How, two people emailed to ask me (you know, you can comment on the blog), am I really going to win the Nobel Prize for this?
First, let me reiterate that I'm planning to win the Nobel Prize in Economics, not Literature. I want to quantify the value of stories in an economy, or, perhaps, the economic value of stories. A story, like money, ciriculates. I started thinking of this when I was working for The New Yorker and had friends in Wall Street who said that the best jokes start on the trading floor. My first thought was, "I should be paying 1% transaction fees for this?" and then I thought, "why not?"
So the question is: are stories a Public Good, like fresh air and a nice view? Could one articulate a Problem of the Anecdote, like the Problem of the Commons? Does the Coase Theorum apply to anecdotes?
Please, my economist friends: help address this and don't be snarky....
1 comment:
Charles Brockden Brown. Literary Essays and Reviews. Eds. Alfred Weber and Wolfgang Schafer. Frankfurt and New York: Peter Lang. 1992.
“On Story-Telling” Much has been written to explain and to teach the art of story-telling; but no science is more difficult to attain, nor can it be taught by any settled rules. If the teller can but contrive to keep the attention of his audience awake to the end of his tale, he has certainly gained a great point, let the method he has taken be what it will; and if he can add to their attention some emotions of pleasure, or of surprise, he may justly be deemed a good story-teller. Seneca, who certainly may be cited as eminent in this art, will afford a beautiful example of this species of triumph over the expectations of his hearers. He tells us of the son of an eminent and opulent knight, to whom the wretched emperor Caligula took such an aversion, merely from envy to the superior graces of his persona and dress, that he ordered him to be led to execution. Not contented with this, he had the wanton cruelty to insist on the father’s presence at an entertainment, while he knew his son was suffering death. He did more; he drank to him in full bowls, having first placed a spy, who might watch and report any change in countenance. The wretched parent commanded his features, and formed them to express content, and even hilarity: nay, he entered into the spirit of the feast, wore the convivial chaplet, and, though old and infirm, he vied with the most robust of the guests in every joyous excess. “You ask me,” here observes Seneca, “how and wherefore he acted this strange part? I answer, “Habebat alterum:’ “He had another son.” Here, by a single, and a very short sentence, the passions of the hearers, which must have been highly excited against the parent, for his mean and odious dissimulation, are now strongly roused in his favor…. (154-55)
“On Anecdotes.” Anecdotes are literary luxuries. The refinement of a nation influences its literature; we now require not only a solid repast, but a delicious desert. A physician, austere as Hippocrates; a critic, rigid as Aristotle, are alike inimical to our refreshments. We will not be fooled into their systems. We do not dismiss our fruits and our wines from our table; we eat, and our health remains uninjured. We read anecdotes with voluptuous delight; nor is our science impaired, or our wit rendered less brilliant. It is jot just to consider anecdotes merely as means of improvement. They serve also the purpose of utility, and deserve to be classed higher on the scale of study than hitherto they have been….Had I to sketch the situation of the Jews in the ninth century, and to exhibit, at the same time, the character of that age of bigotry, could I do it more effectually than by the following anecdote? A Jew of Rouen, in Normandy, sells a house to a christian. After some time, a storm happens, lightning falls on the house, and does damage. The christian cites the Israelite into court for damages. His eloquent counselor hurls a phillipic against this detestable nation, and concludes by proving, that it was owing to this house having been the property of an Israelite, that a thunderbolt fell upon it. The judges, as may be supposed, are not long in deciding. The decree that God had damaged this house as a mark of his vengeance against a Jew, and therefore it was just the repairs should be at his cost. The sentence was hard upon the Jew. To be condemned to rebuilt a house is, however, better than to be burnt with some of its old wood. (159-61).
Post a Comment