The Mystery Feast: Thoughts on Storytelling by Ben Okri
| The Mystery Feast: Thoughts on Storytelling by Ben Okri | |
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| Category: Politics and Society | |
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Reviewer: John Lloyd
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| Summary: A quick but vivid look at what the author calls whisperings from the gods we carry within us. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 48 | Date: October 2015 |
| Publisher: Clairview Books | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 9781905570768 | |
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Ben Okri knows words and books. He hardly ever mentions either of them in this volume, concentrating as he does on the word story instead, but he knows them inside and out. He's won the Booker for a novel, and is just as adept at essays and poetry. So this sample of his work can contain all of the above. The result is something that looks completely disposable and lightweight – like someone put an ISBN number on your local pizza parlour leaflet – but actually resonates with a power belying its size.
We start with a two-page poem, then reach the heady heights of a public address he gave a couple of years ago, concerning story. In a world of DNA, of negative psychology, of the negative space left by advertising between what we have and are told we should want, story has the power to revert us to the straight and narrow. It never comes from nowhere, it is around us even with – or because of – all our science, it is the most powerful tool, and the brightest gift. Pointers to what a modern storyteller and their output might be follow, followed by a quick(-seeming) narrative piece.
Connected to the International School of Storytelling, this volume and the publishers have their seed in a very small acorn, somewhere in West Sussex. But just as, say, Homer gave us five per cent of the Trojan Wars and more or less bequeathed us a whole genre of literature, from small acorns big things grow. The simple and clear, yet poetic language, the fact that so much of this is worth underlining and holding dear, the charge it carries in emphasising the timeless, ageless nature of story and the duty of those who use it, all show this book to be a mighty oak. If the term 'gift book' didn't have a slightly derogatory, sniffy connotation, I would use it here. Call it, if you'd allow me, a great gift to yourself.
I must thank the publishers for my review copy.
Tales of Freedom by Ben Okri also pretty much runs the full gamut of prose, poetry, short stories and life lessons too.
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