Of Fables And Babies... (1)
The Age
Monday March 21, 1994
`Age' writer Jim Schembri explains how he puts together his column, `A Modern Fable'.
WHERE do the stories for the `Modern Fables' come from? I get hit with this question a lot. The answer is: all over the place. Random thoughts, idle thoughts, an overheard splinter of conversation, a train ride, anything, from news footage of a missile exploding into the side of a hospital to being at a dinner party at a restaurant and seeing how there isn't enough room on the table for plates.
Of course, some of them come from personal experience, but they are often so abstracted that people do not recognise how they've been turned into a moose or a flea or a dragonfly or the commander of a starship. This keeps people from being offended. It also keeps them from killing me.
What do the `Modern Fables' mean? I get hit with this question a lot, too, and my answer is always the same: that doesn't depend on me, that depends on the reader.
This is not an excuse to be opaque or evasive. I always have some solid idea (or ideas) about what I'd like the fables to say, but I try to present them in a way which leaves room for alternative interpretation.
Nothing pleases me more than getting a phone call or a letter from someone telling me about how they interpreted a fable in a way that completely surprises me.
The philosophy behind the `Modern Fables' is simple: once they are published they don't belong to me, they belong to whoever reads them.
That is one of the reasons why the `Modern Fables' break with the traditional fable form by not stating what the moral of the story is at the end. Although some fables may be less open to interpretation than others, it is always important to leave the door open.
The other tradition the `Modern Fables' break away from is the exclusive use of animals to represent the often complex situations produced in a world made by humans. I always thought that was a little unfair on the innocent animal kingdom (an opinion shared by James Thurber, an American writer who also wrote fables).
Animals sometimes do make great metaphors for human life, which is why I often like to use them, but with the `Modern Fables' I thought it was time for humans to start taking responsibility for that glorious, complicated, funny, sad, intriguing mess they often refer to as ``civilisation".
© 1994 The Age