Abstract
Bemoaning the demise of storytelling has become almost cliche in critiques of contemporary culture. (1) Ironically, with the current variety and widespread use of narrative media, elegies for the art of storytelling are premature. Indeed, storytelling may never have been so prevalent as it is today. What the repiners are truly nostalgic for, it seems, is the traditional style of oral narrative performance, the style in which a narrator and an audience share an interactive space while the narrator personally conveys to the audience a story that is often intertwined with familiar places, the style which lends itself to local yarns, ghost stories, and accounts of personal experiences that occurred where the narrative is delivered. When places become both the setting of a story and of its telling, the narrator and audience are able directly and advantageously to reference the environment immediately at hand. A powerful synergy for both storytellers and listeners results.