All the Stories are Anansi's

I've just finished reading Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman. I enjoyed the book. It wasn't Neverwhere, but what is? Neverwhere is probably one of the three best books I've ever read.

There's a line in Anansi Boys that keeps coming up. "All the stories belong to Anansi..." I bring it up because Mr. Nancy/Anansi was a spider. Storytelling is often referred to in arachnid terms.

"[Fill in the blank writer] really knows how to weave a story." "The plot has a complex web of twists and turns." This is how we typically describe storytelling, in terms of a spider.

In The Diamond Age, the first character introduced doesn't directly interact with either of the main characters. Yet he is till important because the key protagonist is his daughter, while the secondary protagonist is one of his son's robbery victims. The Diamond Age is all about distant, but interwoven stories. Guess Anansi got his hands on that story too.

I guess it's just the scientist in me, but I think it's odd that, as a culture, we use simple descriptions of nature to describe some of the most complicated things.