Brain Food #793: We have all seen something

What makes a worthwhile story?

Thoughts of the day

Writer Kurt Vonnegut once described how he had wanted to write about his experience of surviving the bombing of the city of Dresden in WWII. It seemed, to him, a story worth telling, until he had gone back home to Indianapolis to find that the bombing was barely given any attention by the local newspaper:

“There was an item about half an inch long, which said our planes had been over Dresden and two had been lost. And so I figured, well, this really was the most minor sort of detail in World War II. Others had so much more to write about. I remember envying Andy Rooney, who jumped into print at that time; I didn’t know him, but I think he was the first guy to publish his war story after the war; it was called Air Gunner.

Hell, I never had any classy adventure like that. But every so often I would meet a European and we would be talking about the war and I would say I was in Dresden; he’d be astonished that I’d been there, and he’d always want to know more. Then a book by David Irving was published about Dresden, saying it was the largest massacre in European history. I said, By God, I saw something after all!”

Surprisingly, we tend to minimise our own experiences and take them for granted, even if our experience makes up a single unique (and perhaps even greatly significant) moment in one of the most history-defining events of our time.

And so this raises the question: How groundbreaking does a topic have to be in order to deserve being turned into art? How much agony or destruction does someone need to have gone through to be able to tell a good story? And, above all, how groundbreaking does one’s life have to be, to be considered full?

Annie Ernaux, the recent winner of the Nobel prize for literature, wrote about no spectacular topics. Most of her work is autobiographical. She became widely known when she wrote about her affair with a married man.

Everyone has a story to tell, or, perhaps better put, there is a story to tell in everything.

At the end of the day, we will have all seen something. We can share what we know, because that is what we can do best. Illicit topics are optional.

Still Life with Apples and a Pot of Primroses by Paul Cézanne

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