Confessions of a Liberal Puritan

A co-worker just forwarded this story link to my group, Grand Theft Auto, Twitter and Beowulf all demonstrate that stories will never die.

This link was offered as a small antidote to depression here at the publishing house over ever-gloomier news from the world of religious publishing, in particular, and the future of book-publishing in general, including this morning's story about another Nashville-based Christian publisher, Thomas Nelson eliminates 55 jobs.

It's nice to be reminded (in the Sam Leith Daily Telegraph article) that, even though the internet is fabulous for most reference work and for (in my particular experience) reinvigorating the communal folktale tradition through making the writing and reading of fanfic so accessible across all kinds of boundaries, there's still a place for actual, hold-in-your-hand-and-curl-up-with-under-the-covers-or-in-a-sunny-spot books in our world, as well . . . no matter who ends up 'last publisher standing'!

Meanwhile, here's my favorite quote from the bottom of page 2 of the storytelling article:

You don't have to be a crazed Jungian, a structural anthropologist, or a seven-basic-plots believer to agree that storytelling is something of universal importance in human experience, and something that exhibits deep and suggestive similarities across cultures.

Myths, it has been said, are "good to think with". Storytelling is a way of trying out situations imaginatively, of preserving knowledge and social value, of attesting to a commonality of experience.

Here's to the persistence of narrative, in all media!