Saturday, October 11, 2003

Modern Myth, Fabled Future

J. Robert Lennon's Opening:

The company's CEO had taken a particular interest in this store, and now spoke in the parking lot to a crowd of reporters and eager consumers about the company's virtues. Then, with a wave of his arm, he ordered the butterflies released.

Amazing how little the fairy tale form -- from syntax to size, and from narrative pace to story infrastructure -- has changed since Aesop, Grimm, and Anderson, how well it's weathered the c-change of time. From the first sentences Lennon's new-this-week piece, consistent and tight at six small paragraphs, hovers just on the right side of saccarine cliche, reveals the languages of fable and journalistic endeavor to be one and the same. Opening shows us how thin the line between fiction and journalism has become, if there is such a line at all, if there ever was. This unknown no-link-provided author-from-nowhere makes it all seem easy. Best, it could easily all be true.

Discovered at McSweeney's Internet Tendency, where love is full-color and loud.

posted by boyhowdy | 1:16 PM |

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