Day 1

I experienced waking up to rain in London for the first time.

The glass ceiling under which I sat, preparing for my seminar, leaked. A thread of water fell into my coffee – brewed strong, with double cream. The English laugh at my "American" provlicty to put a dessert product in my breakfast. "It's too rich for the morning," they declare, spreading butter on their scones.

My reading was dry – though the scones I had prepared were not. A Fortum and Mason recipe, I allowed the batter to sit at increments; lending a fluffy, though compact, texture, enhanced by lashings of butter and jam. I felt pure delight when Meg and Bridget enjoyed a serving too.

On the tube I tried to think about my reading but was preoccupied by a podcast dubbed "in the dark."

Even now, in the environs of academia, I am distracted. Instead of finishing my reading, I have taken to writing this diary – with the ostensible purpose of putting "the narrative construction of reality" into my own words, and entwining its ideas with my own experiences.

The passage questions reality and could be interesting, had not the writer, Jerome Bruner, ladened it with such a needless abundance of jargon.

He suggests that the way humans understand the symbolic world (he differiantes between our physical and emotional surroundings) is constructed through cultural artefacts – namely, narrative. The stories we tell one another, although not necessarily grounded in truth, fabricate our reality.

So what is a story? Bruner offers a 30 page answer to the question that I, devoid of a printer, have painstakingly annotated on my phone – whilst taking the district line to the Virginia Woolf Building.

I read a summary of his definition in the five minutes before class which I found infinitely more helpful.

A narrative is composed of ten elements....

1. Narrative diachronicity: The notion that narratives take place over some sense of time.

2. Particularity: The idea that narratives deal with particular events, although some events may be left vague and general.

3. Intentional state entailment: The concept that characters within a narrative have "beliefs, desires, theories, values, and so on" (7).

4. Hermeneutic composability: The theory that narratives are that which can be interpreted in terms of their role as a selected series of events that constitute a "story." See also Hermeneutics

5. Canonicity and breach: The claim that stories are about something unusual happening that "breaches" the canonical (i.e. normal) state.

6. Referentiality: The principle that a story in some way references reality, although not in a direct way that offers verisimilitude.

7. Genericness: The flipside to particularity, this is the characteristic of narrative whereby the story can be classified as a genre.

8. Normativeness: The observation that narrative in some way supposes a claim about how one ought to act. This follows from canonicity and breach.

9. Context sensitivity and negotiability: Related to hermeneutic composability, this is the characteristic whereby narrative requires a negotiated role between author or text and reader, including the assigning of a context to the narrative, and ideas like suspension of disbelief.

10. Narrative accrual: Finally, the idea that stories are cumulative, that is, that new stories follow from older ones.

Stripped of its bombastic form, the passage reflects the reason I chose to study literature. Stories have shaped how I understand the world. They are so entwined with my reality I believe I am groundless when I don't have something to read. A book, like many people's iphones are for them, is an extension of myself. An appendage as necessary as one's foot, or head.

I use narrative to enrich my experiences For example, the short story we read in class, "Peter Schlemihl", concerned a man who lost his shadow and consequently became an outcast. We discussed the various things this shadow could represent...masculinity, morality, or any attribute deemed necessary by society.

I think I worry a great deal too much about my shadow – how I am projected on the outside world. Howe people perceive me and the choices I make.

After class, I walked with a Russian girl who asked me why I selected King's, considering it wasn't the " best." At that moment, I was too distracted in taking in this new being– squat, solid, framed in a square t-shirt dress, passionate about Tony's chocolate and film, in short, the hazy shape of a potential friend – that I didn't appropriately ponder this question, answering flippantly;

"Because Virginia Woolf went here."

Afterwards, on the tube, unease set in. Why I had I chosen the so-called "fifth best" school in England, according to my new friend? Did other people regard me as a mediocre – a sliver away from the top?

The sun slithered out as I stepped onto the platform at Parson Green. I felt better, my mood swayed by the weather as I am books. I thought about Jerome Brunder who spent 30 pages elucidating something that's meaning could be explained in a blog post. My meaning is study to literature – the details of where, when, how, and who with do not matter so much, as long as I am doing it.

And do it I shall.