p.108 A computer can produce a chronicle, and do so more quickly, accurately, and hence
efficiently, than can a human being. But only human beings can produce stories, because only they have reasons for
doing something, whereby they can endow what they do with meaning - and in proportion as that meaning is communicated
by means of the story form, the story is more or less intelligible. At the minimum, intelligibility is the criterion
of success for the construction of a story. It has to "make sense," whatever else it might also achieve. [JLJ - perhaps
computers can produce stories if they are made to understand the power relations among the objects and can simulate desire
driving action.]
p.109 To present an event as "subsequent" to a "prior" event is to do more than narrate the event
- it is to say why it happened. And the way we do this is to preface the statement that "x happened" with the term,
"then". But this term must be meaningful rather than merely formal
p.109 When we say, "he felt cold and then he closed the window" ("this happened and then he did
that")... we wish to account for his subsequent action as indeed his "next" action by using the term "then;" that
is, we wish to render his conduct intelligible, and this places parameters to what he can (intelligibly) do "next"
(that is, subsequent to feeling the cold).
p.110 In short, the narrative form presents his conduct as a response to situations rather
than as the effect of causes, because it is intelligible to us in terms of our more or less hazy, or systematically
reflective, view of "how the world works," especially of the factors which influence (but do not determine)
human conduct.
p.111 I have argued up to now that the basic form of narrative is, "this happened then that;" that
to put two occurrences as contiguous to each other is to achieve a kind of intelligibility... through the economic
establishment of continuity
p.113 By saying a thing happened next, we know why it happens.
p.122 People can tell or make stories, then, with an easy facility.
p.124 One of our characteristics is that we are "story-perceiving" beings; one of the characteristics
of the world is that it generates stories, that is, "story-objects."
p.126 By "an event," then, I mean a sequence of occurrences singled out for notice.
p.126 to tell a story is to describe an event... the narrative structure is that by which we apprehend
events - or again, the "content" of an event has the "form" of a narrative. Events are no more
nor less "real" or "objective" phenomena in the world than occurrences and physical objects... the fact that events are classifiable
and describable on the same general principles which apply to, for example, physical objects and occurrences, indicates we
are confronted by phenomena just as "real," "objective," and "individual" as any object or occurrence.
p.126 Part of our understanding of "the real world out there" is constituted by our awareness of
events.
p.127 if we were incapable of narrative that entire aspect of reality constituted by events would be beyond
our awareness.
p.127 narrative... has been identified as that mode of discourse which puts
otherwise discrete occurrences into an intelligible order.
p.127 narrative form is explicative of... the world of "story-objects," or "events."
