Josef Herman: Warsaw, Brussels, Glasgow, London, 1938-1944
Josef Herman's early, cathartic work should not be missed
Red Army Faction Blues
Red Army Faction Blues persuasively blends fact and fiction in its account of Germany's turbulent times from the '60s to the '80s, writes Paul Simon
Josef Herman: Warsaw, Brussels, Glasgow, London, 1938-1944
Josef Herman's early, cathartic work should not be missed
Storytelling
by Christian Salmon (Verso, 14.99)
Monday 15 March 2010
Printable
EmailStorytelling is older than Homer and Christian Salmon's thesis is that it is a technique misused by all the dark forces in the world from Bush and Blair onwards.
We on the left need to wise up to what's going on.
He points out how many times politicians actually use the word "story" - 10 times in one Bush speech - and he ascribes Obama's success to his use of narrative in his campaign.
This latter example demonstrates that the devil needn't have a monopoly on all the best tunes.
It's true that the facts of life are being obscured by narratives which are at best no more than half truths.
But we neglect these age-old techniques at our peril.
Our history abounds with stories that tell the truth about reality, from the parables of Jesus to Robert Tressall's "money trick" in The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.
It might have been more apposite if the writer had spent some of his book not in merely denouncing the examples of bad storytelling practice but also in suggesting how we might recuperate these techniques.
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