That's My Story and I'm Stikin' To It.

     Story (narrative) is the fundamental organizing principle of the way we view our lives. We relate to each other our “life story.” It is the way in which the disparate experiences of our life are resolved into an intelligible whole. Story creates or perhaps distills meaning from the random series of events. It reveals (creates) connections between events, between our self and others, between our self and places, between our self and whatever it is that we perceive as greater than our self. Without story, meaning is momentary and specific because relationship implies narrative. Two objects sitting near one another without analysis are simply two units in the visual field, but as we begin to relate them or juxtapose them we begin to tell a story. Their similarity or difference is only applicable if we begin to connect them temporally, imagine that they can be swapped one for another, or combined. Their opposition, their bond become elements of a narrative in which they leave the spatial realm of the visual field and become part of the narrative that again distills meaning.
There is an innate sense in the value of story; after all we don’t simply spill our life story to a stranger. As Benjamin suggests, that story has advice for the attentive listener. We can convey our sense of understanding by relating our own process of making meaning. A truism of police work is that 5 people can witness the same act and tell 5 completely different stories. I will argue that it would be unlikely that 2 would have the same story, because we each create meaning based on the way events relate to our own our story which is as individual as a fingerprint.
Benjamin’s concern over the disappearance of the storyteller might be as much about the fragmentation of society, and the fall of collective meaning. As an effect of the valorization of individuation, meaning becomes the possession of the individual. The novel as Benjamin presents it is the process writ large. A story which collects the memory of generations and conveys collective understanding sadly does not fit fully into a post romantic world where everything is subject to individual acceptance.