A few emails below your email notification today about this question of the purpose of storytelling, was my weekly email from James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits. He quoted James Baldwin on this very subject:
"You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves can we understand them in other people. An artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian. His role is to make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are."
Thanks Lauri- I love Baldwin quotes and here is another from his Paris Review interview:
Similar to the one you quoted, I think this is a good answer to the question what is the purpose of stories- the purpose for the writer, anyway---
"When you are standing in the pulpit, you must sound as though you know what you’re talking about. When you’re writing, you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know. The whole language of writing for me is finding out what you don’t want to know, what you don’t want to find out. But something forces you to anyway."
Opening the vein of paradox: Realizing the doom and glory of knowing who and what you are. The doom of mortality, the glory of the pure potential of being. Everyone we have known and loved will die, yet all are eternally held in this one heart. In the midst of change, what is the unchanging light we offer to the world by being exactly who and what we are?
This James Baldwin quote expresses my exact feelings about why I read, and fortifies me to persist in the struggle to put my own ideas, feelings, stories, into words.
I think this is a great point and just wrote about something similar. Story and literature allows us to realize the trials we are going through are nothing new under the sun. Even fictional characters can inspire us to triumph over obstacles. Or help us realize those obstacles aren't so big after all.
Wow, yes, I like this--reflects to me the Buddhist idea of interdependence, connection, that in pain or pleasure, we are all connected, for there is no one who can experience anything that someone else, probably many someones, haven't also experienced. Thus, we are connected to each other as a human family in all our emotions and experiences. I love stories for reflecting this reality in a creative and artistic way. I also love the intellectual challenge of following along in another's world/universe. It takes an artist to take us there!
I truly believe that there are no stupid questions, not questions that are intentionally stupid anyway. But this question is so basic, so fundamental as to what it means to be human that I'm a bit surprised that it's even been asked. So I suppose, then, that I'm taking a shot at a response because I believe the answer is so simple as to not miss: we tell stories because we can't not tell stories. It's a biological imperative, storytelling, much like breathing or digesting. Telling stories---around a campfire, scratched into the wall of a cave, relayed in gossip, put in book form or pixilated and read, drawn or painted, or made into audio form and heard, or watched as in a play or a movie----is a human function. And as for the ". . . in our culture today" phrase in that question, that only attaches an unnecessary qualifier, as if stories may have been relevant and necessary in some other age but questionable in our own. There have always been stories, as there has always been breathing. How could there not be stories? That might be the more challenging question to ask, futile as it would be to pose. To not tell stories is to be inert. To not tell stories is to not be alive. We humans tell stories because we can't not tell them.
And yet every once in a while we come across a human who doesn’t know how to tell a story. My mother in-law was one such person. She’d simply talk with no beginning, no middle, and certainly no end in sight. Drove me nuts.
I have a couple of people like this in my life too. I chalk it up to narcissism. They’re not telling stories. They’re just releasing a flood of data from their heads and they somehow think it’s important other people. I think actual storytelling carries an awareness of audience, of a gift being offered to others.
Don't you think that's very harsh, to attribute it to narcissism? After all, the narrator has noticed every detail of their story, often in the way others could not. They are poor spontaneous editors, these homespun Lawrence Sternes. Maybe the problem lies in the highly literate ear.
We’re just talking about across a dinner table, those that dominate conversation with seemingly no story, just rambling— Not writing— there’s a place for “floods of data” as Kurt puts it when writing, even if edited out later.
Yes Sea! If I dump a load of data and ideas and feelings and notes about what a character buys at the hardware store into my shitty first draft, they are valuable - to me, to sort through later, to revise, to discard. But if I'm at your house for dinner and I ramble on about everything that happened to me today, and yesterday, and everything that happened to the cousin of the guy who drove me here in an uber, who by the way wore the cutest hat, and did I tell you about my own hat that I made when I was in middle school?......then I am just selfishly sucking all of the oxygen out of the room. Definitely narcissistic. Definitely not a gift to my listeners. Definitely not actual engagement. And I definitely know people like this.
