On Stories

Drawing on the work of James Joyce, the story of Sigmund Freud's Dora and the case of Oscar Schindler, this text illuminates how stories are deep at work in fictional writing, autobiography, psychoanalysis and above all, in attempts to talk of the self. The author also considers the stories of nations and how these may affect the way a national identity can emerge from stories. He looks at the stories of Romulus and Remus in the founding of Rome, the hidden agenda of stories in the antagonism between Britain and Ireland and how stories of alienation in film such as Aliens and Men in Black reveal often disturbing narratives at work in projections of North American national identity. Throughout, On Stories stresses that far from heralding the demise of the story, the digital and supposedly postmodern era opens up powerful new ways of thinking about narrative.