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The Way of the Storyteller
Sawyer, Ruth. The Way of the Storyteller. New York: Penguin Books, 1942, 1990.
Traditional ending after telling a story: "Take it, and may the next one who tells it better it."
--Ruth Sawyer, The Way of the Storyteller (17)
Introduction
Sawyer sets the stage by calling forth our imaginations, not our emotions or our analytical intelligence. She states, "This is no intellectual accomplishment, this book. I have no wish to prove anything, nor could I if I wished" (16). She simply wants to tell of her life and times as a storyteller. Nothing more, just to tell a story. She proceeds to give her background to storytelling, who and what influenced her as a child. You can think of this text as a storytelling narrative, akin to the literacy narrative, because that is essentially what it is. Sawyer particularly revels in Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows, which she discusses in later chapters, particularly "Storytelling as an approach to children's books and reading."
She concludes her introduction by again telling the reader what not to expect: "This is no book on how to tell stories and what to tell. It is a call to go questing, an urge to follow the way of the storyteller[ . . .] not for riches or knowledge or power, but that each might find, 'something for which his soul had cried out.' I believe it to be something that transcends method, technique -- the hows and the whys." (20).
Points to ponder: What is your experience with storytelling? What is your storytelling narrative? Do you believe storytelling is something that can be described in a how-to book?
Storytelling -- A Folk-Art
Sawyer begins with a storyteller's guild and the idea of storytelling as a craft. She then compares it to the art of cooking, always returning to the idea that "the art of storytelling lies with in the storyteller" (26). Storytelling is built out of experience, the building of background, creative imagination, and a gift for selection. While these traits of the storyteller are something that one can be born with, she does conceed that a person can be trained to acquire the skills. A storyteller must have "a clear understanding of what storytelling is and what it is not" (27).
She then asks, "What does storytelling require?" (27) One must approach storytelling with the right approach, which to Sawyer is through simple imagination. You must also have an "intense urge to share with others" the stories and experiences that have affected you. Sharing a story is like presenting someone a gift of yourself.
She defines storytelling as a "living art" (29).
Points to ponder: What do you see as the difference, if any, between
dramatic readings, reading a picture book aloud to a class, and storytelling?
What do you think Sawyer means when she says, "To be a good storyteller
one must be gloriously alive" (28)?