On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 11:07 AM, John Watkins <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:john.watkins04@gmail.com" target="_blank">john.watkins04@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div>Maybe the point of the story is narrative desire. In college, a professor asked a class I was in if anyone believed that Trystero was "real" within the world of The Crying of Lot 49. I was one of the ones who did, and when asked to explain why, I sort of blurted "Because it's a better story."</div>
</blockquote><div><br>I thought Trystero was real, too. It's not even clear what it could mean for a fictional entity to be thinking about something that wasn't real. But this is starting to get real confusing.<br>
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<div>If Bax is a con man who made up all the fantastic elements, then the story is prosaic, dull, and flat.</div></blockquote><div> <br>I don't find it such. If lying and sorcery are the same thing, then Bax is truly a powerful sorcerer. He fooled not just a bunch of fictional characters, but readers in the real world, too.<br>
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<div>But maybe there's a Chesteronian idea at work as well, which is that stories that are <i>compelling </i>are more likely to be true--that human beings naturally seek to order things into coherent and interesting narratives because we think that such narratives best help us to make sense of the world.<br>
</div></blockquote><div><br>Could you explain this further?<br> <br></div></div>