Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #175218 in Books
• Published on: 2004-10-28
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 736 pages

Anthony Stevens
"I am overwhelmed by the immensity of [this] intellectual, literary, cultural and psychological achievement."

Synopsis
This is a monumental work of breath-taking originality - the fruit of a lifetime's research and reading that will unlock the secrets of stories through the ages for all. From The Epic of Gilgamesh to Jaws and Schindler's List, Christopher Booker examines in details the stories that underlie literature and the plots that are basic to story-telling through the ages. In this magisterial work he examines the plots of films, opera libretti and the contemporary novel and short story. Underlying the stories he examines are seven basic plots: rags to riches; the quest; voyage and return; the hero as monster; rebirth, and so on. Booker shows that the images and stories serve a far deeper and more significant purpose in our lives than we have realised hitherto. In the definition of these basic plots, Booker shows us entering a realm in which the recognition of the plots proves to be only the gateway. We are in fact uncovering a kind of hidden universal language: a nucleus of situations and figures that are the very stuff from which stories are made. With Booker's exploration, there is literally no story in the world that cannot be seen in a new light.

We have come to the heart of what stories are about, and why we tell them. Here, Christopher Booker moves on from some of the themes he outlined in his best-selling book The Neophiliacs. Seven Basic Plots is unquestionably his most important book to date.

From the Publisher
Breathtaking in its scope and originality, Seven Basic Plots examines the basis of story- telling in literature, film, and libretto. No one will ever read a novel in the same way again.
Comparable to Harold Bloom's masterpiece The Canon.
The fruit of a lifetime's research and fifteen years in the writing.
Christopher Booker is an author with a high profile with a weekly column in The Sunday Telegraph. This is his most important book to date.
Review coverage and fierce argument and debate about this book are guaranteed.

Customer Reviews

Flawed but important
Reading other reviews there seems to be quite a heated difference of opinion on this book so I will endeavour to give a middle view. A lot of people are saying it's important and I absolutely agree. Others point out numerous flaws and they are true too. In short the idea behind the book is a definitely 5 stars. The execution is at best 3.

What is most odd is the fact that a book called "the seven basic plots" is about 500 pages long. The font is pretty small too meaning this is a very long way round explaining a perfectly reasonable and highly enlightening idea.

What Mr Booker points out is that the vast majority (if not all) stories can be neatly summarised into definite areas- the quest, the comedy etc. He then goes on to show how the basic frame work of Gilgamesh works in exactly the same way as something more modern like Dr No. He also does a very good job of explaining that these basic ideas are so ingrained in us that we tend to not like stories that break the rules of each type of plot.

I can understand why this may annoy some in the literary circles but I absolutely think his points are valid. However he uses too many examples- there are pages of them when the point has already been made and the second half of the book goes off on all sorts of tangents many of which are unnecessary.

Ultimately I think an abridged version of this book would be a vast improvement getting to the point quicker, summarising the ideas more succinctly and then not meandering around other ideas for 250 pages.

reudctionist and misguided
This book is incredibly reductionist, it is also incredibly misguided. At the beginning of the book, Booker states that there are essentially two types of story 'happy' and 'sad'. This is his first, and perhaps most serious of errors. There are in fact three story types, 'happy', 'sad' and the most complex of these 'ironic'. In the 'ironic' ending, the story is both happy and sad depending on the view point. The strongest example of this type of story is the 'secrifice', for example 'Casablance' where the protagonist gives up there own happiness for the greater good. The exemption of this type of story leaves booker's central catagerisation of story (I'm only 96pp in so far)wrong. In the each of the seven plot types, he only uses elements of each story that fit his 'archtype' and his reliance on using the same stories as examples in multiple chapters unermines his argument. He also makes erronious assumptions that demonstrate his own essential mis-understanding, nowhere is this more clear than when he deals with 'The Third Man', a story he admits at the start he 'initially' had trouble categorising. He classes it a 'voyage and return' story because at the end 'although we don't see it, we assume life returns to normal', this is completely the opposite of what Greene was trying to say! The clever screenplay is actually about the fracturisation of humanity coming from the shadow of the second world war. THe central point is that life wil NEVER be the same again, and he can never return to the world he has known. We are left with Holly Martins cut of from humanity, on a distant island, unable to attach himself to the love of his life who he wishes to touch so much. Her walking past at the end and the death of Harry Lime demonstrates the death and dislocation of everything Holly has ever known. Booker misses this as he misses so much else. His thoughts are not even remotely original. The 'perilous escape from death' and the 'constriction and relax' are essential to story, because it has to have conflict by its nature and this has to grow up to the point of 'crisis' because you cannot go from a massive challenge to a minor one, it fails to retain interest.

Homophobic, antisemitic, myopic and wildly self indulgent but fun anyway.
Page one. Bond. The Epic of Gilgamesh. What could they possibly have in common? Booker dives in at the deep end, seeking (with quite dazzling deftness) to unite the common themes which relate the most disparate of texts. And he succeeds.

The next few chapters have you enthralled, there are questions, there are many, many questions, but you're willing to go with it... It's all fresh as a daisy but as informed as can be.

After putting the "what about" thoughts to the back of one's head for a good few hundred pages, however, they cannot help but surface, and when they do, things look more than a little shaky.

Booker's notion (for there is but one) is that all stories conform to one of a very few plots (all of which reflect one Bookerism of an a priori, that we should all grow up and have kids), and when something doesn't fit, boy does he throw the toys out of the pram.

I happen to detest Hardy, have no time for Proust, couldn't care less about Melville and can't stand Stendhal, and for reasons which have much in common with Booker's. I, however, am not arrogant enough to write them AND their fans off as immature and incomplete human beings. Sod pluralism, I just don't feel that self righteous. And god knows how much Cocaine Booker had to do to get there himself.

People don't tell stories for one reason and one reason alone. They tell them because they want to tell them and because people want to hear them. This is too much for Booker to bear, and it's a shame, because he's missing out. He's also missing out on the huge swathes of literature which are more concerned with portraiture and landscape than cartoon strip. Is it not acceptable to enjoy a piece of writing for itself, not for what it "means"?

I am not a Jew, I am not a gay and I am in and of myself both myopic and self indulgent, so my title shouldn't be seen as angry. I actually enjoyed this book very much.

Just don't bother plowing through the thing (it is longer than an evening in with your girlfriend's parents and NO BOOZE) if you're after anything other than right wing reactionary reassurance. That said, it'll suit Jeremy Clarkson's fans down to the hilt.