Philip Pullman tells a nice story about how he invented dæmons for use in His Dark Materials:

“… it just emerged as I was trying to begin the story. I suddenly realised that Lyra had a dæmon, and it all grew out of that.”
(‘The Man Behind the Magic: An Interview with Philip Pullman‘)

I like Pullman’s implication that he isn’t really the author of this story – that the details were something for him to realise rather than invent.

But this is also a story of beginning again. Pullman tried to begin the story without dæmons and it didn’t work, so he began again – this time, with the dæmon present: “Lyra and her dæmon moved through the darkening Hall.” It’s a compelling opening, and many would argue that dæmons are the most successful element of Pullman’s work. It seems important that dæmons were born when Pullman started again.

I tried a more self-conscious version of beginning again when rewriting ‘A Fantasy’, the followup to ‘A Cadence‘.

The original story started with a knight, Sir Drake, who fell in love with a princess. In my head, the story was all about this knight and whether or not his fantasies came true.

When I’d finished the drafts of all the stories in this collection, I realised that ‘A Fantasy’ was by far the weakest. It needed a lot of work. At first I thought this would be a case of a few tweaks, but after hiding from the story for about a year, I eventually decided that the whole thing needed to be rewritten.

Remembering Pullman’s story of regenesis, I tried to talk myself into a similar mindset. I asked myself what other elements were in the story that I was not seeing. Who else was there? In the end I “realised” that what I’d missed was the emphasis. In the first version of the story, the princess was objectified – she was something for Sir Drake to dream about obtaining. I wondered how the story would change if I made the princess an equal protagonist. What if it wasn’t just about Sir Drake’s fantasies, but about hers as well? What if the rich and healthy princess was just as scared of her very ordinary destiny?

Instantly, the story started to shift, and I can now see how ‘A Fantasy’ fits into the collection. In ‘A Cadence‘, the princes go on adventures while the ordinary people work on the land and think about what’s going on. The rich and famous people are clearly the protagonists, and the ordinary people are mere extras. What ‘A Fantasy’ now enables me to do is begin the transition from stories about extraordinary people (with mermaids and dragons) to tales about very ordinary people.

When we talk about storytelling, we put a lot of emphasis on beginnings. I agree that beginning is a great challenge and a real achievement. But perhaps even harder – and even more important – is the process of beginning again.

My wife and I share a conflict of opinion about Doctor Who.

She doesn’t like it, because in every episode the monsters nearly kill the humans but they get away in the end.

I like it, because in spite of that it tells me a believable story about a lonely man.

Which of us is right? Perhaps both (they’re just opinions, after all). But reading The Writer’s Tale recently, I was interested to see the show’s current head writer, Russell T Davies, describe precisely this conflict.

He explains how, as a new episode begins to take shape, two stories converge and start to fight for space. One of the stories is about the monsters, while the other is about the people:

“I’m glad to have started, though worried by what’s to come. I had a fair bit of Cybermen-in-Victoriana worked out, but this two Doctors story, the real story, is so strong that it’s sort of knocking out everything else.”

I’ve stuck with the show because, in spite of the hackneyed formula of the key characters nearly dying in every episode, the overarching examination of human nature continues to engage me. Davies’ comment above, about 2008’s Christmas Special, plays out this conflict between formulaic monster plots and emotionally engaging human storylines.

I’m intrigued by his notion that the second storyline, about the relationship between two people, is “the real story” – as though the other story, about the Cybermen (the monsters) is just a means to an end.

When I was putting together the page about my story, ‘A Cadence‘, I toyed with various ways of describing the tale.

One obvious way would be to describe its elements – it’s a story about two princes and a mermaid. This conveys something of what the story contains.

Another way is to outline its themes – in this version, it’s a “not-so-fairy tale about stupidity, beauty, grief and revenge.”

Which is better? Perhaps neither. But I might verbalise this as Davies does his own stories. I might say: “It seems to be about fabulous creatures like mermaids, but really it’s about human qualities like stupidity and vanity.”

But in the end, I realise that the storyteller’s tools are part of the story he’s telling. I can’t deny that Doctor Who is, on some level, about formulaic monster chases. You can’t pluck out the essence of a story without in some way destroying that story. The story is the whole thing – the monsters and the emotions.

