The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories

Seven Basic plots is a great work. Stories within stories, Christopher Booker really helps make sense of a huge number of tales which vary with each other at the most in the time they were told and the place they come from.

Both the enjoyment and learning you would expect from any good story are found in this book.

Choosing a single item of treasure from a dragon's horde would be a less daunting task, than trying to convey the riches that might be found, contained within this magnificent book!

Monumental, Original, Brilliant (2/2 people found this helpful)

As an author, I have read many books on plotting, but nothing to equal this work. It is monumental, original, brilliant. I began it thinking that it was just another post-Joseph Campbell application of the hero myth to story telling: in fact Booker points out tacitly where such books as 'The Writer's Journey' go wrong. Today, we no longer live in the archetypal world that Campbell discovered: a world where the true attainment of human life is maturity and balance. We live in a world where egotistical individualism and destructive competitiveness are condoned by the capitalist system: a world where all attainment is vested purely in material objects, where few people ever obtain real maturity or balance, a world where selfishness is even championed by quasi-scientific state ideologues like Richard Dawkins and his allegedly 'Selfish Gene'. Beginning about 200 years ago, roughly at the beginning of the modern age, this egotism is reflected in the stories we tell. Today few novels have an archetypal function: they are, as Booker points out, merely egotistical fantasies: I like to think of them as the literary equivalent of video games in which the reader identifies with the principal character and moves through his world, living an ego-fulfilling fantasy. At the end of this story the hero isn't changed: he/she has learned nothing from the experiemce.
This was the best kind of revelation for me - one which you know instinctively is right: I'd felt for so long that there was something wrong with modern stories: I could never understand why some novels which were obviously (to me) rubbish, succeeded so well: how people could get through a Wilbur Smith novel: why Anne Rice's Vampires suddenly and inconceivably became the good guys instead of the bad guys. Now, in one fell swoop, Booker explains everything - not only why modern stories seem so out of kilter with mythology, but how they reflect what is essentially an imbalance in our very culture. Unlike his pale imitations, mostly US authors, Booker doesn't use as examples obscure TV serials no-one has heard of, but classics we have all read - Moby Dick, James Bond, Jane Eyre, The Iliad, Tolkien etc etc.
One small disappointrment for me was Booker's failure to analyse the most successful stories of the last decade - the Harry Potter books - and
even to mention stories that lay bare the whole system itself - metafiction such as John Fowles, and films such as The Matrix. However, I agree with the reviewer who would give this book six stars - it says more than a dozen books on history and philosophy put together. Bravo!

Fundamentally flawed flannel (2/7 people found this helpful)

This book is a complete waste of the time, and the effort, it takes to read it. It is fundamentally flawed in that it does not differentiate between the concepts of plot and genre. For example, tragedy (or comedy) is not a plot, but rather a genre. A plot is simply the construction of a story - ie, what happens to a character as a series of inter-related causes and effects. A genre is the "type" of story which, depending on its ending, relates to theme and meaning, that is - why the story is being told. Thus a plotline of boy meets girl can be any kind of genre depending on its outcome and tone/style - for example, comedy, drama, melodrama, or tragedy. Story is about a character's choices or decisions they make, and the consequences which follow their action (or non-action). The plot is merely the construct of how their story is told. Genre is about meaning and relevance, empathy and experience. Plot is the map, genre is the journey.
Brooker has tried to shoehorn his personal prejudices into some cackhanded literary philosophy. His parsimonious bibliography alone is indicative of his myopic vision of the art of storytelling. I've yet to read any of his novels or screenplays in which he applies his so-called expertise in fiction.
Don't waste your time - and Chris, stick to writing fiction for Private Eye.

A fat book, but you don't have to read it all. (1/2 people found this helpful)

Like some other reviewers, I found the first part of this book by far the most interesting and convincing. The second part less so, particularly as it was becoming rather repetitious by then. I was engrossed by the comparisons between stories from such different ages and cultures: Beowulf and Jaws, Joseph (he of the technicolour dream coat) and Puss in Boots. There were frequent moments of recognition and revelation. Some of the stories analysed were familiar to me, but not all. My knowledge of ancient Greek mythology and drama is woeful, but I was still gripped by Booker's analysis of it. As someone who once took the Bible very literally but no longer does so, I was also particularly interested in the meanings Booker reads into the creation and fall stories and some other Bible stories. I had some sympathy with Booker's opinion of romanticism and what followed from it, the road to post-modernism and beyond. But hey, does this mean that we have to dismiss the likes of Joyce and Beckett, and hail Walt Disney as the greatest of 20th century artists and storytellers? Come on!

I read all of this book and enjoyed it all, but it does get rather repetitious, and if you just want to pick out the bits that interest you the most, you could do this without losing the flow of the argument. On the whole I found it not only interesting but a joyful affirmation of something I had always suspected - the value of storytelling.

Give Booker a Chance! (8/9 people found this helpful)

I think some reviewers (for instance, Olly Buxton in "Blame the Romantics," posted April 24, 2005) are too harsh and have failed to grasp the subtleties of Christopher Booker's arguments. He is not "writing off" Chekhov or Samuel Beckett, to name a few modern giants, but simply trying to understand the radical change that has occurred in Western literature over the last 200 years. Why is it that Greek tragedy or Shakespearean comedy require some kind of plot resolution--whereas in Beckett's Waiting For Godot, for example--nothing changes? Godot never arrives; the other characters remain too paralyzed on stage to go and search for him. What Christopher Booker is noticing is an incontrovertible shift in story-telling since the 19th century, and he makes fascinating cultural arguments about how modern writers--gradually uprooted from family, religion, the land, nationality--have lost the ancient bearings that give them identity, and so create characters who are alienated and inward-focused, unable to aspire to ideals beyond themselves. If you want an explanation as to why the average Joe goes to see Steven Spielberg movies like E.T. and stays far away from the rarified but empty word games of 21st-century "literary fiction," this is the book to read. Academic, yes. Intellectually ponderous at times, absolutely. But if you're patient, Booker will reward your efforts with deep insight. The man has spent 34 years thinking about the universal power of stories upon the human imagination. I might disagree with his interpretation of Christianity--particularly, his assertions about Apostle Paul's role in the early Church--but I still believe Booker's opinions on literature are worth pondering.

The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories

Christopher Booker

Reader Reviews:

A Book For All Seasons (1/1 people found this helpful)

Monumental, Original, Brilliant (2/2 people found this helpful)

Fundamentally flawed flannel (2/7 people found this helpful)

A fat book, but you don't have to read it all. (1/2 people found this helpful)

Give Booker a Chance! (8/9 people found this helpful)

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