Scientists with a gift for stating the obvious have called us Homo sapiens, “the story-telling animal.”
From “the dog ate my homework,” to teary-eyed tales beginning “if only I hadn’t…,” to boozy reunion yarns “Remember that time you and I…?” we use stories to explain what happened, understand how we got here, and especially, to entertain each other.
As usual there are age and generational issues in the entertainment. It’s one thing for the garrulous old-timer to bore young ears with one story after another …after another, non-sequiturs pumped up by free association from the deposits of subterranean memory into a meandering monologue. When you are young and separated from all the fun and joy of life by a compulsory visit to an old person and trapped by respect for your elders, there is nothing more dreaded than the raspy-voiced phrase, “And that reminds me of…” That you will treasure those old stories years later is something you only realize when their time and their tellers have passed.
It’s different when stories are not told at random and are stitched together into collections. Series like Harry Potter tie the plots of the stand-alone novels into a larger story. Sequels like the last five Rocky movies keep the pot boiling with new episodes united only by a title, a Roman numeral, and the same cast of actors. Star Wars even has a prequel.
Another way to string stories together is with a frame story. The most famous, of course, is Scheherazade in The Thousand and One Nights. The brilliant young storyteller saves herself every night from execution at dawn telling –but not finishing– a suspenseful tale to the murderous king. Again and again, he postpones her death until the next night so she can tell him the end of each story. Night by night, Scheherazade finishes the suspended one from the night before but is always careful to start yet another story. It all takes place in a bedroom: narrativus interruptus you might call it.
Sheherazade tells the mesmerized king a thousand stories in 1001 nights, which by my calculation, amount to two years and nine months of bedtime stories, at the end of which the king has fallen in love with the teller as well as the tales. Comedies end with wedding bells, and her story has a happy ending when the king marries Scheherazade, and they live happily ever after, colorín colorado…
To cover everybody, scientists ought to add story-consumer to their story-teller definition of us humans.
Frame stories only slightly different from Scheherazade’s organize collections like The Canterbury Tales, Boccaccio’s Decameron, and Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptameron.
Stories are like COVID-19, extraordinarily contagious, and always ready to “go viral.”
As we hunker down in order “to stick together by staying apart,” there seems to be more time than there used to be. Time to think or pray, time to read a book or watch Netflix, time to reconnect via email or the phone with a neglected friend.
Sticking to the epidemic theme, people are reading Camus’ The Plague and Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year to pass the time indoors during the lockdown.
Along these lines, some people are rereading Boccaccio’s Decameron. Linked together by a frame narrative of friends telling stories to each other in the healthy air of a country estate while they escape the bubonic plague in 14th century Florence, its entertaining stories cover a variety of human foibles. Certainly, if you are a connoisseur of clerical misbehavior, there is much to be savored in that collection.
I love to listen to stories, but I enjoy telling them, too. There is a sort of symmetry there. The symmetrical pleasures of story-consuming and story-telling inspire me to imitate Boccaccio’s plague-escapist frame story. I intend to write daily short tales and borrow other ones from books to entertain you and me as we wait for this period of enforced social distancing to be completed.
My Laredo Decameron will focus on Laredo and try to be funny.
Perhaps after you smile at them, you will be able to go back to worrying about your at-risk family members, return to scowl at the news, or resume cursing your favorite politicians.
My prediction is that Spring 2020 will not be like the line in one of Bruce Springsteen’s early songs, “Someday we’ll look back on this / And it will all seem funny.”
The pandemic isn’t funny at all.
And won’t be in retrospect.
But survivors will be telling stories about it, I guarantee.
Day One: Américo’s Tale
En Laredo hay una calle que se llama Corpus Christi. Bueno, y este borracho venía saliendo de una cantina en Laredo. Se fue a la esquina y vino un autobús y se paró. Y se acercó el borracho a la puerta y dice, “Oye, ¿Qué éste es el bos de Corpus Christi?”
Dijo, “Sí.” Era el autobús que iba a la calle Corpus Christi de Laredo.
Pues se subió el borracho y se sentó. Iba y medio, medio, medio. Y …este… se paró el bos como a las cuatro cuadras en un Stop Sign. Y estaba una pianola a todo dar, tocando un tacuachito. Y dice el borracho, “Aquí me bajo en Robestáun.”
Source: Brownsville’s Américo Paredes (1915-1999) was one of the preeminent folklorists of the 20th century. He put Gregorio Cortez and South Texas on the American intellectual map in his famous book, With His Pistol in his Hand: A Border Ballad and Its Hero. During the early 60s he returned to his home in the Rio Grande Valley on a research trip to collect jokes. A selection of them appeared in his delightful little book, Uncle Remus…con chile.
“En Robestáun,” is #213, p. 144.
Explanatory note by Paredes: “Coming north from the Border one passes through Robstown, a fairly small city, before reaching Corpus Christi. Robstown was supposed to be a place where everybody danced polkas, tacuachitos, cumbias and other kinds of conjunto music.”
The Laredo-Corpus Christi-Robstown anecdote was told by “Informant #7, Texas-Mexican male born in 1927. Korean War veteran. School principal in Brownsville. Like Informant #6, a skilled performer and ‘man of words.’”
English version.
In Laredo there’s a street called Corpus Christi. Well, this drunk was coming out of cantina in Laredo. He went to the corner and a bus came and it stopped. The drunk went up to the door and says, “Hey, is this the Corpus Christi bus?”
“Yes.” It was the bus headed to Corpus Christi street in Laredo.
Well, the drunk climbed aboard and sat down. He was going along… And… ummm… the bus stopped about four blocks later at a stop sign. And there was a piano nearby going full blast, playing a tacuachito. And the drunk said, “I’ll just get off here in Robstown.”
The illustration by the graphics team at LareDos is wonderful. A reminder that “a picture is worth a thousand words.”
I love the tales of King Arthur, but my favorite is the illustrated version of “Sir Gawain and the Loathly Lady.”