I LOVE your optimism! (And this substack, btw) But I’m very skeptical about your claim. I would like to hear an example of something meaningful that you have created in your life that doesn’t come from an ancient story, one way or another. I think you are more deeply embedded in culture than your statement suggests. At best, we remix meaning.
I think you will find that, for your Utopian novel, you will use the same symbols and the same tropes as everyone else does — maybe better, maybe worse — but that culture is all we have to work with. Mostly this is rehashing Christianity. Or pieces of it at least.
An example,
In the original Norse mythology there is no test of worthiness for Thor. He wields the hammer because he is strong. In the same way that Beowulf nor Achillies have no kind of moral component.
But as the story of Thor is updated and transformed, the very Christian idea of worthiness is added to it. And he becomes a different kind of hero.
I don’t know if this makes sense, but you want to do a podcast about it?
Oh well sure, symbolism will live on forever. And art will always inspire other art.
I was speaking more on a personal level. As in: you don’t need to read ancient stories to live a meaningful life. 😝
We might be saying the same thing. Here's how I would put it. You have to have stories to have a meaningful life. And all our stories are ancient, one way or another.
As a writer, I find it is very useful to read ancient stories because it helps you make better stories. Otherwise, all you are getting is the embers of the original spark, which probably isn't very good. But if you can get to the spark of what inspired many people who came after, maybe your chances of doing something new and original with it go up.
You might not need to read ancient stories, but your life will be more meaningful if you do.
Ok yes, totally. There is nothing new under the sun, so to speak. There, I agree!
But, I lost your metaphor because I don’t believe the original stories are the best ones. They are not the original spark with everything that comes after mere embers. They are only the first stories we wrote down. That certainly doesn’t make them the best stories, or the source of all the best metaphors, we have perfected many things since then.
If we are going to study astronomy, we don’t go back to Copernicus. Though he advanced ideas as far as he could get them, with the limited tools he had, we have since advanced them. And shouldn’t we start there? Rather than going back to the very beginning when we didn’t know?
The stories aren't the best (in fact, 'best' is a weird term to apply to stories) but Homer, Ovid, Shakespeare, the Bible and much more echoes through every story in the West. For good or ill. And to be conscious of those influences, to get command of them so you don't make choices unthinkingly, I think you have to read them.
The Guardian just asked Lee Child what his favorite thriller was and he answered, "Theseus and the Minotaur, as told by Plutarch. That 3,500-year-old tale has been endlessly reproduced – Ian Fleming’s Dr No is structurally identical – and never really improved upon."
As far as your astronomy analogy, it's certainly true of the hard physical sciences, and I'd like it to be true of the social sciences (google: replication crisis and lament) but it's not true of art and certainly not true of story.
Another way to look at it: You seriously want to suggest that Beyonce is better than Bach or vice versa? They both have occasions and usages -- and their own goals. As Tacitus wrote, "There is no worse fault for in criticism than to blame a work of art for lacking qualities to which it makes no pretension."
He wrote that nearly 2000 years ago. And I'm not sure that the postmodern criticism is an advance from that. I am certain that postmodern criticism is not more useful to a working writer than that simple idea.
What you are arguing for (which I have heard referred to as the Whig Theory of History) would seem to mean that every poet writing today would be better than Whitman (or any other poet in the past) because poetry exists as some kind of technology that is improved and passed on through time. And if you choose to object on the grounds that individual talent varies from poet to poet and age to age, I would suggest that even the worst Doctor today is better for almost everything than the best Doctor 300 years ago. But art doesn't work that way.
Which is why canonicity matters. I think to disagree is to rob yourself of sources of power as a writer.