Bianca Aguirre's Bio, Image, and Response

I’m originally from Orange County, California. I love the sun and knew I wanted to stay in California for college. I am currently a second year here at Stanford planning to graduate with my BA in English in June '14. In my fourth year at Stanford I plan to co-term in English and apply to a PhD program. Someday, I hope to be an English professor at a university. My desire to be an English professor arose during my junior year of high school in IB English. I fell in love with Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and went on to write my Extended Essay on Brave New World and Ralph Waldo Emerson's "The American Scholar." I will be writing my honors thesis next year on Brave New World and Emerson’s transcendentalism. Since reading Brave New World, I have pursued other utopian/dystopian texts. This past fall I studied abroad in Oxford and did a tutorial in utopian/dystopian literature in which I read seven inspiring novels. When I returned to Stanford in the winter, I undertook individual work with Mark McGurl and read 8 more utopian/dystopian novels. In Narrative and Narrative theory, I hope to develop the skills to someday write a utopian/dystopian piece of my own. 

Besides reading and writing and studying English, I enjoy singing and dancing and serving God. At Stanford, I have been a part of Testimony A Cappella and the Catholic Leadership Team. I am a tour guide on campus, as well as a writing tutor at Hume. I also really love ice cream and squirrels. 

Whether or not there is such a thing as a new story is a complicated question primarily because the word “new” can mean different things. If “new” refers to complete originality, then I’d have to say no, no story is ever new. On the other hand, if “new” refers to containing one new element, then of course there are new stories being written every day. In Alice Staveley’s class on intertextuality last quarter, I came to realize that authors are first readers and that they sometimes “talk back” to authors before them. Ultimately, I believe that because writers are first readers, their writing is influenced and perhaps shaped by the works they've read and been inspired by. This suggests that no work is ever completely original or new. As Professor Tallent commented earlier today in her Development of the Short Story class, “Writers have each other as resources.” Writers feed on other writers’ creations and gather the ingredients from certain pieces they enjoy most. They then use these ingredients to make a creation of their own—something not completely original, but most certainly new.  Writing a story is like cooking.

This term “new” is also subjective in that it is essentially determined by the reader. A reader will most likely find a story new if it creates a new experience for them or teaches them something new. Whether or not the takeaway from the story is new hugely impacts whether or not the story itself is new. That being said, whether or not a story is new to a reader is dependent on what stories they have read before. A reader’s library actually affects the impact stories have on a reader. For example, even though The House of the Spirits was written after One Hundred Years of Solitude and therefore theoretically less new, I felt One Hundred Years of Solitude was less original and less impactful because I had already been awed by The House of the Spirits. Additionally, when I finally read 1984, it wasn't as new and exciting as I had expected it to be because I had already read Brave New World and held it in higher esteem.

Stories definitely have the potential to be new and exciting and to evoke new experiences and create new impacts on readers, but not all authors are as successful at doing this as others. While some may take ingredients from their favorite authors’ works and create a seemingly original masterpiece better than the ingredients from which it was made, some may take those same ingredients and fail to create a newer and more brilliant piece. William Morris’ News from Nowhere—in my opinion—is an example of a work that borrows from other writers’ works (in this case largely from Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward) but doesn't execute a stronger or more fascinating finished product. While I believe such a thing as a new story can exist, it depends on the writer to deliver and the reader to capture exactly what is new.