Ali Smith: In Between Story and Narrative

Ali Smith smiles and looks with friendly eyes about the space of the Sheldonian theatre in Oxford. It is the 2024 Oxford Literary Festival’s Award of the Bodley Medal and the bright sparkle of a week of lectures and thought fills the air. She has just been introduced to the audience by Richard Ovenden, the 25th librarian of the Bodleian Library. She decides she wants direct audience participation. A paraphrase. “My new novel is an old story in the back of my head. It was inspired by Kafka. I am hoping that Oxford will bring its ending. “Hello!” Let me read some to you. Do you want me to stand up or sit down?”

She stands. And now there is further evidence: down to earth, grounded, Northern, Scottish, friendly, wanting to say hello. Her audience participation now revels in the Reveal. Themes emerge and strike well, are interpersonal: family, work, life, the inside and the out. The feeling and flow of this and that – mother, relationships, strangers, boys. The ways people are dressed. The elegance of elegant girls.

Where is this set? Says Ali: “A place not even registering on Google as a place.” But, nonetheless, through such a place, she is intent on exploring disconnect.

“The withdrawal from life of people who could afford it. Of people so still inside that, even though they were moving it was like they were the figures from old paintings…there was no animation. They were…like a Still Life Painting.” This moment of life, this story, touches all stories. But something is amiss, not quite right, not quite correctly teleological. Yet, at the same time it is correct. It remains story, and even a blockage of meaning has a meaning. A light will emerge from the tunnel, out from the unbearable lightness of being. There is hope.

How did reading inspire Ali? Was there a Wow moment? A Book of Nonsense is an image of her inner child. At eight years of age came another. She had mumps, and the local bookshop, which seemed to only have Mary Queen of Scots, did have the Little House on the Prairie.

Then came Joyce and the short stories of Dubliners. She was age 15 and “I hit a moment”. “It was true.” “I felt it”. She knew that story was true.

Her words remind of that moment when the actor and poet Viggo Mortensen was asked what the appeal of the Lord of the Rings was. His reply was the same: “Because it is true”.

What is the Power of reading? Ali says, “On that power we would be here for days and days, but at least they make the print bigger when you are my age.” A certain wax and the ode of the lyrical cannot be held back. “A book is organic and conceptual at the same time.” But there is much weight to the process, “I feel like Kafka and that famous painting of him with his head on the desk.” But she feels lucky. “Lucky to be born in North of Scotland in the 1960s and to hit the Scottish Renaissance after.”

That renaissance said: “Anything can be done with the I.” What of writing? What does she need? At home there is nothing in the background at all except for a cat. He is a brilliant companion. Sometimes purrs, sometimes quiet. He provides the company of another being as she writes. As a cat can turn unpredictable so Ali also loves how story runs away from her. “If you know the ending it is not worth writing.”

Something weighter comes to the Sheldonian all ‘a sudden’. Ali has been asked about story. The smile deepens, a muse steps in, speaks through her.

Sadly, we are being pulled towards the surface. But story will let you know where it is going or allow structure to be changed…or the ending. Story is kind, and aware of need and frailty. Reality out there, in the shallows, is out of control. Writers must write, more than ever. Story will save us, recall dimension and depth. Story is a living thing. Is like following a wild wolf or riding a strong-willed horse. For a writer, encountering an image is the lead off. A writer encounters, then plays from this. This living anima in story is like the instant between two strides taken by a traveller.

What about Story vs Narrative? Story is the thing that is ancient to us all. Story is the way we tell the whole of time. We tell of ourselves; we tell of community. Story is ISNESS. Narrative is the line the story takes. Story: we cannot but be involved in it. It is the foundation of hospitality. It is what is Othered in meeting another, as well as in-selved. It is multiple. It dissipates into everything. Story will never exclude, never.

Which writers inspire her? Alasdair Gray and Poor Things. From him she picked up the way of being beyond the Fourth Wall. Of saying Hello and Goodbye.

This betweenness of the author and the reader is vital. She has used ‘Hello’ at the end of a book before, because of Alasdair. Similarly, Muriel Spark. You must die. You must live. These are equal sides of the same coin. The hello never stops. Everything we meet is a hello. Each morning a new morn, a new hello.

So, ‘Hello’. To audience member.

Finally, the Presentation of the Bodley Medal, a cheer arises, hands are clapped, an acceptance speech follows. Ali must talk of course, of the Meaning of medals. It makes sense. She remembers her father’s medal from the war. She remembers that Medals are chancy things. He almost disparaged his medals at times: for the memories they gave were not all kind. But He would have loved Ali getting this medal. He was proud of her being bookish.

In the medal is the terrible ambiguity of the sublime. The Republic of Letters cries for recognition. Ali mentions how the present culture war is depriving people of letters and the democracy of reading. Communal rights are swept away under its cover. She has an obvious disgust with governments and their cultural war. Now, she feels a great responsibility to remind that Imagination meets inheritance, ancestry, thinking, common source, relationship, family, folks, and the striving for common knowledge.

Life is to words as words are to life.