12 - “One Good Story”: Storytelling and Orality in Thomas King's Work

Summary

Thomas King begins the 2003 Massey Lectures by saying:

There is a story I know. It's about the earth and how it floats in space on the back of a turtle. I've heard this story many times, and each time someone tells the story it changes.… One time, it was in Prince Rupert, I think, a young girl in the audience asked about the turtle and the earth. If the earth was on the back of a turtle, what was below the turtle? Another turtle, the storyteller told her. And below that turtle? Another turtle. And below that? Another turtle.… It's turtles all the way down. (King 2003, 1–2)

In this inimitable way, King evokes the fluidity and dynamism of oral storytelling traditions. His stories, whether written or spoken—and the Massey Lectures are written to be spoken and then disseminated to readers in book form—are, moreover, often narrated as multi-layered repetitions, as oral stories frequently are. These stories contain past and present and, in the end, are simultaneously and paradoxically both partial and complete. Each story evokes another, and the many-layered references that are typical of much of King's writing resonate with oral stories that are passed along from generation to generation, each story moving seamlessly from one into another, and with no single originary story underlying the web of narrative.