NEW TITLE:
STORYTELLING
Bewitching the Modern Mind
By CHRISTIAN SALMON
Published 22nd March
2010
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EVENTS:
8 April, 1pm at the RSA,
8 April, 6.30pm at the
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“French writer Salmon here
treats us to the useful spectacle of a relentless polemic against a ubiquitous
idea widely held to provoke only positive feelings. As used by branders or
politicians, "storytelling" is, on his argument, a sedative,
suppressing the desire for truth in favour of satisfying narrative form.”
Steven Poole, Guardian
“This book, which is both concise and clearly written
… guides us through these texts which are largely unknown and now very
influential.” Le Monde
“There are certain books that make you feel less
stupid after reading them than before. … It is a fascinating and never
jargon-heavy book.” Le Progres
“Lively, very well informed and slickly
handled.” Les Inrockuptibles
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Some stories tell of real, lived experience, passing on its
lessons: telling stories is an art that has been cultivated by humanity and
lies at the heart of the social bond. Others mask reality and distort the truth,
concealing reality rather than elucidating it: these stories, Christian Salmon
argues, work to convince people to believe in the existence of WMDs and buy
things they don’t need.
Through groundbreaking research, Salmon builds upon Naomi Klein’s No Logo for the
Behind the advertising campaigns for heritage brands such as
Chivas Regal (“Live with Chivalry” i.e. like Frank Sinatra) and the
founding stories of all-natural, ‘ethical’ brands such as Innocent
and Ben & Jerry’s– but also in the shadows of victorious
electoral campaigns from Bush to Sarkozy hide “storytelling
management” and “digital storytelling” technicians. Salmon
argues “Obama turned political storytelling into a new rhetorical
art”; the Obama legend shows how the construction and marketing of
politicians’ life stories is key to their electoral success.
With the journalist’s nose for a story, the lucid mind
of an analyst, and the keen affinity with the nuances of narrative as a literary
critic, Salmon’s rigorous research untangles the
worldwide web of discourse. From the world as painted by Fox
News, training videos for soldiers made by the Pentagon in collaboration with
As well as in the commercial company
and on the political level, Salmon also detects the creeping impact of
storytelling strategies across the judicial system in the rise of surveillance
and profiling. But where this threatens individual freedom, citizens are
increasingly distracted by telling stories: a new blog is started every second,
and a 2006 report entitled “A Portrait of the
Salmon founded the
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AUTHOR: Christian Salmon is a
writer and researcher in the Centre for Research in the Arts and Language at
the CNRS in
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ISBN: 978 1 84467 391 9 / $24.95
/ £14.99 / CAN$31 / 192 pages
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For more information visit:
http://www.versobooks.com/books/nopqrs/s-titles/salmon_christian_storytelling.shtml
To buy the book in the
http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/book/9781844673919/Storytelling
or
To buy the book in the
http://www.amazon.com/Storytelling-Bewitching-Modern-Christian-Salmon/dp/184467391X
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