The Seven Basic Plots; why we tell stories - Christopher Booker

The first half of this mammoth tome is interesting, outlining 7 basic plots that form the basis of all storytelling. These are:

Overcoming the Monster – Beowulf, Jack and the Beanstalk
Rags to Riches – David Copperfield, Dick Whittington
The Quest – Pilgrim’s Progress, Watership Down
Voyage and Return – Alice in Wonderland, Brideshead Revisted
Comedy – Shakespearean comedy, The Marriage of Figaro
Tragedy – King Lear, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Rebirth – Sleeping Beauty, A Christmas Carol

Later on he adds a couple more, the individual vs the implacable Other (Job, 1984) and the mystery (Sherlock Holmes).

By necessity, large chunks of text are taken up by plot synopses which I tended to skim, either because I already knew the outline or because it was opera, so who cares right?

It’s fun to consider the films, novels and plays one enjoys and figuring out how they fit into Booker’s scheme and, to be fair, just about everything does. However, my suspicions were raised by a few factual errors and some egregious misreadings. For example, he considers the story of only the original Star Wars film and therefore judges it as a failed Overcoming the Monster plot, whereas it was obviously designed as a series of stories that would straightforwardly fit into the Rebirth plot.

The first big problem arises with the thesis is that Booker regards stories that do not conform to these archetypes are, by definition, failed stories. Waiting For Godot is a failure as a Rebirth because the condition of stasis is never relieved. Around The World In Eighty Days is a failure as a Quest because the hero rescues the girl halfway through. No room is allowed for variation. As he says in discussing the “failure” of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, “Lawrence has sought to defy the archetypes. As always, the archetypes have won.”

This is even more egregious when based on a misreading, as when he attacks Joyce’s Ulysses because it fails to copy the archetypal template of The Odyssey. This is nonsense, because Joyce was ironising the original poem rather than attempting, pointlessly, to recreate it.

The second big problem overwhelms the final section of the book, in which Booker attempts to apply his ideas to the real world. He is revealed as a pretty old-fashioned reactionary, as when he describes A Clockwork Orange (the film) as “a glossily-packaged commercial for sex and violence”. No it isn’t. And what’s wrong with sex, incidentally? (He’s none too keen on swearing either. )

Eventually the book deliquesces into a broth of Jungian gobbledegook and unsupported political assertions. Towards the end there’s a very odd broadside against the state of Israel, provocatively worded and utterly out of place.

If this book fits into a fictional genre, it is that of Tragedy. The splendid chapters on Thomas Hardy and Hamlet offer intriguing, stimulating readings of texts that I have read plenty about. Like Othello’s jealousy or Lear’s pride, Booker has a Fatal Flaw. It is overambition (he spent 34 years writing the thing) and it brings about his downfall.