Iterations: This is not a story

 

This is not a story.

 

A story has a beginning, a point at which a plot is born, sometimes quite messily and sometimes in a rather sterile fashion, and starts on the often tortuous, seldom straightforward path of a maturing process.  A story also has an end.  This word bears two meanings of unequal significance: the conclusion of the plot, and a purpose.  The former is quite simple; the plot concludes when the words on the page are no more.  The latter, on the other hand, is the essence of a story.  Purpose is the lifeblood that pulses through every word, no matter how short or trivial.  A story has a reason to be told.  Without an end in this sense, it is a lifeless pile of words.

 

This is not a story, though the man who narrates it would like to think that it is, because of the crucial thing it lacks.  It may have a beginning and an end in the first sense of the word, but it has no reason to come alive.

 

This is a long, largely mundane, often incoherent, at times sordid compilation of sentences detailing a man’s life.  Try as he might, he cannot extract a purpose from the events he narrates and thus inject meaning into his words.  The reader may be more successful at that; to each his own.

 

On the next page is a beginning without an end.