Correction and Update: Thomas Hatchman asked the tenacious questions, link corrected below!

Good questions and tenacity in today’s symposium from, I think Tom (and apologies if I’ve got the name wrong). I think the conversation was the idea that all is narrative, versus my contention that all is not narrative. To try to simplify, we can narrativise anything (there was a moon who fell in love with a star, the star did not feel the same way, so the moon became sad) but that is not the same thing as saying that everything is narrative (the moon ‘looks’ sad to us due to the sun’s reflection in concert with its craters). Our lives are a case in point. Stories are cause and effect narratives that, significantly, are teleological. This means they are ‘end directed’ or defined. Things happen for purposes in a story – if a train is late in a story it is because this will let two characters meet, an accident be avoided (or not avoided) and so on. It isn’t just late. If my train is late on the way home tonight, then alas it is just late. There isn’t some final cause in relation to me which is the reason why the train is late.

Also briefly touched on intentionality. This is also mentioned by the next reading by Ryan, but this drawing from Seymour Chatman might also help:

(Chatman, Seymour. Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988. p. 151.Print.)

A narrative/story always has an author, as an intended statement/thing there is a real author (maker/creator) as well as an implied author within the work, while the narrator is a narrator present in the text. If they are not present there is still a sense and existing narrative voice that is a product of the text (which is why they are not the same as the real author).