Life is so complex that it needs an unlimited amount of stories to express what we go through, how it feels, and how we survive. The writer John Berger asserts: “Between the experience of living a normal life at this moment on the planet and the public narratives being offered to give sense to that life, the empty space, the gap, is enormous.”

Stories and novels offer us new models, images and pictures of how the pieces of life fit together. They help us to disengage from a story we find no longer credible or adequate. They open new interpretations so that we can see things in a new light. They give us the possibility to hear other stories than our own, to test other alternatives, to perceive new angles.

I have spent many hours in the company of fine authors. I have much to thank them for. I have been allowed to borrow their glasses to look at life and learn. They have given me language to explore the majesty of nature, the meaning of courage, the redemptive power of love, the depths of loneliness, the moral intricacies of life. Larger, compelling but otherwise speechless mysteries such as love, passion and faith have got words in varied form in their stories.

Every writer develops “a kind of map of life” (from Edward P. Jones’ novel “The Known World”). I need writers to explore and describe “maps of life”, so that I see the stumbling-stones better and so that I do not oversimplify life. I am limited in what I can experience, but I can get help from literary friends, who are equipped with the gift of observing and expressing. They give me a taste of more than one life.

There are many benefits we can enjoy through exposing ourselves to story-telling.  In listening to or reading a story or a novel, we can particularly be attentive to aspects like:

• • Unraveling the hidden messages of a story – there is more than one thinks
  • Story as the carrier of values within families and communities
  • The healing power of story – saving lives through story sharing
  • New areas of life and feeling opened up and enriched through story

Suggested Reading

There is a vast supply of literature. Reading and subsequent dialogue can unearth treasures that we weren’t aware of. They will bring us into areas where we would not go without a little help.  This is my recommended list at the moment:

‘Modern’ Short Story:

• • The Third and Final Continent – ‘Interpreter of Maladies’ – Jhumpa Lahiri
  • The Isabel Fish – ‘How to Breath Underwater’ – Julie Orringer
  • The Boat – ‘Island’ – Alistair McLeod

‘Classic’ Short Story:

• • The Life you Save May be Your Own – ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’ – Flannery O’Connor
  • Parker’s Back – ‘Everything that Rises Must Converge’ – Flannery O’Connor
  • A Father – Anton Chekhov
  • After the Storm – Ernest Hemingway

‘Modern’ Books:

• • The Songlines – Bruce Chatwin
  • Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro
  • The Sea – John Banville

‘Classic’ Books:

• • The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
  • The Sound and The Fury – William Faulkner

Rinus, April 2009