tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1183167595241544584.post5885460845606100948..comments2018-02-11T06:28:54.012-06:00Comments on Mary Wehner: Story and MythAndre Theisenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07147266838473436137noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1183167595241544584.post-71400474556912266882018-02-09T12:11:42.724-06:002018-02-09T12:11:42.724-06:00Your post reminded me of a passage from Virginia W...Your post reminded me of a passage from Virginia Woolf’s: “But, whatever the reason may be, I find that scene making is my way of marking the past. Always a scene has arranged itself: representative; enduring. This confirms me in my instinctive notion: (it will not bear arguing about; it is irrational) the notion that we are sealed vessels afloat on what it is convenient to call reality; and at some moments, the sealing matter cracks; in floods reality; that is, these scenes – for why do they survive undamaged year after year unless they are made of something comparatively permanent?” (emphasis added). She asks, “Are other people scene makers too?” but turns from considering this question and discloses, “in all the writing I have done, I have almost always had to make a scene, either when I am writing about a person … or when I am writing about a book” (“A Sketch of the Past” in Moments of Being: Unpublished Autobiographical Writings, p. 122). We make scenes as spontaneously as we try to make sense of our experience and imagining how the lives of individuals are intertwined (say, two people one happens to see on a subway) is one of the ways we make sense of life. We are storytelling animals and indeed story-shaped selves. This is nowhere more evident than in our irrepressible tendency to imagine scenes in which, say, an almost imperceptible gesture of affection carries a large, enveloping significance. [Please delete Pinging]<br /><br />Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12682747098505685451noreply@blogger.com