by botherer on Sep.20, 2004, under The Rest
I’ve no idea if this will work, but I’m hopeful.
My current dissertation title is:
“How do the stories that young people tell and hear affect the ways in which they perceive their lives?”
A part of my research for this is going to be to get lots of different age groups to write or tell me stories. And I’m hoping that people who read this will be good enough to write me a story.
If you would, please email it to the address on the left, (removing the “plop” first). It could be exciting.
September 20th, 2004 on 15:57
The address is on the right, John. :p
September 20th, 2004 on 18:14
Ah, but John’s facing out from the screen. So it’s to his left.
I often imagine the botherer blog is a bit like one of those one way mirrors, with John pulling faces at the people reading his latest entries.
September 20th, 2004 on 18:52
a bit like big brother really, but not so scary – he’s only watching when we let him. You’re wierd.
September 20th, 2004 on 19:48
Does the act of telling a story affect the way you perceive your own life in the same way that hearing one does? If not, is trying to tackle them both too broad a scope for a dissertation?
I like dissertations. It’s kind of what your whole education leads towards – it starts out broad and mandatory, and as it goes along you get more and more choice about what you want to study, until right at the end it reaches a singular pinnacle – just one topic. And unless you chose the wrong subject to do at uni, it’s usually one that really interests you, and thereby the most enjoyable thing to write.
I shall send you a story. At some point.
My dissertation title was “If It Were Possible To Replicate People, How Would The Moral Status Of The Act Of Destroying A Person Change?” I.e. is it okay to kill clones? I said yes.
September 20th, 2004 on 20:28
what kind of story?
can there be robots?
September 20th, 2004 on 20:31
Story as in… fiction, non-fiction…?
September 21st, 2004 on 01:08
Once upon a time, there lived a poor boy in a hut in the forest. His mother had died in giving birth to him, and his father spent much of his day working for the local squire, game keeping and general husbandry. The boy, Peter, would occasionally accompany his father to the squire’s abode. There, the squire would, if in a cheery disposition, select a book from his cavernous shelves and place it in the boy’s hands. At first, Pete had taken the proffered tome, a discourse on Roman History, as a strange and distant ornament to a life that would never be his. But, one morning, as he sat in the hut in the depths of the forest, the sound of chaffinches his only accompaniment, he dared himself to open the book, to open it, and to begin to read it. And that’s when it happened…
September 21st, 2004 on 10:37
An English teacher some time ago was having trouble inspiring his kids, so he was delighted to hear there would be a lecture by Somerset Maugham. He went along, and afterwards he asked the great writer for some advice to inspire his pupils. Maugham said the secret to good fiction is that every story must contain divinity, aristocracy, sex and a mystery.
Armed with this knowledge, the teacher told his class this golden rule, and asked them to write a story for homework. As the bell rang for the end of period, one of boys put up his hand and said “I’ve done it!” The teacher laughed at him and said if he thought he’d written the story already we’d better all hear it then. Proudly the boy began: “‘Oh Christ,’ said the Duchess. ‘I’m pregnant and I don’t know who the father is!'”