When I was too young, my mum tried to explain evolution to me.

She said: “A long time ago we used to be like monkeys, with long thick hair and claws instead of nails. We lived in the trees.”

The first problem was that when she said “we”, meaning the human race, I thought she meant “we” as in her and my dad. So I started to develop a very strange understanding of their early married life.

The second problem was that my only sustained experience of monkeys at that time had been not of the real things, but of Coco the Monkey, the mascot of Coco Pops, my favourite breakfast cereal. I came to the conclusion that my mum used to look like Coco the Monkey.

I had misunderstood the story. I realised that it was a story of origins, but instead of recognising that it was about our collective origin as a species, I’d interpreted it as a story about my parents’ origins as individuals.

I believe that at the heart of storytelling lie two questions: where do we come from, and where are we going?

These stories have been told on the individual level, as various kinds of autobiography, and they’ve also been told on the collective level, as stories about humankind as a whole. The Christian myth, Marxism, psychoanalytic theory, evolutionary theory, and lots of other stories, have all influenced the way human beings see themselves by attempting to explain where we come from and where we’re going.

Our concept of time is linear, and so are the stories we tell. Stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and I think we like to perceive our lives like that too. The middle is usually now, where we are at the moment. So the puzzle is working out how this particular story began, and guessing how it will end.

The story we tell about ourselves changes as we get older, but the anxiety does not go away – we realise that we are in the middle of something, but we want to understand the whole narrative.

My first Christmas story, ‘A Christmas Argument‘, is now available.

Like the scenes from ‘A Cadence’, it comes complete with some beautiful illustrations from my good friends.

Some of the pictures are unfinished, so I’ll add them if they become complete.

Why did I choose to write a Christmas story set in the jungle?  This post explains part of my thinking.

Click here for the full story.

There is a strong tradition, in children’s storytelling, of telling tales about predatory animals such as lions and tigers.

Children’s books about lions and tigers rarely present such creatures as they really are: ruthless, powerful hunters.  Instead, authors emphasise qualities such as their beauty and majesty, presenting them as objects of awe or affection in stories that are fundamentally about humans, not animals.

A classic example is The Tiger Who Came to Tea, in which Sophie and her mother are visited at home one day by a tiger.

Crucially, the tiger is never depicted as being threatening.  He disrupts and intrudes on the world of Sophie and her mother, but they are never in physical danger.  Rather, the consequence of this unexpected visit is the reassertion of domestic happiness – with nothing left to eat at home, Sophie’s father takes the family to eat at a nearby café.

The principal quality of this tiger is its mystery.  Its visit is unannounced, and the family does not know if it will come again.  Like its real-life counterpart, this tiger is unpredictable, but it is not dangerous.

In another book, Library Lion, the lion displays both human and animal qualities. It is kind, and wants to help; but its lion-like roar gets it into trouble. Ultimately, though, the conflict is resolved and the predatory creature – more so than in The Tiger Who Came to Tea – is accepted into civilisation.

Both stories are made compelling because of the relationship between the mystery and unpredictability of wild animals and the civilised nature of the domestic environment they are brought into. Catherine Rayner’s Augustus and His Smile uses the predatory animal to very different effect.  Despite certain familiar features, such as the mapping of human emotions onto the tiger (“Augustus the tiger was sad”), mankind is most notable in this book because of its absence. Indeed, apart from the “small, shiny beetle”, the “birds that chirped and called” and the “shoals of tiny, shiny fish”, Augustus the tiger is the only living creature to appear in the book.  The story is striking because of the solitude it conveys.

In case this needs pointing out, I can reveal right now that all three of these stories are factually inaccurate. A tiger in your home would tear you to pieces and destroy your furniture. A lion running loose in a public library would not help the already fragile Dewey Decimal System. But this, of course, is not the point.

Nevertheless, I wanted to explore the specific kind of suspension of disbelief required when we read such tales of not-quite-anthropomorphic creatures. I also want to expose the con of texts like Owl Babies, which appears to be warmly reassuring, yet whose subtext conveys a world in which one family’s comfort is at the expense of another’s security.

The result is my first Christmas story, ‘A Christmas Argument’.  Following on from the fun we had illustrating ‘A Cadence‘, I invited some friends to help me illustrate this one.  The full story, complete with illustrations, will be posted here next week.

