A Quote by Erskine Caldwell
Many Southern writers must have learned the art of storytelling from listening to oral tales. I did. It gave me the knowledge that the simplest incident can make a story.
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For me, a story's a story if people want to hear it; it's very much based on oral storytelling. And for me, a story is a story when people give me the privilege of listening when I'm speaking it out loud.
I am not against songs in films. We come from an oral tradition of storytelling. I have grown up listening to epics in oral rendition and oral rendition always had music.
When you consider that there are a thousand ways to express even the simplest idea, it is no wonder writers are under a great strain. Writers care greatly how a thing is said - it makes all the difference. So they are constantly faced with too many choices and must make too many decisions.
I keep a journal, like many writers do. It helps in writing a story, as you can use an incident from the journal and put in your story.
I must not fall asleep in the middle of my life. Out of the blankness that surrounds me I must pluck the incident after incident after incident whose little explosions keep me going.
I have a daughter, Hanna, and I never read fairy tales to her. But I did tell her bedtime tales and made up many tales involving 'Gory the Goblin' and other creatures that I borrowed from the Grimms' tales and other tales I knew.
The values transmitted through oral history are many - courage, selflessness, the ability to endure, and to do so with humor and grace. I got those values listening to my dad's stories about the Depression and how their family survived. It gave me courage that I, too, could survive hard times.
Art inspires me. Looking at art in a museum, listening to music, reading the works of other writers.
Everybody in my family were great storytellers. My dad and his brothers would just go on and on; they could tell amazing stories. I think it was something to do with the Celtic, oral storytelling tradition. People very much had that propensity towards telling tales.
I remember my father had a sermon he used to preach when we were in Florida, in which he gave a reference to the Southern Cross-about the stars, the colors, in the Southern Cross, which thrilled me very much. I must have been around 5 years old. ... Now, it turns out that the Southern Cross itself does have one red star, together with three blue ones.
Blind Curve, the book I'm working on now, sprang from a crazy incident that happened to me last year while on my book tour. I was pulled out of my car for a minor traffic violation - an incident that escalated into my being thrown into cuffs and told I was going to jail. Except in my story, the hero doesn't get off as easily as I did.
Ancient art has a specific inner content. At one time, art possessed the same purpose that books do in our day, namely: to preserve and transmit knowledge. In olden days, people did not write books, they incorporated their knowledge into works of art. We would find a great many ideas in the works of ancient art passed down to us, if only we knew how to read them.
I really enjoyed Eddie Bracken. He told me a great story. He did The Odd Couple on Broadway, replacing Art Carney, and he said, "Art Carney did it for six months and I did it for three years, and I don't think anyone I've ever spoken to saw me. They all saw Art Carney."
Many people make the mistake of confusing information with knowledge. They are not the same thing. Knowledge involves the interpretation of information. Knowledge involves listening.
I used to believe my art had to be about the things that brought me joy and gave me hope. But I learned that art can be found in all of life, even in pain.
No person learned the art of archery from me,
who did not in the end make me his target.
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