There are days when I think (or it’s said to me, either directly or indirectly) that writing fiction is an indulgence, something selfish that doesn’t really help anyone or accomplish anything real in the world. But then I re-read this excerpt from Anansi Boys, by Neil Gaiman, and I remember why I write, and that it’s not trivial, or selfish, or an indulgence
The old man started to talk in a gentle sing-song. “When I say Tiger,” he said, “You got to understand it’s not just the stripy cat, the India one. It’s just what people called big cats – the pumas and the bobcats and the jaguars and all of them. You got that?”
“Certainly”
“Good. So…a long time ago,” he began, “Tiger had the stories. All the stories there ever were was Tiger stories, all the songs were Tiger songs, and I’d say that all the jokes were Tiger jokes, but there weren’t no jokes told back in the Tiger days. In Tiger stories all that matters is how strong your teeth are, how you hunt and how you kill. Ain’t no gentleness in Tiger stories, no tricksiness, and no peace.”
Maeve tried to imagine what kind of stories a big cat might tell. “So they were violent?”
“Sometimes. But mostly what they was, was bad. When all the stories and the songs were Tiger’s, that was a bad time for everyone. People take on the shapes of the songs and the stories that surround them, especially if they don’t have their own song. And in Tiger times, all the songs were dark. They began in tears, and they’d end in blood, and they were the only stories that the people of this world knew.
“Then Anansi comes along. Now, I guess you know all about Anansi – ”
“I don’t think so,” said Maeve.
“Well, if I started to tell you how clever and how handsome and how charming and how cunning Anansi was, I could start today and not finish until next Thursday.” began the old man.
“Then don’t.” said Maeve. “We’ll take it as said. And what did this Anansi do?”
“Well, Anansi won the stories — won them? No. He earned them. He took them from Tiger and made it so Tiger couldn’t enter the real world no more. Not in the flesh. The stories people told became Anansi stories. This was, what, ten, fifteen thousand years back.
“Now, Anansi stories, they have wit and trickery and wisdom. Now, all over the world, all of the people they aren’t just thinking of hunting and being hunted anymore. Now they’re starting to think their way out of problems — sometimes thinking their way into worse problems. They still need to keep their bellies full, but now they’re trying to figure out how to do it without working — and that’s the point where people start using their heads. Some people think the first tools were weapons, but that’s all upside down. First of all, people figure out the tools. It’s the crutch before the club, every time. Because now people are telling Anansi stories, and they’re starting to think about how to get kissed, how to get something for nothing by being smarter or funnier. That’s when they start to make the world.”
“It’s just a folk story,” she said. “People make up the stories in the first place.”
“Does that change things?” asked the old man. “Maybe Anansi’s just some guy from a story, made up back in Africa in the dawn days of the world by some boy with blackfly on his leg, pushing his crutch in the dirt, making up some goofy story about a man made of tar. Does that change anything? People respond to the stories. They tell them themselves. The stories spread, and as the people tell them, the stories change the tellers. Because now the fold who never had any thoughts in their head but how to run from lions and keep far away from rivers that the crocodiles don’t get an easy meal, now they’re starting to dream about a whole new place to live. The world may be the same, but the wallpaper’s changed. Yes? People still have the same story, the one where they get born and they do stuff and they die, but now the story means something different to what it meant before.”
“You’re telling me that before the Anansi stories the world was savage and bad?”
“Yeah. Pretty much.”
She digested this. “Well,” she said cheerily, “it’s certainly a good thing that the stories are now Anansi’s.”
The old man nodded.
And then she said, “Doesn’t Tiger want them back?”
He nodded. “He’s wanted them back for ten thousand years.”
“But he won’t get them, will he?”
The old man said nothing. He stared into the distance. Then he shrugged. “Be a bad thing if he did.”