Interlude:One Story

Foster's Ideas

“One of our great storytellers, country singer Willie Nelson, was sitting around one day just noodling on the guitar, improvising melodies he’d never written down, never heard in quite those forms. His companion, a nonmusician whose name I forget, asked him how he could come up with all those tunes. ““They’re all around us,” old Willie said. “You just reach up and pick them out of the air.”” Stories are like that, too. That one story that has been going on forever is all around us. We- as reader or writers, tellers or listeners- understand each other, we share knowledge of the structures of our myths, we comprehend the logic of symbols, largely because we have access to the same swirl of story. We have only to reach out into the air and pluck a piece of it.” (pg 192)

In this chapter Foster goes back to a previous idea mentioned in the book about all literature and stories being compiled into one story. This idea of one story and intertextuality is the focus of this chapter as he goes more in depth about how in some way or another everything connects.

In this chapter Foster acknowledges the fact that from a young age readers can relate one piece of literature to another. This is the same for writers. Like most of us they grew up reading poetry and reading fairy tales and famous short stories, so when it comes time to writing they have to block this remembrance in order to be somewhat original. Sometimes this is a subconscious action that is fairly easy for writers to do but other times they consciously have to push things out of their memory in order for their own original ideas to burst through. In this way Foster explains that because writers (and all of us for that matter) are prone to recall the events that are familiar or common to them an overlap in ideas is inevitable.

In this quote he continues to back up his idea of “one story” by relating it to music. Literature and music have a lot in common: every song in one way or another is connected. Whether it be through lyrics or rhyme or rhythm in some way or another they all intertwine. Nelson makes a good point by stating that all the tunes are out there it’s just how you interpret them that changes from song to song. The same with literature: all the subjects and topics and characters are out there its just how the author chooses to portray his or her picture that changes each novel, poem, fairy tale, and short story.