Stories

I am not sure exactly what I am trying to capture in this initial note --- but I feel like I am everywhere inundated with storytalk.

I've noticed this before - for a long time, actually - but certainly reading Shalom Auslander's Feh has stories on my brain.

But I'm thinking of talk like this post, "Confluence" from the Sourdough Madrigals newsletter. It begins with a long quote from the Ojibwe Canadian author Richard Wagamese on stories, which itself begins "All that we are is story." From there, Graison Gill finds stories in:

• bread ("a story we tell about ourselves")
• the ingredients of bread
• a business that tells the story of a place, but also more than the story of its place
• the bad story of American agriculture, and a new story of American agriculture
• the "other great American story": debt

It's this sort of "storytalk" that interests me. I can't quite say why yet.

So this is a placeholder for additional examples of storytalk. I think I'm especially interested in storytalk in somewhat unusual places. It's not surprising to find Salman Rushdie or Chimamanda Adichie, as novelists, writing about stories - Auslander's Feh quotes Adichie's talk on stories, and also uses a quote from Rushdie in his frontmatter - but I think I'm interested in less-expected uses.

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Auslander, Shalom - Feh (2024)

Betasamosake Simpson, Leanne - "Gizhiigokwe and Chi'Mikinak" in Theory of Water: Nishnaabe Maps to the Times Ahead (2025)

• See note on Thomas King below.

King, Thomas - The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative (2003)

• The first chapter, "'You'll Never Believe What Happened' is Always a Good Way to Start," uses variations on the same story Betasamosake Simpson explores in "Gizhiigokwe and Chi'Mikinak"