Foreword, Churchill, Orwell, old hat and all that

[Terrance]

Paul Nightingale wrote:
> >
> >
> > Paul Nightingale wrote:
> > >
> > > One of the problems I have is dealing with the arbitrary distinction
> > > between fiction and non-fiction, between the novel and politics.
> >
> >  If we dismiss the distinction between fiction and non-fiction (i.e.,
> > Gravity's Rainbow equals a  biology text) what the author and the text
> > tell us is subordinated to what the reader says they do. GR is a work
> of
> > biology?  On come now, it's not. Is it an obituary? A list of
> > ingredients?
> >
> As you see below I do go on to emphasise the importance of narrative.
> One can certainly look for narrative in the biology textbook and the
> list of ingredients.

Yes, one can look for a [coup d'état] in/on/at the bottom of a
Craker-Jack Box too. 
But one shouldn't be disappointed if all one gets is a crummy little
plastic prize. 

The contrast in narrative derives primarily from the differences the
author of the text has created and not in the reader's culturally
consumed "narrative" being imposed on the text and attributed to the
author.  



> >
> > >Writing is writing.
> >
> > NO. And reading is not reading. One simply does not read a novel like
> GR
> > in the same way that one reads the ingredients listed on the back of a
> > Power Bar meal replacement package.
> >
> You give the game away when you add that "in the same way". Reading is a
> cultural activity and therefore learned. Readers now are more sensitive
> to the listing of 'healthy' and 'unhealthy' ingredients. A pretty banal
> example, but the narrative goes something like, this chocolate bar will
> kill me because it's full of shit. Or: this bar of sugary gunge will
> give me energy and help me run the marathon in seven minutes flat.

OK, call the culturally  learned thingy a "narrative" . So, this is what
the reader contributes--his learned culturally consumed "narrative"-- to
the activity.  But reading is not an activity without a text. And a
text, like _1984_ has an author. And the author makes choices. He
decides that he will make his narrator a boy. A girl. An insane man.
What is the tale told by the boy, the girl, the insane man, the idiot
...  of the text to be called if not a narrative? 

Can't we come up with some other term for what you are now calling a
narrative? I mean, it's kind of confusing to call the culturally
consumed "narrative" a narrative when we are talking about novels. Isn't
it? Or is that the point?