In Adam’s school, some enterprising publisher has given away a bunch of new kid’s books and the teacher has assigned the task of reviewing them to the kids. To help the kids figure out what “review” means, they have a helpful sheet that asks questions about the plot, the pictures, and even what the parents think of the book – clever, that one. These are all fictional books. The question about the plot is: in a few sentences, describe the story in the book – Resume l’histoire dans quelques lignes. The story – here l’histoire – is, I take it, a proxy for plot. In the very convenient Dictionary of Untranslateables, the section on plot is under the entry “erzaehlen”. The entry, like all of the entries, goes muchly into the etymology and philology of key words, and sorts out the diegesis from narration: “If diegesis is the recounted world as it appears in a fiction, narration is the universe in which one recounts , that is, the set of acts and narrative procedures that give rise
“I’m so bored. I hate my life.” - Britney Spears
Das Langweilige ist interessant geworden, weil das Interessante angefangen hat langweilig zu werden. – Thomas Mann
"Never for money/always for love" - The Talking Heads