To make sure you get it, why not register for my updates?

One of the things I love about cover versions, remakes and adaptations is that they represent a different way of telling the same story.  Often, it’s amazing to see how similar elements can give rise to such different stories.

At the moment, I’m enjoying a playful retelling of the King Arthur myth, in the form of the BBC’s Merlin series.  Audaciously, it rewrites the prehistory of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table as a kind of soap opera, with popular British actors playing out stories that borrow from the Arthur myth whilst also establishing a mythology of their own.

The BBC’s website warns us to “keep the magic secret”, and this is the series’ main addition to the story we know.  In this version, Uther Pendragon (Arthur’s father and predecessor) has banned magic from the kingdom.  For him, magic is wild, uncivilised, and untrustworthy.  It is the conflict between magic and Uther’s law that provides much of the adventure in this new story.  It’s an interesting subject, and I’m enjoying watching how it is developed.

Many of my own stories are, in a sense, alternative versions of existing tales.  ‘A Cadence‘ and the stories that follow it (‘A Fantasy’, ‘A Substitute’ and ‘A Tragedy’) are all based, to differing extents, on stories or story functions already known to me.  They also contain my own inventions, elements of autobiography and even traces of public affairs.  So I’ve rewritten the stories I know, or repurposed them.

In another sense, these stories contain the echoes of the many other ways in which I might have told them.  My uncertain narrator plays out different possibilities rather than offering a fixed narrative, and – in a much more emphatic sense – reminds us that each of these stories could have ended differently, had the characters made different choices.

‘A Cadence‘ contains a story within the story – somewhere in the middle, the narrator interrupts his narrative to explain the back story of his two protagonists (Tenniel and Daniel), revealing why it is that this kingdom is governed not by one king, but instead by these prince twins.

Thinking about Merlin the other day, I remembered that I had told this story once before, in a significantly different way.

In ‘A Cadence‘ and its sequels, I took great care not to involve magic in any way, because  I wanted to depict a world that was devoid of it.  They’re rife with mythical creatures, but no magic.

Conversely, my earlier version of this story is all about magic.  Like the writers of Merlin (although several years earlier) I invented a kingdom in which civilisation has pushed magic to the outskirts of acceptability.  I envisioned this story as the first in a series about the return of magic to this place.  I never wrote its sequels, and eventually re-used the story of the prince twins.

Here’s the original in its entirety (written circa 2002), in case you’re interested:

The Royal Twins

Once, a very long time ago, and in a land very different from our own (yet where men and women treat each other much the same) a pair of twins was born to the King and Queen who ruled the province. A very happy time followed, but after a few months the man and wife fell ill, and it was thought that they would not survive. The two boys, Titus and Chesney, were taken away from the invalids to save them from falling ill as well, and, when they returned, their mother and father were dead.

It is commonly known that twins have a natural bond between them, and in this case the natural bond was given further strength by the strange situation: the two boys were drawn together by the death of their parents, and became even closer when the public clamour surrounding the phenomenon of the orphaned royal twins demanded that they spend hours together at public events and royal appearances. In such a way, the most charming example of brotherly affection was reduced to a sort of stage show for the general amusement of a country in want of a ruler.

Because there was no natural heir old enough to take the throne, the kingdom fell temporarily into the hands of the royal council, which was made up of some of the wisest and most respected men in the province. One day, one of the most senior members of this council approached Titus with a heavy heart, and said:

“My dear boy, I have some terrible news to tell you. The other royal advisors and I have watched you and Chesney grow up together, and know how close you are. But, as you know, you are now both old enough to become King, and the law decrees that when twins are the heirs, a competition must be staged to identify the superior. We do not like it, but we must follow the royal procedure. The contest will take place next week.”

Titus received the news with a grave face, and said nothing for some time. When he was ready to speak, he said very simply: “You must know that I cannot compete against my brother, for aside from the fact that I love him too well to be able to do such a thing, the very idea is entirely impractical – it would not work.”

The advisor, whose name was Old Rodney, had anticipated such a response, and knew what the young man meant. Titus and Chesney had grown up together, had been trained and educated by the best men in the country, and were flawless at every task imaginable. The councillors had recognised immediately that to place the twins in competition with each other was not only morally outrageous, but also hypocritical, because logic itself dictates that if two specimens are perfect, completely unflawed, then one cannot possibly be superior to the other.

