Universal rules
From Christopher Booker
Sir: It might seem churlish to quibble with such a charming and generous review as that given by John Bayley to my hook The Seven Basic Plots,Why We Tell Stories (Books, 13 November). But I would not wish your readers to be under a misapprehension as to what the book is about. The purpose of analysing the 'seven basic plots' which provide its title is not just to show how many stories follow similar patterns. This merely serves as the intro
duction to a comprehensive analysis of the iirchetypal structures and figures around which stories naturally take shape in the human mind. The greater part of the book, which Professor Bayley did not have space to cover, is concerned with how and why it is that stories follow these universal rules, and why evolution should have given us the need to tell stories in the first place.
Christopher Booker
I .itton, Somerset
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