William C. Dowling

Obviously, I can't judge how reliable and sound this introduction to Paul Ricoeur's Time and Narrative ("Temps et récit") is, since I haven't read anything from this French philosopher at all. I accept Dowling's introductory words, that Ricoeur's style is almost impossible to follow for the average reader, so thank him for this handy introduction.

Since the 1970s, narratives have been everywhere. In the slipstream of postmodernism emphasize is more than ever on how narrative our approach to reality is. "Everything is a story" has become a common saying. And Ricoeur (but of course not only him) has made a big contribution to that. If I have understood this book correctly, his merit lies mainly in recognizing the special temporal character of stories: they are told 'forward', with actors who act without knowing the outcome, but through a narrator who in retrospect, so ‘backwards’ knows all too well what the future held in store.

Especially the determining role of the 'total simul'-perspective, the overview of the temporal whole, indicates the strength of a narrative: it allows to capture reality in a story with a beginning, a middle and an end, and with seemingly free acting characters, so that the plot approach is not necessarily too coercive, controlling and therefore reductionistic (unless perhaps in extremely naturalistic stories). Using fiction, Ricoeur clearly sketches how the characters create their own reality that does not necessarily has logical and rational coherence and thus make open choices. But at the same time I think he has to admit that the weakness of the narrative approach lies in that "knowing how it ends" of the narrator. And with that we are on the trail of historical thinking, which is almost always an "ex post facto" approach, and therefore inherently teleological; knowing the outcome cannot but colour the story. It is a paradox that we apparently cannot escape. More on this in my History-account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3219056401.… (altro)

This is a book that I admit appealed to me because I knew it would confirm what I had long known as an alumnus and former tutor for the athletic department. But it is so much better than that. Dowling does a fine job of detailing the pernicious effects of big-time sports on a university and what happened when Rutgers sold its soul to Div. 1-A. He explains the way that the theory of peer effects works on a school; his use of the "dollar auction game," used by economists to explain how rational people will engage in irrational behavior is perfectly apt. He also debunks every canard of those who think a new stadium is as important as hiring new professors, from "the Flutie effect" to "Everybody knows O.J." And the telling of the tale has a few terrific plot twists that I won't reveal here. Any Rutgers alumnus or anyone wanting an example of flat-out good writing should read it.… (altro)