The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories [Paperback]

I have literally just finished reading this book, having slaved with great enjoyment over each page for the last 7 days.

I won't attempt to sum up such a magnum opus but instead, here are some of my personal observations of the book - what made it special for me;

1. It is an easy read -- always interesting and well constructed, refreshing and thought provoking.

2. It is standalone -- by which I mean you are not expected to be familiar with the great works of literature or jungian psychology; in some ways this book is the ultimate "bluffers guide" to all of literature -- each work is surmised and explained in enough detail to justify an argument or assertion.

3. It is visionary -- this book paints the biggest of the big pictures; what emerges spans all of the arts and humanities bringing a truly visionary perspective that is at time challenging and always thought provoking; what stories reveal about who we are? why are we like we are?

4. It is inspirational -- how many readers will close the book desperate to unleash that "novel within them" given the secrets to developing plots that "hit the mark" (smile).

After reading it I can fully understand why it has taken 35 years to produce, having spent 7 days reading it I feel I have cheated the author. I'm sure I'll be back to it again as some of the subtleties reveal themselves, and to challenge the arguments themselves with the armoury he provides.

On the negative side, I found it meandered a little here and there and felt a little repetetive at times, but this is to be expected when you write, on average one chapter a year!!!! Some of the typos are surprising and it must contain some of the longest footnotes in all of publishing!

Best non-fiction book I have ever read.

This is a superb book judged by any standard and from any angle. I'd give it 6 stars if it were allowed.

It's extensively researched, annotated, and beautifully written. Not repetitive at all as some reviewers claim. Just for the sheer volume of encyclopedic reference material you should buy it.

Previous reviewers have commented negatively about Booker's presupposition of morals/ethics in terms of developing a good story. I heartily applaud Booker for this and additionally his point that the inner transformation of characters is what gives them and the story depth and meaning.

Resolving inner conflicts through a journey of dicovery/quest is why we read/listen to/watch stories/movies, etc. in the first place. Nowadays we have become so used to and enthralled by two dimensional pasteboard characters in modern novels/movies that we resent anyone who suggest that good stories need morals, depth and inner transformation of the characters as well as an external plot. Stories are not just for entertainment but good stories feeds the soul, just as pop music is entertainment and cathartic but classical music can be religious experiences.

Other reviewers have complained about the Jungian approach in analysing the development of characters. I personally think this is the best point of this book. I particularly agree with Booker's point that authors subconsciously projects their personal shadows onto his characters and one can nearly always discern the author's personal morals by the stories he writes. After all, creativity is but an exercise in self-discovery.

This book should be listed under Jungian psychology as well. Although the author has not so stated, I bet he's personally gone through analysis in the 30+ years that took him to write this book, because he shows an indepth knowledge of the Jungian approach far beyond what one might expect of someone who has just read up on it.

Booker has surpassed Joseph Campbell, and in fact has gone beyond where Campbell left off. So another star should be awarded and Booker deserves a medal just for his Herculean efforts. For his effectiveness he should be cannonised whilst alive.

Buy this book and read it!

Where an author crows that it has taken 34 years to write an academic study, and that academic study is 728 pages long, I suppose it is inevitable that people will be inclined to praise it - especially when the author is the famous Christopher Booker - and overlook its faults. To my mind, though, this work is an opportunity sadly missed, and is more than one draft short of its intentions.

To start with an issue not relevant to Booker's scholarship, it has to be said that the paperback edition is badly made. I ignored another review here and didn't buy the hardback; I am now regretting the decision. The cheap and insubstantial binding (by MPG Books)springs shut like a trap, and if you attempt to flatten it the pages fall out. Publisher Continuum's roofreading too falls short of the professional standards one might expect for a putative classic work of literary theory - for example, the spellings "tsar" and "czar" jostle together on the same pages as if they had different meanings.

These, though, are very minor issues compared with the substance of the study, whose failings fall easily into Booker's own Aristotelean definitions of Tragedy. The book is strong on ideas, and I often felt myself agreeing with the author's Jungian analyses of basic plots, but Booker's "hubris" - his conviction of the rightness of his own opinions - results in the "hamartia" that these ideas are not carried through with any cogency - with the possible "nemesis" that a better, more succinct and concise anaysis will soon supplant it. Take as an example the progression of his argument: the development of his initial concepts works along the lines that if he can tell enough stories - from a huge ragbag of novels, poems, plays, operas and films of variable quality - then by sheer volume of evidence he has proved his points.

His retellings, however, become undesirable for three reasons: sometimes he distorts the narrative so that it better fits his theory; he gives away all dramatic twists, reversals, surprise endings and so forth in a clunkingly banal fashion (so too bad if you haven't read every book or seen every film with which the author has been entertaining himself for over three decades); and (most damningly) The Seven Basic Plots is shot through with basic errors of fact. Where on earth was an editor in all this? The mistakes include jaw-dropping schoolboy howlers - for instance, in his account of Much Ado about Nothing he informs us that Don John the Bastard (whom he unaccountably refers to as "Duke John") is Claudio's brother. No, Christopher, he's Don Pedro's brother - do your homework next time. Failure in his grasp of foreign languages, poor indexing and pure ignorance can be illustrated by just one example: he refers to the classic French film The Wages of Fear as The Wages of Death, doesn't bother to index it, and gives the French title as La Salaire de la Peur ("salaire" is in fact masculine - write out 100 times).

There is still a lot to be gleaned from this volume, and Booker's premises mostly hold true. But as a would-be major work of scholarship it is lumbering, long-winded and repetitive, with an authorial smugness belied by its casual inaccuracy. It lacks the genius of simplicity which is at the heart of the best works of this kind. Sadly, the masterwork on the key stories of humanity remains to be written.