We oppose in vain reality and fiction, this is what I will remember from Nancy Huston’s book. Any human group invents stories that imply actions from that given group. We are driven by stories, social background, country, religion, family story and so on. Stories have an effectiveness in our reality as they push people to action and structure our identities, to this end stories are very much real.
Some of us tend to “embellish facts” like the inhabitants of Marseilles as goes the French cliché of the South. They start from a fact and add what they experienced, thus making the story riveting. They are fully aware that stories are vital and create bonds. In the movie Big Fish by Tim Burton, a father gets on his son’s nerves who cannot seperate fact and fiction in his father’s life anymore. With the son, the viewer ends up realising how
disproportionate is the stress we put on reality/truth, when we should wonder on the liveliness of stories. It does not matter if it is not strictly factual! The tale brought closer together two beings. A beatiful plea for the writer trade…
*This is an attempt to translate the title of her book “L’espèce fabulatrice”, which I have not found online.
Here to get the book in French: https://www.lalibrairie.com/livres/l-espece-fabulatrice_0-587130_9782742791095.html
