Look 103: Stone Soup
Fellow Angler,
Today we eat stone soup.
The idea of this soon-to-be-recurring post is to give you content that either hasn’t fit in previous posts or isn’t enough to warrant its own post. It’s a collection of leftovers and odd ends, much like stone soup.
Now, I was recently told that not everyone knows the story of stone soup. I was shocked and expressed disbelief because it’s a foundational story for me, alongside The Count of Monte Cristo and A Pocket for Corduroy. So I put the question to you:
You can click on an answer to vote in this poll. But I can’t see your responses yet, so I have to ensure the readers who live under a rock are brought up to speed.
Stone soup: A folk tale (Derek’s Version)
The basic plot as I know it:
A poor or traveling man wants food. He asks some villagers for food and they say no. They don’t want to share their scarce resources with a stranger. They definitely don’t want to give away food and get nothing in return. So the man devises a plan.
He puts a stone into a pot of water and piques everyone’s interest by declaring that he’s making stone soup. Sometimes the sell is that stone soup has magical properties. Sometimes it’s a very pretty stone. But mostly people are so curious to taste this mysterious soup that they’re willing to contribute a vegetable from their garden, a chunk of leftover meat, some herbs, or whatever else they can offer that helps make the soup taste better.
In the end, the villagers unwittingly worked together to make a delicious soup they can all enjoy together. Most don’t even realize it’s just normal soup. The hungry guy who started this gets a nice meal and resumes his journey, presumably until he gets hungry again and tricks another set of villagers.
So it’s a children’s story?
Don’t be ridiculous. Yes, the story of stone soup can be used to share lessons of helping people and working together. But if that’s all you get out of it, you’re not going deep enough. The real meat of the story is psychological.
Everyone gets tricked and cheated out of their own food, but it causes them to help someone in “need” and they have a joyful experience with their neighbors. Does it matter that the initial trickery was done by someone with selfish motives? When is deceit acceptable? Who has the right to judge when the ends justify the means? How can we decide the worthiness of the traveler? Does it matter where they’re coming from or where they’re going?
Am I overthinking this story? No. And to make you believe this post has a point, I’m going to argue that this sort of next-level thinking is necessary for a writer to come up with ideas.
The truth is that everything you see and read is a writing idea and I’d say an idea is anything that makes you think a little. Most of the time you only need to look one level deeper than the surface — a level that is still in plain view but that 90% of the population overlooks in their daily lives.
Noteworthy soup: Sopa da pedra
According to Wikipedia there are many versions of this story. Different countries call it axe soup, button soup, etc.
In an old Portuguese version, the hungry man is a poor friar or monk. He’s on a pilgrimage and needs food but he’s too proud to simply ask for it. So he uses this little trickery then walks away with the kind farmer’s pot so he can more easily eat food later on his trip.
I like this version because there’s a lot to unpack. Who is this proud man that decided to become a friar? Why would such a person choose to make a pilgrimage? Does he truly believe in whatever he’s pilgrim-ing for? Why does a pious man trick and steal from the people he has potentially sworn to help?
When a monk on a pilgrimage appears in one of my novels, now you know the (partial) inspiration.
Soup to avoid
I read a children’s book telling of stone soup where the villagers weren’t tricked. They purposely joined forces to make a great soup. That’s rubbish. The story loses all depth if people work together willingly. Every good story needs some hanky-panky.
Hanky-panky: a tangent
If you’re wondering why I chose this word in the last sentence, it’s because it felt funny. BUT the Merriam brothers and Noah Webster have assured me that hanky-panky can mean “questionable or underhanded activity.” In fact, that was its original meaning in 1841.
Do most people know the word for another definition nowadays? Yes, but what most people know is rarely the whole story. So the next time you’re at a party with a lull in conversation, tell someone that one of your mutual connections (ideally one of your family members) tricked you with some hanky-panky. It could liven up the convo.
Anyway…
The point today was to share bits and bobs in one spot a la stone soup. Instead I’ve spent 800 words explaining what stone soup is. What follows is an abbreviated version of what a normal stone soup email could contain.
102 title song
Maybe you already spotted it but the song that inspired the title of my previous post, “Look 102: It’s in Your Head” was… Zombie by The Cranberries. It’s quite a political song, which you can learn about on your own time.
Comic Con
Last week was Comic Con in New York. I attended to watch some D&D games, browse the stalls, peep the costumes, and look for issues of Blazing Comics, a 1944 comic book that only lasted six issues but featured the Green Turtle, who was potentially the first Asian superhero in American comics. You can learn more in a recent(ish) graphic novel that creates a backstory for the character: The Shadow Hero.
Muppet content
We can all agree Muppets are great. So if I had infinite money (or finite money but much more than I have now), I would buy this Muppets From Space script so I could read the original ending. Read more about the original ending here.
Some Muppet art from Comic Con:
Finally…paid posts are coming
My wife assures me that I can trick more of you into giving me money (though that’s easy for her to say since I gifted here a lifetime paid subscription).
The content isn’t too different but you’ll get MORE:
More behind-the-scenes (you’ll never believe how long I took to write my last post)
More content recommendations (I just bought a real weird book this past weekend)
More FUN (facts you didn’t know you wanted to hear! my cat in a costume!! a pigeon with a beard!!)
Upgrade for the steep price of $2 per month or $20 per year. You’ll get a post every week instead of every two weeks and I’ll use your money to pay off the cost of making this blog.
If you don’t upgrade, you’ll still get a free post every two weeks and I’ll still appreciate you reading my stuff. Don’t bow to peer pressure unless you’re doing it to look cool.
Until next time,
Happy fishing!