Extraordinary Discourse 210


Sideways To The News





Every construction we make of the world is, or should be, hypothetical. It is a story we tell ourselves. Being hypothetical, it is also at best falsifiable. We believe we understand someone; we find we've been wrong when we hurt them or they hurt us. We think we know how we are perceived and valued, and learn that those around us have quite another view of us, far better or far worse. I might suggest that we are sane in the degree that out our internal narrative retains the character of hypothesis, permitting editing, necessary adjustment, the assimilation of new understanding. Fictional narratives consistently employ surprise, reversal, irony, hidden identity. The wandering Ulysses is continually confronted with prodigies that alter the effective terms of survival. Only his shrewdness, his ability to respond to urgencies that constantly change, allows him to return alive to Ithaca. Disrupted hypothesis is structured into fiction of all kinds, from Don Quixote to "Casey at the Bat."
from
On "Beauty"
By Marilynne Robinson
From Tin House
Pushcart Prize XXXVII
Best Of The Small Presses


Trigger warning:

Roy Rogers's horse might not like some parts of this podcast.


Also, this podcast occasionally lapses into blasphemy





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