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Last Tuesday, a very tightly packed Castro Theatre hosted
speaker Neil Gaiman,author of over a hundred short stories and
graphic novels, as part of The LongNow Foundation’s
series Seminars About Longterm Thinking. In his
talk,entitled “How Stories Last”, Gaiman explored the importance of
storytelling as ameans of survival in our culture.
While Gaiman is probably best known for The Sandman, a DC
Comics series aboutthe ruler of dreams, some might more easily
recognize him as the author ofCoraline; adapted in 2009 into an
animated movie about an 11-year-old girl whofinds herself trapped
in an evil “copy” version of her own world.
Instead of harkening back to characters from his own works to
help illustrate ouraddiction to stories, Gaiman drew from
conversations with satire novelist DouglasAdams, lessons from his
Holocaust surviving grandmother, and the mystique ofthe glass
slipper from Cinderella.
ARTS
Stories Worth a Thousand Lies: NeilGaimanBY ASHLEY VILLARREAL ON
JUN 18, 2015
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The glass slipper in Cinderella was most likely a fur
boot
“’Once upon a time’ is code for ‘I am about to lie to you,’”
Gaiman half-jokes. “Theact of reading a story or listening to a
story is the act of knowing you’re being liedto.” Many tales we
remember may have actually had details changed to make
themmore interesting and worth remembering. The glass slipper in
Cinderella wasmost likely a fur boot, he says, but a sparkly
pair of heels sounded better andallowed the story to be retold time
and time again.
And stories aren’t just fun to tell at parties—they hold much
more power andmeaning than we give them credit for.
Many stories we now tell predate us bythousands of years
and were made shareable only through the importance weassigned
them. In many ways, Gaiman says, stories can be likened to viruses
thatsimply use people as vehicles to spread.
“Information in a story is something you can access as real
info,” Gaiman alsosays. “You can access it as if you have
experienced it—you can use it—and then youcan pass it on.” What we
read and remember becomes important to our societybecause we derive
lessons from stories over time that can be transferrable to us
inour everyday lives.
Even more vital is the potential for escape that stories provide
us with. Gaimanrecounts how his grandmother was lucky enough to
come across a copy of “GoneWith The Wind”, by Margaret Mitchell,
during her Holocaust imprisonment.Having been forbidden books, she
spent many of her days recounting what shehad read in secret the
night before. This ritual helped bring temporary comfortand
distraction to her peers, many of whom did not survive to retell
them.
While it seems the written tradition of storytelling is
slowly being overpowered byan oral one where the impermanence of
the Internet is king, Gaiman promises thestories we continue to
collect for future generations will not easily be lost.
“Douglas Adams once told me that books are sharks,” he recalls.
“There weresharks back when there were dinosaurs…the reason there
are still sharks is thatnothing has turned up that is better at
being a shark than a shark is.”
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Listen to Brainpickings audio recording at the Long Now
Foundation on June 9th,2015:
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