long live the uncomfortable truth (a christmas post)

[adelaidesean]

Every month, one of the board-members of the SA Writers' Centre writes a piece for publication in our monthly newsletter. It was recently my turn, and the text (for those of a non-South Australian bent) is below the cut.

Reading over it again brings home to me the not unrelated facts that (1) Christmas cheer is just not my thing, and (2) I'm getting grouchy (or at least more political) in my dotage.

"Board's Eye View, December 2007"

Stories are remarkable things. Despite being just strings of words, artfully arranged, they can evoke every possible aspect of human experience, and some experiences far beyond that.

No less remarkable is our fascination with stories. Our hunger for narrative, for insight into the lives, minds and heart of others, appears to be endless. Stories about how stories come to be written, too, are popular: Eregon, Suite Française, and The Lovely Bones come immediately to mind. No doubt there are others.

Then there's the thrill of discovering a great new read--via a friend's recommendation, say, on a resort bookshelf, or through BookCrossing--which itself becomes part of the greater narrative. We love finding new stories, and we are diminished without them. They illuminate and inspire us--and they can change our lives, as some books are proud to declaim. They are a fundamental part of what makes us human.

The power of stories is very much on my mind at the moment, and not just because I'm wondering which titles will make the bestseller lists at the end of 2007. The time of year is almost upon us when we remember and re-tell two particular stories, both of which have survived more than two thousand years. One concerns a child born in a stable, the other a flame that burned seven days longer than it should have. Whether they're fictional, historical or something in between, these two stories have not just lasted longer than the individuals who first told them; they've outlived buildings, governments, languages and entire cultures. Forget lives: these stories have changed history. That is truly amazing.

It also highlights the double-edged nature of our love of a good tale. Writers have occasionally remarked on the inability of real life to satisfy us in the same way as fiction. Screenwriter William Goldman relates the difficulty of adapting certain true-life events in World War II, which, when told exactly as they happened, completely failed to convince viewers of their reality. Award-winning American author Tim Powers agrees: "Fiction is not a portrayal of real life," he tells emerging writers; "Fiction is concocted and planned, to be suspenseful and then satisfying, which real life is not." Reality is first draft material, from which something much more convincing can be made.

How convincing depends on the way it's told and the audience it's told to. Some stories have limited markets and are never intended to sweep the world. Others are designed specifically to spread, across all demographics and regardless of what truth lies behind them. Consider the children thrown overboard, or Iraq's weapons of mass-destruction. These stories were later revealed to bear little relation to what was real in the world, but nonetheless their effects were profound.

Such stories are intended to do much more than provoke a laugh or to bring us to a deeper understanding of ourselves. These stories exploit our willingness to believe what feels true in order to suspend our natural scepticism. Some might say that stories of miraculous oils and mangers do the same thing. It's up to the listener to decide, when the telling is over, how great an influence they'll let it have over them, once real life resumes.

Australia has just passed an important milestone in its history (that other great story, of which we are all part). As I write this, the results of the Federal Election are unknown. I hope that we, as writers and tellers of stories, remembered that we're not the only ones who use words to spin reality into something else, be it a more palatable version of the truth or a lie that's been cleverly disguised. All political parties do it; it would be wrong of me to point the finger at any particular one. Suffice it to say that stories can be more effective at toppling regimes than bullets, and they have maintained more than a few long past their use-by date. We who share the same skills as the spin doctors and speechwriters must listen with ears carefully attuned for comfortable fictions. An uncomfortable truth will always serve us better, when the story-tellers fall silent.

So this year, after we've wished each other Happy Hanukkah or Merry Christmas and eaten our fill with family and friends, let's remember the power of story, and resolve to tell our own to the very best of our abilities. Whether they're about family members no longer with us or lands that never existed, let's devote ourselves to using words to capture a reality very different from the one experienced every day. For that is the true magic of the written word: to take us out of our lives and into someone else's. And therein lies the key to compassion, multiculturalism and a moral society.

(With thanks to Tim Powers for allowing me the quote from his Writers of the Future/Clarion notes.)

Polemics aside, all the very best of the season to you and yours. I hope 2008 brings an improvement on whatever lifted you up or got you down this year. This my first Christmas ever with a family in a home we call our own, and the first in a very long while with a Prime Minister I can respect, so I'm feeling pretty optimistic. Here's to good times for us all!