Office of Future Storytelling , livre ebook

Troubador Publishing Ltd - Neil Powell

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

116 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

Neil Powell explores the political and existential problems facing humankind in this philosophical and literary examination of language and society... The Storyteller is tired of telling stories about Love, God and Beauty. With the invention of Eric Crawford, an English teacher at Davenport College, he explores what is required to tell new stories. As a result, a tantalising world of freedom beckons.This encompasses Eric's family and romantic life, the explosive relationship he has with troubled student, David Spurling, and a protest movement about the role of Art in society. The Storyteller's control of Eric's life conversely makes the Storyteller realise the power language has overhim. Reminding him that language is a public medium, not the exclusive tool of an authority or author.A stylistically innovative novel, at turns both a philosophy and black comedy,The Office of Future Storytelling, examines the relationship of language to individual identity and freedom. It argues that the stories we need are those which demonstrate our unequivocal connection to the world.

Sujets

Philosophie et théologie

Philosophy of language

Informations

Publié par	Troubador Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	02 septembre 2022
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781803133829
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0250€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Copyright © 2022 Neil Powell

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Matador
Unit E2 Airfield Business Park,
Harrison Road, Market Harborough,
Leicestershire. LE16 7UL
Tel: 0116 2792299
Email: books@troubador.co.uk
Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador
Twitter: @matadorbooks

