Monday, May 28, 2007

A story in questions?

Is it possible to write a story entirely in questions? Would such a story automatically suck? Would it simply be maddeningly frustrating to read and write? Is it a fatal flaw in the whole concept that stories must necessarily convey information whereas questions are intended to solicit it, and can only convey information by being incredibly long, hypothetical in nature, and so full of clauses which are, in fact, thinly veiled statements that by the the time reader reaches the question mark, he or she is forced to wonder if it even belongs there, and to look back through the monstrosity of a sentence to determine if it's even a question?
Is it further possible that a particular author has already begun to write a story in questions, has finished a gripping introduction, and is now simply floundering about for a way to start the narrative?
Could it be that once, in a far away land, in a distant time, there lived a race (Why not call them the Queri?) who lived their lives in questions? Why would they live such lives? Did an ancient deity once tell them to seek the questions not the answers? Were they simply inquisitive by nature? Does that even matter? What would the Queri be like? Would they speak only in questions, or would living in questions involve more, like the refusal to make decisions if at all possible?
Why don't we focus our story around a little Queri boy named Hanzer? What was wrong with Hanzer (asked all his teachers)? Why couldn't he ever accept a question as a question? Why did he insist on trying to follow them up with a thing that was not a question at all, and sucked the great mystery out of a question?
Who could forget that fateful day in pres-school when Hanzer's teacher asked "What shall we call all of these colors?"?
Did Hanzer reply "What shall we call them?" like all the other dutiful children? Did he even reply with "Why must we call them anything?", as a very smart child might do?
Or did he (and in fact he did) reply with, "Let's call that one Carl!"?
Of course, did it just go away after that? Or did Hanzer go on answering teacher's questions despite repeated discipline?
What hadn't his parents tried to keep down that anti-questioning streak? Hadn't they lectured him with the most obvious leading questions? Hadn't they beaten him with the questioning stick (a bent cane with a ball hanging off the end)? Hadn't they questioned his right to desserts and video games?
But why wouldn't he just learn? Why would they ultimately be forced to banish poor Hanzer from the land of questions?
And how, for his part, was Hanzer to live outside of the village he'd grown up in? Where could he go? Would he head west to the fabled land of exclamations? Or east to the land of pregnant pauses?
Or would he take the most dangerous road of all, due north, to the mythical land of answers, where none dare enter?

2 comments:

Lisa said...

I LOVE IT!!!

Marten said...

Or did he (and in fact he did) reply with, "Let's call that one Carl!"? -I think the perenthetical makes this a non question.

very this is the title of the story which is also found several times in the story itself.