Ron Suskind's analysis of how re-elected President Obama can tell a "story" to Americans that will inspire them with confidence, intersects with important lessons about the art of storytelling itself.
Stories that "sell" these days are told in totally non-traditional ways. In other words, mode, style, form, all have to adapt and adjust to the continually changing contours of that ever-morphing beast called "audience."
Suskind sheds a bit of light on the death of the third-person, all-seeing, all-knowing, omniscient narrator (reminds me of the late Victorian novelists).
When Obama wrote his compelling autobiography at age 33, he was the classic omniscient narrator, omniscient to the extent of re-inventing the truths of his life to suit the needs of a personal narrative that would catapult him into the arc of a presidency.
But after he actually became the president, Obama could ill-afford to play a role the omniscient narrator part of him had helped create. He was at a loss at how to now play the role that others--i.e. the public--"wrote" for him through their yearnings, wants and impositions.
Now, it's time for the omniscient storyteller to become a character himself: To stop writing about "history" and become a shaper of it.
Gandhi once said that real change happens when people become change itself; echoing that call, Suskind asks Obama to be more porous to spontaneity, improvise more, be less calculating, be more receptive to lightning reactions:
Don't tell the story, be the story.
In a writer's words, "show, don't tell."
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