A Native Narrative
by Thomas King
ISBN: 0887846963
This is another one of those books that I’m not sure how to talk about because I want to find the right way to tell you to go read it, right now, because it is worth your time.
This is a nonfiction book — the content was originally delivered for the Massey lectures in 2003 — but it is all about stories. King is a storyteller, and in this book he demonstrates the way in which stories shape our perceptions of the world.
From creation stories (he offers a retelling of both the Native story of the woman who fell to earth and story of Genesis from the King James version of the bible) to stories about duck feathers, basketball games, treaties, and the legal disappearing of Indians, King illustrates how stories create a framework for understanding the world around us. When he talks about evil coming into the world as a story in Silko’s Ceremony, he warns us: “you have to be careful with the stories you tell. And you have to watch out for the stories that you are told.”
King interrogates methods while offering them up for display. He is sarcastic, comforting, and humorous. He notices that you, his imagined audience, “have already leaned over to a friend and whispered, Platitude. Platitude, platitude, platitude. Thomas King the duck-billed platitude.” He is bringing you along, lulling you with the repetition, with the world being carried on the back of a turtle and being “turtles all the way down.” Oral traditions, written words, public and private: they all count, he tells us, they all go into making us who we are. He is building a case, anecdote by anecdote, of how stories are all we have.
In doing so, he plants the seeds of responsibility. For we are responsible not only for the stories we tell and the stories we listen to, but for the stories we choose to believe. He builds up, with his fierce and funny mind, to not letting anyone off the hook, when he explains why he doesn’t tell a certain story out loud, because he winds up weeping:
…for the world I’ve helped to create. A world in which I allow my intelligence and goodwill to be constantly subverted by my pursuit of comfort and pleasure. And because knowing all of this, it is doubtful that given a second chance to make amends for my despicable behaviour, I would do anything different, for I find it easier to tell myself the story of my failure as a friend, as a human being, than to have to live the story of making the sustained effort to help.
Then he really lets the hammer drop, repeating the refrain we’ve now heard for the fifth time: “don’t say in the years to come that you would have lived your life differently if only you had heard this story. You’ve heard it now.”
King is brilliant. I can imagine myself buying a stack of these books and giving them away to people I care about, because I have yet to come across a better explanation of the power of stories, and a better inducement to pay attention to that power. Highly recommended. Go buy two. You’ve heard it now.
I agree that this is a powerful and influential book. Ihave these other books to offer – I know that you will enjoy and benifit from them. Please accept these out of generousity; I have no pretensions. Please read them.
“Awareness” by Anthony de Mello
“Seeking the Heart of Wisdom” by J. Goldstein & J. Kornfield
Feel free to drop me a line by email
All the best,
Mike
i have to write an essay on this book… i’m not sure what the question is referring to by asking me to discuss “sequences”
Discuss Thomas King’s The Truth About Stories in terms of sequence and repetition. To what effect does King manipulate narrative time? How does his telling and retelling of different stories support his claims about the nature of storytelling itself?
I have to a critical summery on this book and I’m not sure what to do
Hello Tom, and Theresa and Anajelika,
From your market CBC co-interviewer (&ham) acquaintance.
This story of yours is a fast read and a slow think. Better to let your intuition guide you.
Reading the book was to enter my own life’s story and to sing, cry and dance all at once. I once had the unique experience of having a story play out like a film in front of my head. The whole story, beginning to end. That story has guided me through the 15 years since in times of doubt and despair; it gives me joy and hope and the opportunity to fine tweak details.
Ah, hell, enough of this; I’m going out to read the book again. It’s a good reread as the story never ends —and never begins. Until you step into it.
according to king, what does each story “try” to teach us and what does each “actually teach us??
Can someone please answer that question!!!
Do also go and listen to the CBC webcasts. They are brilliant and King’s voice and intonation add such dimensions to the stories!
Do also go and listen to the CBC podcasts. They are brilliant and King’s voice and intonation add such dimensions to the stories!