence of olives and red wine. ![]() I had a good classical education, and a positive distaste for business of any kind: that was the capital with which I faced the world. 'What did I do? Why, I sat down and reflected. 'What did you do then?' asked Salisbury, disposing of his hat, and settling down in the corner of the seat, with a glance of fond anticipation at the menu. Yes, as I was saying, I became even harder up.' I was wondering as I walked down whether the corner table were taken. But suppose we go in there might be other people who would like to dine-it's a human weakness, Salisbury.' My financial state was described by a friend as "stone broke." I don't approve of slang, mind you, but such was my condition. But the curious thing is that soon after you saw me I became harder up. 'My dear Salisbury, your memory is admirable. I think I remember your telling me that you owed five weeks' rent, and that you had parted with your watch for a comparatively small sum.' You remember I was getting rather hard up when you came to my place at Charlotte Street?' But where have you been, Dyson? I don't think I can have seen you for the last five years?' 'I beg your pardon-wasn't looking where I was going. His eyes were downcast in study of the pavement, and thus it was that as he passed in at the narrow door a man who had come up from the lower end of the street jostled against him. ![]() Charles Salisbury was slowly pacing down Rupert Street, drawing nearer to his favourite restaurant by slow degrees. This seminal book opens up in an entirely new way our understanding of the real purpose storytelling plays in our lives, and will be a talking point for years to come.ONE evening in autumn, when the deformities of London were veiled in faint blue mist, and its vistas and far-reaching streets seemed splendid, Mr. Drawing on a vast array of examples, from Proust to detective stories, from the Marquis de Sade to E.T., Christopher Booker then leads us through the extraordinary changes in the nature of storytelling over the past 200 years, and why so many stories have 'lost the plot' by losing touch with their underlying archetypal purpose.īooker analyses why evolution has given us the need to tell stories and illustrates how storytelling has provided a uniquely revealing mirror to mankind's psychological development over the past 5000 years. Using a wealth of examples, from ancient myths and folk tales via the plays and novels of great literature to the popular movies and TV soap operas of today, it shows that there are seven archetypal themes which recur throughout every kind of storytelling.īut this is only the prelude to an investigation into how and why we are 'programmed' to imagine stories in these ways, and how they relate to the inmost patterns of human psychology. This remarkable and monumental book at last provides a comprehensive answer to the age-old riddle of whether there are only a small number of 'basic stories' in the world.
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