After a week had passed, this notion proved itself to be correct in practice. The brothers competed at archery, chess, dictation, jousting and numerous other activities, but to the astonishment of the crowd that had gathered to watch the selecting of their new King, in not one of these activities did one triumph over the other. Even in the highly subjective case of musical performance, in which Titus and Chesney played upon the lute and the recorder respectively, a panel of judges declared that both played so sweetly, accurately and with that creative instinct which often escapes the most accomplished musicians, that it would be unjust to announce a winner.

The royal council observed these happenings with a grave sense of irony. In any other situation, a kingdom would have cause to rejoice at the brilliance of the young princes. They were pure and gifted in every respect: loving, strong, intelligent and creative – the perfect representatives of their province. Yet now, the council was expected to search hard for some flaw in one of the brothers – anything which could distinguish one brother as better than the other.

In the land that we presently speak of, the use of magic had been rare for many years. There had been a time when sorcerers of all kinds held the supreme status in the land, but, as the kingdom grew and became more civilised, ruled justly by a King and Queen, and governed by rules and decrees rather than by enchantments and spells, this wild magic had been built upon and pushed aside, so that now only a few relics of the old times remained.

Old Rodney was not merely wise, but also extremely observant, so that he knew, through eavesdropping at the market-place, that there were those in the kingdom who still appealed to the forces of magic in times of strife. A popular source of advice was the young sorceress, Carmella, who lived with her brother in a hamlet on the outskirts of the kingdom. Had the use of magic been declared unlawful, the loyal Old Rodney would never have considered visiting Carmella. However, as the practice was merely considered primitive and antisocial, rather than strictly treacherous or even morally outrageous, Old Rodney’s only source of opposition on the matter was his personal misgivings. Eventually, deciding that the kingdom’s needs were more pressing than his own reluctance to turn to the wild ways, he went to visit Carmella, and explained the predicament.

Although Carmella was very young, she had been using magic to answer the questions of her visitors for many years. The magnitude of this particular problem affected her little, as she was hardly even aware of a royal presence in the province, so in most senses this visitor was much the same as any other. Nobody can say, then, why she chose to address this issue differently from all others which presented themselves to her. Instead of appealing to the forces of magic herself, and obtaining from them a solution for Old Rodney, she presented him with a thick book, telling him that if he ever had a question, the book would help him to find the answer.

Old Rodney hurried home and, after summoning the other most senior members of the royal council, placed the book onto a table. As Carmella had instructed him, he placed one hand on the cover of the book, and said in a loud but timid voice:

“Who should be the next King of the province?”

He then opened the book at a random page, and read the book’s response. Instead of giving a direct answer, the book had asked another question:

“Who is the rightful heir to the throne?”

Old Rodney sighed and turned away, believing the book to be useless. But one of his subordinates suggested that, as Carmella had said that the book would help its users to find an answer, rather than dictating one outright, they should follow its guidance.

Old Rodney, who was very wise, but growing impatient with the present problem, realised that the younger man was correct. Placing his hand on the book’s cover a second time, he answered:

“The rightful heir is the first male to be born to the King and Queen. But both sons were born at the same time.” When he opened the book again, the response was this:

“If the rightful heir is the first-born, and both were born at the same time, who is the rightful heir?”

With this second response, the book mysteriously closed itself, as though that was all it had to say on the matter. Since all those present were very wise, and quick with logic, they swiftly saw what the book meant. The following day, it was announced to the kingdom that the two princes, being inseparable in every respect, and complementing each other perfectly, would rule the province together. In this way, the province found its new King, and in this way, magic wormed its way back into the kingdom.

Today I want to show you something really exciting. It’s a series of pictures showing scenes from my story, ‘A Cadence‘.

Some of my friends did this as a surprise, and I’m excited not only because they’ve so successfully visualised my story in a way I never could, but also because the whole project ties in with all my recent ideas about ordinary people performing.  The people who created these images do not call themselves artists.  They just got together one day to do some art.  Isn’t that brilliant?

