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The Storytellers' Journey: AN AMERICAN REVIVAL

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In his book, Joseph Daniel Sobol chronicles the revival of storytelling as a widely practiced American folk art and its emergence as a formidable commercial enterprise over the past three decades. He tells the story largely through the history of the National Storytelling Festival, held annually in Jonesborough, Tennesse since 1973. Mr. Sobol attempts to offer both an enthusiastic account of the storytelling revival and the Jonesborough festival and a scholarly analysis of the revival and festival as social phenomena. This dual approach is on the whole successful, as Sobol manages to be simultaneously inspiring and detached.

Those looking for a good story will be especially pleased by the early sections of Sobols book. Here, he lets a number of storytellers tell how they became involved with the revival. Sobol tells of his own early exposure to a storyteller named Brother Blue at Fishermans Wharf in San Francisco. We meet those who found storytelling to be the ideal means of expressing themselves spiritually and artistically after frustration with conventional artistic forms. These accounts--nearly uniformly presented as life-changing experiences--continue throughout the book but become sparser as Sobols focus shifts to the evolution, successes and tribulations of the Jonesborough festival. As far as academic prose goes, Sobols is quite lively, and his social scientific analysis of the storytelling phenomenon is strong and balanced. But the first-person accounts that he includes are so compelling that one longs for a book-length oral history to serve as a companion to this one.

Sobol does not shy from dealing with the more trying episodes in the history of the National Storytelling Festival. For the most part, these sprang from the its growth from a small, regional event into a large, profitable, and truly national one. Whereas at the beginning, anyone who showed up and told a story could be considered a storyteller, by the mid-eighties, distinctions were made between national and regional performers. Along the way, questions arose regarding personal and cultural proprietorship of stories; while individual storytellers were frustrated that their stories were being told by others without permission, cultural groups--Native Americans in particular--were concerned that white storytellers were profiting by telling their stories. A series of conferences in the mid-eighties grappled with these issues. In 1987, the first National Storytelling Congress, held in St. Louis, initiated a discussion of personal ownership of stories. While it did not adopt any formal code of its own, it inspired other, regional, groups to do so for their members. The following year, in Santa Fe, the congress heard grievances from Native Americans and other groups who felt that their storytelling traditions had been violated by white storytellers who told stories from them. As in St. Louis, no formal codes were adopted at Santa Fe regarding cultural proprietorship of stories. Many storytellers did, however, take the experience as a cue to tell stories drawn from their own experience.

-Daniel Weiss for PlanetAUTHORity.com

This book is a studyof the impact that the National Storytelling Association (formerly known as NAPPS) and the Jonesborough, Tennessee, National Storytelling Festival have had on storytelling in the U.S.A.

This book is partially scholarly speculation and partially informally-formal (and interesting) interviews with well-known national storytellers. Here is a study of what has been known as NAPPS (National Association for the Preservation and Perpetuation of Storytelling, which then became NSA (National Storytelling Association) and is now, since the book was publishes, NSN (National Storytelling Network). A reader gets the history of the organization as well as compelling discussions of it by people who have been connected for years with the fall festival at Jonesborough, Tennessee.

In one chapter, Sobol discusses other festivals throughout the country which have been modeled after the original at Jonesborough. This chapter shows the power of the original group as well as its far-reaching influence.

Perhaps the least interesting thing about the book is a jargon-laden introduction and beginning of the first chapter. Once Sobol gets into his interviews with storytellers, the reader's interest picks up.

Joseph Sobol interviewed founders of the National Storytelling Association and several of the revival storytellers' key members to provide us with this excellent history of the movement. Interesting and enlightening reading for all contemporary storytellers and for fans of Jonesborough, Tennesee's National Storytelling Festival.

Storytellers and fans of the National Storytelling Festival will want to read this history of the storytelling movement's growth. Sobol interviewed Jimmy Neil Smith and many of the festival's key performers to prepare this useful portrait. Scholarly, informative, and insightful. A must read for professional storytellers and NSMA members.