Overview
When I hear a good story, I have an almost physical need to tell it," writes veteran cultural critic Robert Fulford. "Of all the ways we communicate with one another, the story has established itself as the most comfortable, the most versatile."In The Triumph of Narrative, Fulford explores narrative in all of its forms—from conversation, gossip, and urban legends to journalism, literature, film, and television—to illustrate vividly how storytelling formed the core of civilized life, how stories shape us as much as we shape stories, and how the human appetite for narrative persists.
Pursuing his subject across a landscape that includes The Birth of a Nation, Chinatown, TV news, Twain, Hemmingway, and Nabokov, Sex scandals, and The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Fulford brilliantly elucidates the timeless elements of narrative and articulates the intimate connections between story and how we live and view reality. During an era when mass media and mass leisure have enabled us to spend much more time absorbing stories than any of our ancestors could, The Triumph of Narrative is an incisive look at one of our most fundamental, irreplaceable needs.
About the Author:
Robert Fulford writes a weekly column for The Globe and Mail (Toronto) as well as a monthly media column for Toronto Life. Editor of the Canadian magazine Saturday Night for nineteen years and the author of six previous books, he lives in Toronto.