structure or not
There are, I think, basically two kinds of narratives. One where the end, the act of finishing the book is the means; the second kind is where the means, the act of reading the book, is the end.
For the first kind, you feverishly read through the book to get to the end, to see how everything unfolds. It is the whole story itself that is interesting. The best example would be detective novels, Agatha Christies. There is a point to reading the book.
For the second kind, you savour each page, because each little part is a whole story condensed in itself; the form structure of the book, the narrative, is merely the means to carry all the parts together. More chaos, less structure – or structure in chaos. Murakami novels are often like this, or movies of Wong Kar Wai (hence why people don’t *get* his movies – there is no point in the end – the points are in every moment)
These are two ideal types; a good book ideally has a mixture of both, obviously. What struck me is, if books are a metaphor for life – what form structure does your life have? Live to die, or live to live?
August 11th, 2005 at 4:06 am
What if your life were a book? What if the book were turned into a song?
“The Book of My Life” by Sting
Let me watch by the fire and remember my days
And it may be a trick of the firelight
But the flickering pages that trouble my sight
Is a book I’m afraid to write
It’s the book of my days, it’s the book of my life
And it’s cut like a fruit on the blade of a knife
And it’s all there to see as the section reveals
There’s some sorrow in every life
If it reads like a puzzle, a wandering maze
Then I won’t understand ’til the end of my days
I’m still forced to remember,
Remember the words of my life
There are promises broken and promises kept
Angry words that were spoken, when I should have wept
There’s a chapter of secrets, and words to confess
If I lose everything that I possess
There’s a chapter on loss and a ghost who won’t die
There’s a chapter on love where the ink’s never dry
There are sentences served in a prison I built out of lies.
Though the pages are numbered
I can’t see where they lead
For the end is a mystery no-one can read
In the book of my life
There’s a chapter on fathers a chapter on sons
There are pages of conflicts that nobody won
And the battles you lost and your bitter defeat,
There’s a page where we fail to meet
There are tales of good fortune that couldn’t be planned
There’s a chapter on god that I don’t understand
There’s a promise of Heaven and Hell but I’m damned if I see
Though the pages are numbered
I can’t see where they lead
For the end is a mystery no-one can read
In the book of my life
Now the daylight’s returning
And if one sentence is true
All these pages are burning
And all that’s left is you
Though the pages are numbered
I can’t see where they lead
For the end is a mystery no-one can read
In the book of my life
August 11th, 2005 at 8:40 pm
That’s a nice observation, really. I immediately thought about Murakami also in the ‘each part is a story itself’-structure. And about the question: I gotta say live to live. Life is structured in small parts and you are the result of the parts.