STORY’S LAST

        “If a story is not about the hearer (they) will not listen.  And here I make a rule—a great and lasting story is about everyone or it will not last.  The strange and foreign is not interesting—only the deeply personal and familiar.”—John Steinbeck, East of Eden

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        Deep down, she knew that they were hers, and it made her love them more.  They were not deep, nor lasting of eternal truths—but they were hers: thoughts and scenes, feelings and dreams that touched in the personal of art.

        She did not know how many times she was first, and the only one, to see.  For prescience of Steinbeck’s see proved true: readers and audience fell away.  Few held in the read and following through his endless Creation-make.

        Most fell away, but she remained—drawn to the truths, deeply personal and familiar—reading on in mind and spirit’s live, whole-hearted in belief, of the stories that were hers.