“In Kerala, he watched a famous storyteller work his magic.
The interesting thing about this performance was that it broke all the rules. ‘Begin
at the beginning,’ the King of Hearts had instructed the flustered White Rabbit
in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, ‘and
go on until you come to the end; then stop.’ This was how stories were meant to
be told, according to whichever king of hearts had made up the rules, but this
was not what happened in that open-air Keralan theater. The storyteller stirred
stories into one another, digressed frequently from the main narrative, told
jokes, sang songs, connected his political story to the ancient tales, made
personal asides, and generally misbehaved. And yet the audience did not get up
and walk out in disgust. It did not hiss or boo or throw vegetables or benches
at the performer. Instead, it roared with laughter, wept in despair, and
remained on the edge of its seat until he was done. Did it do so in spite of
the storyteller’s complicated story-juggling act, or because of it? Might it be that this pyrotechnic way of telling
might in fact be more engrossing than
the King of Hearts’ preferred version—that the oral story, the most ancient of
narrative forms, had survived because of its adoption of complexity and
playfulness and its rejection of start-to-finish linearity? If so, then here in
this warm Keralan night all his own thoughts about writing were being amply
confirmed.” –from Rushdie’s Joseph Anton (p.80)
See also: Jeanette Winterson on "What Is Art For?"
See also: Jeanette Winterson on "What Is Art For?"
