For most of F W Boreham’s writing career, he discovered, along with other exponents of the art, how the storytelling style frees a writer and speaker from “the tendency to be didactic.”[1]Many times Boreham said, “Our best reformers often fail us because they rely too exclusively on the negative approach … they attack this; they condemn that; they denounce the other. They forget that the best way of showing that a stick is crooked is by laying a straight one beside it.”[2] This principle underlay Boreham’s stories about people who embodied the values and virtues he was seeking to commend. “The contemplation of a great heroic sacrifice,” Boreham wrote, “must produce in the beholder a profound ethical effect.”[3]
Instead of scolding or spelling out instructions, Boreham respected the intelligence of his readers and trusted them to draw their own implications. His metaphors of ‘holding up a mirror’, ‘pointing’ and ‘poking … the fire’,[4] suggested that his editorials were not intended to be ready-made for they required the contemplation of the reader to complete the circuit of communication.
Geoff Pound
Image: Story telling is about ‘poking … the fire.’
[1] Alan David Gold, Minyan (Sydney: Flamingo, 1999), 105.
[2] F W Boreham, Mercury, 4 August 1956.
[3] Boreham, Mercury, 25 April 1925.
[4] F W Boreham, A reel of rainbow (London: The Epworth Press, 1920), 118.
Instead of scolding or spelling out instructions, Boreham respected the intelligence of his readers and trusted them to draw their own implications. His metaphors of ‘holding up a mirror’, ‘pointing’ and ‘poking … the fire’,[4] suggested that his editorials were not intended to be ready-made for they required the contemplation of the reader to complete the circuit of communication.
Geoff Pound
Image: Story telling is about ‘poking … the fire.’
[1] Alan David Gold, Minyan (Sydney: Flamingo, 1999), 105.
[2] F W Boreham, Mercury, 4 August 1956.
[3] Boreham, Mercury, 25 April 1925.
[4] F W Boreham, A reel of rainbow (London: The Epworth Press, 1920), 118.