Most of all, seeing these pictures has got me excited about these stories again, and has made me determined to finish off the sequel to ‘A Cadence‘.  I’ll keep you posted!

Scenes from ‘A Cadence’

“Believing that the monarch was appointed by divine right, the royal counsel summoned sorcerers and magi from far away to examine the boys.”

“A second palace would need to be built; a fact that neither prince saw fit to complain about.”

“I have heard that all mermaids have the fragrance of raspberries.”

“His master sat, motionless, for several agonisingly silent minutes.”

“Daniel remained on the beach, staring at the rock and the necklace, never changing his expression.”

“Anxious that her mistake should not be discovered, she hurriedly concealed the body under some rocks.”

“When he led her to a horse-drawn carriage waiting nearby, he was harbouring an ambition that the mermaid could never possibly have perceived.”

“The light diminished as, one by one, the candles dwindled to nothing.”

“A loyal servant of the prince”

I recently mentioned escapism as one of the possible functions of fantasy, and have been meaning for some time to elaborate on this by outlining its other functions, as I see them.

These functions are not necessarily mutually exclusive – a fantasy can perform more than one function at the same time. It might even be true that they are mutually inclusive – that these are the necessary qualities of all fantasies. I’m not sure, yet. Let me know what you think.

1. Fantasy escapes reality

In a crude sense, fantasy provides escapism by creating something that is other than reality. In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the children are literally escaping a real-world threat when they enter the wardrobe and discover Narnia.

Fantasy transports us, and can distract us from real-world concerns. It has been said that, in fantasy, anything can happen. Although I’m not sure how true this statement really is (see below), it’s certainly the case that the usual rules do not apply in fantasy, and there is something exciting about that.

The implication of “fantasy as escapism” is that fantasy gives us what is not real: it shows us what is not really there, just like the glasses Dorothy and her friends put on before entering the so-called Emerald City.

2. Fantasy replaces reality

There is another way of understanding the Emerald City con: some might say that whatever we see is the reality: there is no underlying truth, but instead our perception of things makes reality.

Often, when reading or watching fantasy, I’m reminded of Puddleglum’s speech in The Silver Chair. Towards the end of the novel, the villain of the piece tries to convince the protagonists that everything they remember of ‘reality’ – their life above the ground – is an illusion. Puddleglum replies:

Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things – trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play-world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia.

What is more important – something that is real, objectively, or something that feels real, to an individual? Fantasies that address this essential question include Better Than Life, Life on Mars, The Wizard of Oz and many, many others.

3. Fantasy creates reality

In order for us to suspend disbelief, fantasy must have an internal logic we can make sense of, even if it’s not ‘real’.

Contrary to the popular belief that anything can happen in fantasy, many of the best examples of the genre emphatically enforce the notion that this is not the case. As Doctor Who developed, for example, so did a set of rules about what was and was not permitted in the Doctor’s universe.

Rules add to a fantasy’s plausibility. Father Christmas is generally understood to be an imaginary person, but people nevertheless share an understanding of his essential qualities: he is male, old, has a beard, appears at Christmas, etc. Any deviation from these qualities is seen as a transgression of some kind. When I say “Father Christmas”, you know what I mean.

It sometimes amazes me that we can accept something to be completely made up but still understand it and discuss it as if it were real. Whole portions of our brain must be devoted to things that do not exist.

4. Fantasy reflects reality

In her second adventure, Alice literally steps Through the Looking Glass, and the world she finds on the other side appears to be a reflection of her real world.

It’s been suggested that alternative worlds such as Narnia or Fantastica can only really be understood as reflections of, or deviations from, our world. Many parallel universe fantasies present a world that is identical to our own except for one significant feature: the roles of men and women are reversed, or our souls are physical, tangible companions, or the historical racial hierarchy is turned on its head.

A reflection is a strange thing: it’s the same, but opposite, and it cannot exist without the original; the original generates the reflection.

5. Fantasy defamiliarises reality

Fantasy is often used as a means of presenting reality in a new way, so as to defamiliarise something we are used to. This trick is also used in satire: what we see initially appears absurd, but we later come to recognise it as something we already know. For a good text that’s both fantasy and satire, see Gulliver’s Travels.