ISBN 978 1803133 829

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

Contents
Part One
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22

Part Two
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30

Part Three
31
32
33

Part One

1
We sat back to admire, in the darkened theatre, on a video screen above the stage the giant image of a typewriter. The machine itself, mounted below on an empty desk, illuminated by a column of light. Simultaneously two hands appear, as though bursting from the sleeves of a black jacket. Clack-clack! The armatures of the machine hammer against the trapped paper. A glow makes the man discernible; in late middle age, in self-absorbed activity. Grace enters, carrying a glass of water. She carries it gracefully up to the desk where the Storyteller sits. He turns, taking the page out of the typewriter. With another sheet, he hands it to her. She studies both and then reads.
“‘Dear Mr Storyteller. I like all your stories, but the one I like most is Crumb . Rosie seems like such a nice girl and is faced with such an awful situation. Have you ever thought about reviving this character? I would love it if she was the subject of your next book’.” Grace then exchanged the letter for the Storyteller’s reply.
“‘Dear Anna. Thank you for your letter. It’s been a long time since I thought about this story. To be honest with you, once I finish a book, I don’t often return to the characters. But in this case, I promise you I will give it some thought. If I do return to Rosie Crumb, I will be sure to let you know. Thank you again for your letter’.”
“I got a letter, asking me if I’d revive the characters,” said the Storyteller.
“Bold,” said Grace. “You should ask her to adopt a puppy.” Studying the Storyteller, she asked, “Are you considering it?”
“Well, I’m thinking about it, yes.”
“It will be your last book,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Is that what you’d want to write?” By that time next year, he would be retired, and no more books. It was his last chance to say what he wanted. “You should really think about it.” Grace left him.
The Storyteller signed his reply and then dutifully pulled the collection off the shelf and flicked through the pages. Crumb. What had happened to Rosie Crumb? he wondered.
*
“Rosie sat in the hospital bed. Her dark hair and small round face held at the centre of the soft pillow. Her father could barely look at her without trembling. A hand in his pocket, the other clasped to the back of his neck. ‘Rosie…’ he said, the hand sliding to face. (We, the knowing reader, whisper, ‘Ice and fog.’) The declaration alive in her eyes that matched the colour of her dark hair said, resisting him, ‘Dad. You’re not getting in.’ And now look, she smiled.” The Storyteller’s fingers and thumbs separated the pages. “If it wasn’t a boy they’d found for her.
“‘This is Leo,’ the nurse said.
“‘Hello, Leo,’ said Mr Crumb. He shook the boy’s hand. ‘This is my daughter, Rosie.’ They all looked at Rosie.
“‘I’ve brought a book to read,’ said Leo. The reason for Leo being there? A blinding pain in his head that lit up the world. Leo Harker went to the hospital with a pain in his head. He didn’t know why. It was just there when he woke up, a pain in his head. He went to school where he tried to ignore it. He even played in the school football match. But then several badly controlled passes landed him in trouble with his peers. ‘Come on, Leo!’ they said, calling out their frustration. The next ball went straight past him. The boy fell to his knees, covering his face, awkward glances were made to the coach, the whistle was blown.
“‘Leo, look at me. Take your hands away. Tell me what’s going on?’ In his mind the vivid blur of a football match, the thud of the ball, the stud-raked turf, remained until a blinding flash. The coach pulled away Leo’s hands revealing a pair of eyes beset by mirror fragments of the people gathered around him. There was an eye and an eyebrow floating kaleidoscopically around a head, football boots and muddy knees, and a parade of identically folded arms.
“‘We’re going to A&E.’ Coach lead him from the pitch and sat him in the passenger seat, setting off, leaving the rest on the field. (The final score was three nil to their opponents from Hawks Cross.)
“‘I’ll call your parents,’ he said, breathlessly, as he navigated the streets. At the hospital Leo met doctors.
“‘You say that words were playing hide and seek, swimming over the page. Sounds to me like you’re having a migraine, Leo. We’ll do some tests, but I think you’ll be fine. Just fine. We’ll give you a painkiller, and set you up, okay.’
“While he was waiting for the results, which were bound to be just fine , the nurses, the next morning that is, seeing an opportunity in Leo, took him to see Rosie. A young girl with a broken leg, come in at about the same time. Her mother had been driving. That was enough, really. United by time at the junction beside Layton Gap. But anyway, we shouldn’t. The nurses asked him to bring with him the book he’d been reading, that he tried to protest wasn’t his. He’d borrowed it from the boy in the next bed.
“‘What are you here for?’ asked Rosie.
“‘Prosopagnosia caused by migraine,’ said Leo. ‘It means face blindness.’
“‘Is it permanent?’ she said. ‘Can you see me?’ Her own eyes focusing on him clearly.
“‘Yes,’ said Leo. ‘I just had a pain in my head. But it’s gone now.’ Leo Harker spent the afternoon reading to her. The thing which brought Rosie to life was not the sound of his voice, but something quite incidental: a fly behind the bed trapped against the windowpane. They both watched it buzz and dance. After a moment, Leo took a plastic bottle and covered it.
“‘I’m not going to kill it,’ he said, and slid behind it a piece of paper, carrying it to an open window. The act of setting it free, that was what seemed to wake her. When her father, Mr Crumb, came back, and it was time to leave, Leo asked, ‘Do you want anything, Mr Crumb?’
“‘No,’ her father replied. ‘Thank you, Leo. No.’ Describing him, while he was still present, ‘A nice boy.’
“‘Are you in love with her?’ the boy who’d given him the book said, when he returned.
“‘No,’ said Leo. ‘She’s only fourteen.’
“‘Guys fall in love with girls that young in Shakespeare,’ the other boy said. ‘You were with her all day.’ Leo learned that the boy had come in with his grandparents to have a swollen appendix sorted. He lived with them because his mother lived in Paris. He said he wanted to be an English teacher, which seemed so ordinary. It made Leo think of his father and specifically his father’s shed in the garden with the roof that opened up to the sky, and the lens inside that his Dad said put his eye to, and the blob of Saturn. How everything was small when you looked at other planets. And did the boy know that five billion years from now the sun would explode?
“‘And all the Art there was would be gone,’ the boy replied.”
*
The Storyteller looked up (and we upon him), set the book aside and ponderously pulled the cap off a pen.
“That cocky know-all boy, well, now he was going to be called Eric.” He scribbled the name and drew a circle around it; the character brought by name into being. Then ran a hand through his hair.
“An English teacher at Davenport College.” The Storyteller saw that this earlier work had possibilities not evident when he’d written it. He wound a blank sheet into the typewriter. Then he stretched his fingers. You still needed fingers . ‘That cocky know-all boy,’ he typed. And then, for inspiration, ‘Shakespeare…’ The clackety-clack machine gave him a page, which he stopped to read carefully, pressing his fingers to his lips. The zealous typewriter had adopted the habit, as if to prove it was still game, of whenever he used a punctuation mark of putting a hole through the paper. He rose, thinking again about Anna’s letter, thinking about the page, thinking about the story, to press it against the window, illuminating the dot pattern with moonlight. The whole idea of ending his career with a reader’s request seemed to the Storyteller both apt and ridiculous.
“What are you doing?” his wife said, seeing him by the window.
“Look,” he said. “Have you seen the moon? Look how bright it is.” He remembered a piece from Othello: ‘ It is the very error of the moon; she comes more near the earth than she has wont — ’
“Yes,”