The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction
Metadata
Highlights
- The first cultural device was probably a recipient… Many theorizers feel that the earliest cultural inventions must have been a container to hold gathered products and some kind of sling or net carrier.
- I’m not telling that story. We’ve heard it, we’ve all heard about all the sticks and spears and swords, the things to bash and poke and hit with, the long, hard things, but we have not heard about the thing to put things in, the container for the thing contained. That is a new story. That is news.
- This theory not only explains large areas of theoretical obscurity and avoids large areas of theoretical nonsense (inhabited largely by tigers, foxes, and other highly territorial mammals); it also grounds me, personally, in human culture in a way I never felt grounded before. So long as culture was explained as originating from and elaborating upon the use of long, hard objects for sticking, bashing, and killing, I never thought that I had, or wanted, any particular share in it.
- If it is a human thing to do to put something you want, because it’s useful, edible, or beautiful, into a bag, or a basket, or a bit of rolled bark or leaf, or a net woven of your own hair, or what have you, and then take it home with you, home being another, larger kind of pouch or bag, a container for people, and then later on you take it out and eat it or share it or store it up for winter in a solider container or put it in the medicine bundle or the shrine or the museum, the holy place, the area that contains what is sacred, and then next day you probably do much the same again — if to do that is human, if that’s what it takes, then I am a human being after all. Fully, freely, gladly, for the first time.
- I am an aging, angry woman laying mightily about me with my handbag, fighting hoodlums off. However I don’t, nor does anybody else, consider myself heroic for doing so. It’s just one of those damned things you have to do in order to be able to go on gathering wild oats and telling stories.
- I would go so far as to say that the natural, proper, fitting shape of the novel might be that of a sack, a bag. A book holds words. Words hold things. They bear meanings. A novel is a medicine bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us.
- Finally, it’s clear that the Hero does not look well in this bag. He needs a stage or a pedestal or a pinnacle. You put him in a bag and he looks like a rabbit, like a potato. That is why I like novels: instead of heroes they have people in them.
- full of beginnings without ends, of initiations, of losses, of transformations and translations, and far more tricks than conflicts, far fewer triumphs than snares and delusions; full of space ships that get stuck, missions that fail, and people who don’t understand. I said it was hard to make a gripping tale of how we wrested the wild oats from their husks, I didn’t say it was impossible. Who ever said writing a novel was easy?
- If, however, one avoids the linear, progressive, Time’s-(killing)-arrow mode of the Techno-Heroic, and redefines technology and science as primarily cultural carrier bag rather than weapon of domination, one pleasant side effect is that science fiction can be seen as a far less rigid, narrow field, not necessarily Promethean or apocalyptic at all, and in fact less a mythological genre than a realistic one.
- In it, as in all fiction, there is room enough to keep even Man where he belongs, in his place in the scheme of things; there is time enough to gather plenty of wild oats and sow them too, and sing to little Oom, and listen to Ool’s joke, and watch newts, and still the story
isn’t over. Still there are seeds to be gathered, and room in the bag of stars..
The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction
Metadata
Highlights
- The first cultural device was probably a recipient… Many theorizers feel that
the earliest cultural inventions must have been a container to hold gathered
products and some kind of sling or net carrier.
- I’m
not telling that story. We’ve heard it, we’ve all heard about all the sticks
and spears and swords, the things to bash and poke and hit with, the long,
hard things, but we have not heard about the thing to put things in, the
container for the thing contained. That is a new story. That is news.
- This theory not only explains large areas of theoretical obscurity and
avoids large areas of theoretical nonsense (inhabited largely by tigers, foxes,
and other highly territorial mammals); it also grounds me, personally, in
human culture in a way I never felt grounded before. So long as culture
was explained as originating from and elaborating upon the use of long,
hard objects for sticking, bashing, and killing, I never thought that I had,
or wanted, any particular share in it.
- If it is a human thing to do to put something you want, because it’s
useful, edible, or beautiful, into a bag, or a basket, or a bit of rolled bark
or leaf, or a net woven of your own hair, or what have you, and then take
it home with you, home being another, larger kind of pouch or bag, a container
for people, and then later on you take it out and eat it or share it or
store it up for winter in a solider container or put it in the medicine bundle
or the shrine or the museum, the holy place, the area that contains what
is sacred, and then next day you probably do much the same again — if to
do that is human, if that’s what it takes, then I am a human being after all.
Fully, freely, gladly, for the first time.
- I am an aging, angry woman laying mightily about me with my handbag,
fighting hoodlums off. However I don’t, nor does anybody else, consider
myself heroic for doing so. It’s just one of those damned things you have
to do in order to be able to go on gathering wild oats and telling stories.
- would go so far as to say that the natural,
proper, fitting shape of the novel might be that of a sack, a bag. A book
holds words. Words hold things. They bear meanings. A novel is a medicine
bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and
to us.
- Finally, it’s clear that the Hero does not look well in this bag. He needs
a stage or a pedestal or a pinnacle. You put him in a bag and he looks like
a rabbit, like a potato.
That is why I like novels: instead of heroes they have people in them.
- full of beginnings without ends, of initiations, of
losses, of transformations and translations, and far more tricks than conflicts,
far fewer triumphs than snares and delusions; full of space ships that
get stuck, missions that fail, and people who don’t understand. I said it
was hard to make a gripping tale of how we wrested the wild oats from
their husks, I didn’t say it was impossible. Who ever said writing a novel
was easy?
- If, however, one avoids the linear, progressive, Time’s-(killing)-arrow
mode of the Techno-Heroic, and redefines technology and science as primarily
cultural carrier bag rather than weapon of domination, one pleasant
side effect is that science fiction can be seen as a far less rigid, narrow
field, not necessarily Promethean or apocalyptic at all, and in fact less a
mythological genre than a realistic one.
- In it, as in all fiction, there is room enough to keep
even Man where he belongs, in his place in the scheme of things; there is
time enough to gather plenty of wild oats and sow them too, and sing to
little Oom, and listen to Ool’s joke, and watch newts, and still the story
isn’t over. Still there are seeds to be gathered, and room in the bag of stars.