Most obviously, dystopian fiction defamiliarises the world we know. We initially think, “this is fantasy”, only to later exclaim, “hang on a minute, I recognise that.” A recent example that is unsophisticated yet powerful is Russell T Davies’ Doctor Who revival, which has conveyed dystopian representations of social networking, mobile phone usage, traffic, and much more.

By making the familiar strange, fantasy helps us see it in a new way.

Here’s another question: to what extent do these principal functions of fantasy also apply to all storytelling? If the answer is “a lot”, what is the actual difference between fantasy and other forms of storytelling?

I love intrusive narrators.

The more garrulous, interfering, self-conscious, the better.

Intrusive narrators remind us that someone is telling this story, that the story does not exist without the telling.  It’s like the classic distinction between ’showing’ and ‘telling’ in narrative. The narrator who shows is invisible, letting his characters speak for themselves. Conversely, for the intrusive narrator, the telling is part of the story, and the narrator one of its characters.

Some examples:

• A Series of Unfortunate Events
  

In Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events, the narrator is ostensibly telling us the story of the Baudelaire children, with occasional references to himself.  As the series progresses, Snicket becomes more of a character in his own right, even possibly meeting the children on two occasions.

• Vanity Fair

Like Lemony Snicket, the narrator of Thackeray’s Vanity Fair occasionally speaks to us in the first person despite delivering a predominantly third-person narrative.  The narrator explains how he met some of the characters, thus implicating himself as a character in his own right; but at other points he displays the traits of the omniscient narrator, revealing his characters’ feelings.

• Clockwork

The curious narrator of Philip Pullman’s wonderful ghost story, Clockwork, polarises his desire to judge and to narrate.  The main body of the text tells us the story, while boxed inserts peppered throughout the narrative pass judgment on the characters’ actions.

• Christy Malry’s Own Double Entry
  

In B.S. Johnson’s novel, the narrator poses specifically as the author of Christy’s story, with absolute power over the protagonist’s fate.  At one point, the ‘author’ engages in dialogue with Christy, discussing the possible future (or lack of) for his character, much as the producers of Eastenders seem to do on a regular basis.

Stories with instrusive narrators are relational narratives, where we witness not only the story itself, but also the story of its telling.

They also remind us, sometimes beautifully, that a text is an utterance, existing in time.  Unlike the Word, which is literally synonymous with its author, most stories have a tangible, physical presence in the world that is distinct from whatever created them.  A spoken story can be heard, interpreted, and re-told by its audience.  A written story can be re-read, re-printed, re-appropriated and performed in infinite circumstances.

The invisible narrator creates the illusion of the text as an absolute – the story exists, and we are invited to witness it.  The intrusive narrator turns the text into something finite, something created.  In these cases, the reader is not just witnessing a performance; he is part of the conversation.  The intrusive narrator dares us to challenge him, to disagree, to re-tell the story in our own words. 

Authorship is a process in which we all participate, all of the time.

Recently Bridget McNulty – an author whose blog I like – decided to re-tell ‘The Tale of the Sheep-Lion‘, a story I don’t remember hearing before, but which seems to be quite well-known.  Other tellings can be found here and here.

Everyone agrees on the basic elements of this story: a lion cub is separated from his own kind and raised by sheep.  He therefore acquires their tendencies and behaves as sheep do.  One day, a lion discovers the sheep-lion and, surprised by his sheep-like behaviour, challenges him and eventually teaches him to be more like a lion again.

This reminds me of the question I asked recently about the ugly duckling family of stories: do things happen to us because of who we are, or because of what we do?

The three versions of this story I’ve found online seem to interpret the sheep-lion’s return to lionhood as a return to his true self.  McNulty writes:

What I find problematic about this interpretation is McNulty’s faith in “the truth of the situation”, that flashes up one day like a simple flick of a light switch.

I believe that identity is relational, that who we are at any given point is defined by our relationships with other people.  In my interpretation, then, the sheep-lion’s identity is conditioned, first, by his relationship with the sheep, then, later, by his relationship with the lion.  Neither of these selves is truer than the other: at each stage in his life, the sheep-lion’s relationships create him.

The ugly duckling is saved by his true self.  So, in McNulty’s version of the story, is the sheep-lion.  But I suspect these stories tell us more about their tellers’ thirst for truth than they do about truth itself.

Is there a truth outside our telling of it?