Words&Dirt

“‘Our only weapon against this willful ignorance is stories.  The stories that you alone are writing down.  I have in one of my boxes down stairs a little packet of letters from English men and women that all go something like this: ‘I have never had the least objection to Slavery, however your book recently fell under my eye, and, though most of the slave-narratives contained in it were mawkish and dull, one in particular struck a chord in my heart, and I have since read it over and over, and come to understand the despicable, nay execrable crime that Slavery is…”

‘Which one?  Which of the stories do these letters refer to?’ Dappa asked, fascinated.

‘That is the problem, Dappa: each of them refers to a different one.  It seems that if you put enough stories out before the public, many a reader will find one that speaks to him.  But there is no telling which.’”

––The System of the World, by Neal Stephenson, pg. 159