"Unfortunately, the top rung of that ladder was so worn out that it broke right through and he began to fall. He was halfway down to the ground and would have broken something for sure if he hadn't remembered he'd left his hammer up on the roof and had to go back up to get it."
-Joe Bruchac, in his telling of "Grampa Jesse and the Used Nails"
Storytelling. It's become a classic part of the wilderness experience. Boy scouts gather around campfires, guides embellish their narrative to tourists' delight, fishing buddies compete for bragging rights. But traditional Adirondack liars include more in their tales than grapples with the one that got away. Their truth stretching tends to avoid genuine bragging in favor of comedy and collaboration. Groups like the Adirondack Liar's Club continue to share new and well-worn tales alike to this day.
Adirondack storytelling drew a lot of its major features from lumber camps. While competition certainly existed, the best of the loggers' stories focused on entertainment and camaraderie. Groups of men would gather and bounce off of each other, monitoring the listeners' reactions and bringing up complementary tales. They told their stories, full of puns and outrageous situations, in a dry, deadpan style. Like in the quote above, a common element of Adirondack stories is the use of an outrageous fallacy as if it were the most matter of fact thing in the world. One man grew a zucchini so large he made a dugout canoe out of it, only to have it eaten out from under him by beavers. Another trained a bear to let him ride it like a horse, but after one night of drinking realized he'd ridden the wrong bear home.
These stories rely on embellishments and straight up lies. It's a part of the craft, and as Vaughn Ward says in her book I Always Tell the Truth (Even if I Have to Lie to Do It!) "Lying, as an art form, can flourish only within a moral system where telling the truth is taken for granted." Traditional Adirondack liars act like they're telling the truth, but understand that everyone knows it's all part of the fun. Their tall tales are not self-serving, they're not spicing up accounts of their weekends to tell around the water cooler. They can draw from real life experiences, historical figures, and traditional stories passed down through generations, but they always have a pinch of the ridiculous!
Source:
Ward, Vaughn. I Always Tell the Truth (Even If I Have to Lie to Do It!): Stories from the Adirondack Liar's Club. Greenfield Center, NY: The Greenfield Review Press, 1990. Print.
This is super interesting, in regards to the topic of lying. Growing up, I was always taught how horrible lying was. But I never really realized that there are some types of lies, such as in storytelling, that don't carry with them the same negative connotation. I think it's interesting to think about how maybe sometimes it is o.k. to lie.
ReplyDeleteI love this topic! Like Christine, I was taught that lying are unethical and I should never do it. However, I think it's really interesting how there are always a few kernels of truth in even the most ridiculous stories and that some stories have a positive function: preserving a cultural history of the Adirondacks.
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