Read Online Our Tragic Universe by Scarlett Thomas - Free Book Online Page B

someone would say, “I’ll tell you a story,” and then recite something like an absurdist poem with no conflict and no resolution. One of these “stories” was about a Zen monk who, on the day he was going to die, sent postcards saying, “I am departing from this world. This is my last announcement.” Then he died.’
    ‘Isn’t this a problem of definition?’ Claudia said. ‘They obviously weren’t telling “stories” as we would understand them. If we say that a story is something with a beginning, a middle and an end, deterministically linked, with at least one main character, then someone else can’t come along and say that a story is actually defined as “anything anyone ever says”.’
    ‘How about if we define “story” differently again?’ Frank said. ‘What if a story is simply any representation of agents acting? What if that’s all it is, and the shape of the narrative, its determinism, its construction of “good” and “bad” characters and so on are culturally specific?’
    ‘Exactly,’ said Vi. ‘Thank you, my love. These structuralists who go on and on about the universality of the hero’s journey like to talk about the story of the Buddha, because he saw three fucked-up things and then set off on a journey and got enlightened at the end. But they don’t pay so much attention to the Chinese story “Monkey”, which is another Buddhist story, but with a very silly Trickster hero who doesn’t do the right things or ask the right questions, but ends up enlightened as well. They also don’t pay any attention at all to the Pacific Trickster Maui, who, according to the stories, fished up at least some of New Zealand with his grandmother’s jawbone. Maui eventually dies whileattempting to creep inside the goddess of death, Hine-nui-te-po, through her vagina, which is lined with teeth. He’s supposedly a hero entering an innermost cave – ha ha! – and hopes to secure immortality for everyone. He has taken some bird companions on his great quest. But one of these, the Piwakawaka, or fantail, laughs at Maui and wakes up the goddess, who crushes him between her legs. These are storyless stories, because they are not Aristotelian, or even Claudian .’ Vi smiled at her sister as if she was the one now picking out all the mistakes in Claudia’s knitted blanket. ‘If we go with Frank’s definition, then they are stories, but they’re not satisfying in the way we expect stories should be in the West. They also make us re-think what we mean by “story” in the first place.’
    ‘Isn’t that more or less a normal tragedy?’ I said. ‘No hero can ever succeed on a quest for immortality. There’s too much hubris.’
    ‘Yeah.’ Vi nodded. ‘I see what you mean. But in its very nature the story takes the piss out of tragedy, because it’s funny and absurd, which is not how tragedy is supposed to be. This, for me, is a key feature of storylessness: all structures must contain the possibility of their own non-existence – some zip that undoes them.’ She smiled. ‘The storyless story is a vagina with teeth.’
     
    There was no sign of Libby’s car in the river on Monday morning. I had plenty of time to look, since I got stuck in the ferry queue for half an hour. I was on my way to the library as usual, where I planned to finish my review of The Science of Living Forever and then try to work on my novel. I was sleepy but warm, wrapped up in my new turquoise ribbed scarf. I’dwoken when Christopher had, at five, and only dozed between then and him leaving. I realised I’d been dreaming Kelsey Newman’s words over and over again – You are already dead – and of being chased around by the Omega Point, which had become a blueish, cartoonish antagonist that said things like ‘Ha, ha, ha,’ and twiddled its moustache. I also dreamed some other words, words that I remembered, and which seemed to be connected somehow: You will never finish what you start. You will not overcome