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You are here: Home / Potpourri / Why Can’t A Story Just Be A Story?

Why Can’t A Story Just Be A Story?

Why Can’t A Story Just Be A Story?

I loathed English class in high school.

Not to be mean, I did however have a few fantastic English teachers.

English class in college was terrible too though.

My rub was that, although I enjoyed reading, the English teachers were always telling you what to think.

I mean, come on.

I love reading.

And I love the fact that a favorite book can take on a whole new meaning, a whole new life, when you read it again a decade later.

For example: You read C.S. Lewis as a child and it’s one story.

As an adult, it is a much different one.

But in English class, they never let a book just be about the book, about the story, about the joy of reading.

It was always: “What was the author really trying to say.”

“How does this relate to the politics of the time.”

“How does this compare to the writer’s childhood.”

Good grief, let a story be a story.

And quit trying to tell me what to think when I read one.

“Personally, I’m not much for symbolism. I never get it. Why can’t things be just as they are? I never thought to psychoanalyze Seymour Glass or sought to break down “Desolation Row.” I just wanted to get lost, become one with somewhere else, slip a wreath on a steeple top solely because I wished it.”

–Patti Smith, M Train

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Filed Under: PotpourriTagged With: #Reading, #Storytelling

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