Anecdote

For other uses, see Anecdote (disambiguation).

An anecdote is a brief tale narrating an interesting or amusing biographical incident. It may be as brief as the setting and provocation of a bon mot. An anecdote is always based on real life, an incident involving actual persons, whether famous or not, in real places. However, over time, modification in reuse may convert a particular anecdote into a fictional piece, one that is retold but is "too good to be true". Sometimes humorous, anecdotes are not jokes, because their primary purpose is not simply to evoke laughter, but to reveal a truth more general than the brief tale itself, or to delineate a character trait or the workings of an institution in such a light that it strikes in a flash of insight to their very essence. A brief monologue beginning "A man walks into a bar..." will be a joke. A brief monologue beginning, "Once J. Edgar Hoover walked into a bar..." will be an anecdote. An anecdote thus is closer to the tradition of the parable than the patently invented fable with its animal characters and generic human figures— but it is distinct from the parable in the historical specificity which it claims. An anecdote is not a metaphor nor does it bear a moral, a necessity in both parable and fable, merely an illustrative incident that is in some way an epitome.

Note that in the context of Russian humor anecdote may at times incorrectly refer to any short humorous story without the need of factual or biographical origins.

The word anecdote ("unpublished", literally "not given out") comes from Procopius of Caesarea, the biographer of Justinian I, who produced a work entitled Ανεκδοτα (Anekdota, variously translated as Unpublished Memoirs or Secret History), which is primarily a collection of short incidents from the private life of the Byzantine court. Gradually, the term anecdote came to be applied to any short tale utilized to emphasize or illustrate whatever point the author wished to make.

As a rule, biographical anecdotes are considered too trivial or apocryphal to be included in a scholarly biography.

Anecdotes are typically oral and ephemeral. They are just one of the many types of stories told in organisations and the collection of anecdotes from people in an organisation can be used to better understand its organisational culture (Snowden, 1999; Gabriel, 2000).

Well-known examples

For example, Cary Grant is said to have been reluctant to reveal his age to the public, having played the youthful lover for more years than would have been appropriate. One day, while he was sorting out some business with his agent, a telegram arrived from a journalist who was desperate to learn how old the actor was. It read: HOW OLD CARY GRANT? Grant, who happened to open it himself, immediately cabled back: OLD CARY GRANT FINE. HOW YOU?

A more sophisticated anecdote concerns Sidney Morgenbesser, then Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Columbia University. One day in New York City, Morgenbesser put his pipe in his mouth as he was ascending the subway steps. A policeman approached and told him that there was no smoking on the subway. Morgenbesser pointed out that he was leaving the subway, not entering it, and that he had not yet lit up. The cop repeated his injunction. Morgenbesser repeated his observation. After a few such exchanges, the cop saw he was beaten and fell back on the oldest standby of enfeebled authority: "If I let you do it, I'd have to let everyone do it." To this the old philosopher replied, "Who do you think you are—Kant?" His last word was misconstrued, and the whole question of the Categorical Imperative had to be hashed out down at the police station. Morgenbesser won the argument.

For many years Reader's Digest featured "My Most embarrassing Moment", anecdotes with the general theme, "life's like that", a common reaction to a well-told anecdote.

See also

• Anecdotal evidence
• Humour
• Narrative

References

• Snowden, D. (1999). "Story Telling: An Old Skill In A New Context." Business Information Review 16(1):30-37.
• Gabriel, Y. (2000). Storytelling in Organizations: Facts, Fictions, and Fantasies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

External links

• www.anecdotage.com features several thousand anecdotes about Winston Churchill, Mark Twain, Albert Einstein, and hundreds of other historically significant figures and current celebrities.
• www.folklore.org/index.py Anecdotes about the design and development of the Apple Mac.