The Plotless Tale

— J. Chr. de Vries

‘The plotless tale does not exist, you will undoubtedly argue with me, no matter what description or action one puts on paper, there is always a structure or a storyline to discover, there are actions that can always be somehow linked causally, whether the writer intended it or not,’ you may want to counter. However, I believe that a plotless story is indeed possible, for example, when the story is merely a description of reality, without psychological analyses or constructed connections between characters or actions, unfolding in real-time. It must not be fiction. The fact that the reader may still make those connections will fall under their responsibility; the reader then becomes the ‘writer’. Nature does not provide plots.


The resulting question then is: Is there then a ‘tale’? In other words, does a story necessarily have to contain a plot? Is a story inherently fictional? One could argue that what I call a ‘tale’ or a ‘story’ in that case is a ‘description’. A recipe from a cookbook is then a description, not a story. But what if I describe how I meticulously prepare a dish following that recipe? For example, if something goes wrong during that cooking, milk boils over, a flame in the pan, then it certainly becomes a story, but does this story have a plot? To be sure, the recipe must be executed flawlessly. Can we then also provide a description of consuming the dish? Only if we reveal nothing about how it tastes, it seems to me. But the question still remains whether it is then a story. It seems more like a report, an account.

Let’s give this a try. I’ll write a meticulous account of how I boil an egg in a specific way, with the intention (pretense) that this is a genuine ‘story’ — but without a plot. Whether this will succeed, I do not know, as writing the following text takes place in real time.

The Perfectly Boiled Egg

Ingredients (for two people):
– Two eggs
– A small saucepan
– A stopwatch
– Two egg cups
– Two egg spoons
– Black pepper
– Salt

Carefully place the eggs into the saucepan, avoiding any bumps. Fill the pan with cold water in a way that completely submerges the eggs. Bring the water in the saucepan to a boil. Start the stopwatch when the water begins to boil, meaning when the first air bubbles appear (not the very small ones, but the real, sturdy bubbles!), and remove the eggs from the heat precisely after 273 seconds. Peel the eggs halfway and place them in the egg cups. Add pepper and salt to taste. Enjoy your meal!

Because I want to test whether the duration of 273 seconds is accurate, I decide to test it with three eggs. I will fish them out of the water with a tablespoon at intervals of 13 seconds before and also after the specified time of 273 seconds, so I can compare the three eggs with each other.

I follow the instructions precisely. After a few minutes, small bubbles start to appear. I’m not sure if these are the ‘real air bubbles’ or the ‘very small ones’, but when I suddenly see a couple of larger air bubbles, I immediately press my stopwatch (just a mobile app, by the way).

After precisely 260 seconds, I carefully remove the first egg from the pan and place it in the first egg cup. 13 seconds later, I pick up the second egg, and after another 13 seconds, the last egg.
I take each egg from their cup, peel them halfway, and put them back in their respective cups. The three eggs are lined up next to each other in order of their cooking duration. I label the 260-second egg as number 1, the 273-second one as number 2, and the last as number 3.

Then, using the egg spoon, I remove the top layer of all three eggs. The yolk of the first egg is soft; the yolk of the third one is hard, and the yolk of the second is precisely between soft and hard. According to the recipe, this is the ‘perfectly boiled’ egg.

I taste the three eggs in the order 1, 3, and 2. The yolk of the first egg drips from my mouth, leaving a stain on my shirt. The yolk of the third egg crumbles, causing bits to fall on my pants. The yolk of the second egg slides down smoothly without any spills.

The test is surely not scientifically foolproof. The pan size and the number of eggs undoubtedly play a role, as they also determine the boiling time of the water. The longer it takes for the eggs to start boiling, the less time the actual boiling should take. Surely, this is a matter of seconds, but still… And let’s not even mention where this cooking process takes place, at sea level or high in the Alps, because air pressure determines the boiling temperature. At three thousand meters above sea level, water boils at 90 degrees. But in our chilly little country with a small saucepan, the magic of 273 works as promised.

— § —

What would be the plot in this story? A man tests a recipe for the perfect boiling time of an egg. That is indeed what is happening, but is that a plot? There is indeed a question: Is the theory of 273 seconds confirmed or not? And yes, this issue is resolved.

On the other hand, is it really a ‘story’ (or a ‘tale’)? The spilling of the egg yolk seems indeed to indicate this. In any case, it transcends the description of a recipe or the report of its execution. But it is also a businesslike description of it; we don’t get to read about any emotional stress that the narrator might have been experiencing. There are only statements; there is spillage — in two different ways — or there isn’t.

Well, Dr. Zeele, this brings us to the core of the assignment you asked me about in the context of our therapy sessions. You asked me to tell you about the ‘plot’ of my life, and in order to answer that question, I had to think about that concept first. Perhaps my life has no plot, and there is no story either.

Life goes on, things happen, other things just don’t — winning the lottery, for example, never happens to me. Seeing that as a story could be called a decision.

And finally: does this essay have a plot? An affirmative answer might mean that this also applies to my life, of which this letter is a part. A man attempts to write a plotless story to find out if his life contains a plot. The issue ultimately remains undecided. Is that a plot?

Postscript

The next day, I received a response from my therapist, Dr. Zeele. (The treatment, by the way, took place over twenty years ago.)

Dear Mr. De Vries,

Please find a brief response to your essay herewith. As you rightly point out in your text, the matter of the plot and the story depends on the perspective of the observer. The reader of a story that may not have a plot can nevertheless discover or create one. He then becomes a ‘writer’, as you rightly state. The opposite is also possible; a story in which the writer believes to have created an obvious plot may be perceived as plotless by the passive reader. The choice is yours to go through life as a reader or a writer.

Best regards,
— Dr. Zeele, psychiatrist

That was all I had to work with. I understood that if I wanted to discern a plot in my life, I had to ‘write’ my life. The plotless tale I wanted to write would then become possible as part of that plot. Writing a plotless tale could be a conscious act and thus acquire meaning. It would be unwise to make myself dependent on the whims of the reader. The reader takes what belongs to the reader; the writer gives what belongs to the writer. Freedom is making choices.

— Den Haag, 9 april 2020