[MD] Art and Stories

[Steven Peterson]

Hi Marsha, Ian, Matt, all

Marsha, are you gonna give the new one a try of Life of Pi? In Life of
Pi (one of my all-time favorites), the narrator gives two difeerent
accounts of the same events. The people he is telling the stories to
want to know which story is true, but the first person narrator asks
which story is the better story? The better story is clearly the one
that doesn't ring nearly as true.

I quoted author Martel:

"Fiction and nonfiction are not so easily divided. Fiction may not be
real, but it’s true; it goes beyond the garland of facts to get to
emotional and psychological truths. As for nonfiction, for history, it
may be real, but its truth is slippery, hard to access, with no fixed
meaning bolted to it. If history doesn’t become story, it dies to
everyone except the historian. Art is the suitcase of history,
carrying the essentials. Art is the life buoy of history. Art is seed,
art is memory, art is vaccine."“In addition to the knowledge of
history...we need the understanding of art. Stories identify, unify,
give meaning to. Just as music is noise that makes sense, a painting
is colour that makes sense, so a story is life that makes sense."

Steve:
What do you think about "not real, but true" applied to fiction?

This is the sort of thing I think Neil Gaiman would say, too (about
stories)  I personally wouldn't use the words "true" or "real" for
fiction since they sound to me like direct contradictions to the word
fiction, but I really like the last bit about "making sense" as
something distinct from truth and reality which applies as well to
both fiction and nonfiction.

It makes me think about art in general. A lot of modern art just
doesn't make any sense to me while some does make some sense to me,
but it isn't an issue of true-false bivalence. "True" is the wrong
word, but I like "makes sense." Some art gets dismissed as not making
any sense (too dynamic or chaotic) or is mundane and doesn't *make*
sense of anything that did not already make sense (too static). Some
art keeps drawing you back to try to make sense and you keep finding
new things in it and it never seems to exhaust the process of making
new sense (some sweet spot of dynamic-static tension).

The new book has a lot of writing about writing which may interest Matt.

Best,
Steve