a thought on narrative. today we have concept of "spoilers" for a story. this is a modern idea. like I have been talking about lately with theater and comedy/tragedy, back in ye olden days, you knew going into a narrative, is this a comedy or a tragedy?

and a tragedy means: the hero dies at the end, and a comedy means: the hero gets married at the end. so in this light, what we call "spoilers" today is really, finding out whether the story is a comedy or a tragedy

our enjoyment of the narrative has changed, from reinforcing a psychological/social/metaphysical pattern, to, essentially, a kind of narrative peak-a-boo. the enjoyment is reduced to this little moment of surprise, tittivation. before 1900, all stories were spoiled

the interesting thing to do about this, is to ask oneself: how could people enjoy theatre? how could they enjoy stories, when it said right on the front page of the manuscript or poster "the tragedy of Hamlet" so you knew he was going to die before you even knew what it was about