Well, okay, maybe your mom-in-law didn't know how to tell a story, maybe the simple mechanics involved were lost on her somehow, but that didn't mean she didn't have a story to tell or that she didn't try to tell it. The original question was why we tell stories not how to perfect the means of telling.
I think you're right – in order to answer the question in the context of its being asked, we're all making an assumption about what constitutes a story in the first place. You could say some people enact the telling of a story orally because they like the attention (we're only human, after all) – and this could be true whether or not the listener decides the story is worthy or not?
And considering it's SC, the discussion is likely not over yet! Your comment about your MIL made me think of Florence Foster Jenkins. She was a NY socialite back in the '30s & '40s, very wealthy & somehow convinced that she could sing. And not just sing, but sing opera! The problem was she was truly awful, awful, awful. Years of professional coaching & still she couldn't carry a tune. (Like we all breathe and tell stories, as I argued above, I believe, as did she, that we also sing. Not always well, but quality isn't at issue.) That didn't stop her, though. Many years ago I came across something that she said after she'd rented out Carnegie Hall & gave a concert (which, for the audience, must have been its own form of penance & which the critics of course panned), something that I jotted down & have kept in my stash because it informs my own opinion about making art, about the undeniable need for it as a human function, and that was: "Everybody said I couldn't sing. But nobody said that I didn't." Your mom-in-law may be in the same camp!
Oh! I think they made a movie about her didn’t they? Wasn’t it Meryl Streep? Maybe I’m imagining things. Yes I’m fascinated by that when people think they’re really good at something and they don’t seem to care if they are or not and can’t seem to improve and move forward.
I know it's a different story, but this story makes me think of the bad opera singer in Citizen Kane, the which of course was based on Hearst and Marion Davies.
The "every once in a while" is becoming more frequent in my experience. More and more people talk as per your MIL. This thread made me think they don't read enough, or absorb their reading differently, and thus don't learn story mechanics. Hence their telling of stories suffers....and so do we as their listeners.
May be tedious, pointless etc etc but she's still telling a story; just a horrible and shapeless one. Put between covers and you'd close it after 2 pages. I'd be careful though, when talking about story writing (which is what this club is all about, no?) even putting strictures of "beginning, middle and end" is too confining. There are plenty of examples out there where this trilogy is deconstructed, broken up and still lifted up into the realms of the beautifully written; what's the beginning, middle and end of the Joyce story we're currently kicking around?)
On the page and in art, rules are meant to be broken, but conversation is an art as well. Those on “send” and never on “receive “ ramble on with no relationship to the listener.
It was hard for me to get used to at first. She's no longer with us, but I still meet people who want to tell a story, or so it seems, then "broadcast" as you say for a long, long time, not letting anyone interject, not pausing, but then there's no "ending." No, "And...scene." Long stories: they better pay off, people!
I am reminded yet again of St. Francis, who must have been speaking directly to me as a youngster feeling invisible and misunderstood when he said something like, Seek to understand, rather than to be understood. I could change it to, See, rather than seeking to be seen. Listen, rather than needing to be heard. Say yes, rather than closing my heart. Breathe, rather than seeking protection in tension.
This comment is so timely— I was just speaking with a friend about how maybe these ways of interacting— talking non stop— is a way to handle stress, fear, or pain. In the end, I have to be more patient with this style of communicating. I’m the one that has to breathe. But it is incredibly soul crushing.
I agree. One psychological explanation is that stories are simulations that we run to understand the world and our relation to it. This is necessary because our senses perceive an enormous amount of chaotic and unstructured information and our brains have a very difficult time processing it and making sense of it. This reason for stories is only one part of the picture but an important one.
My two cents: stories are catharsis in a world that doesn't always make sense. They are a way for us to explore the road not taken or just to have some adventure with a measure of control (as in: reading a genre that always has a happy ending). We can escape from our daily lives and be entertained, have joy, or just an opportunity to cry over something less meaningful than a personal tragedy.
Conversely: what consequences flow from not allowing ourselves to be 'entertained' by stories? Constraints on our propensity and capacity to connect, empathise and band together to our individual and collective benefit?
Not sure we can avoid stories. Every news story is structured as a narrative, most conversations are a sharing of anecdotes, or ideas about them, and even non-fiction is usually arranged in a narrative structure. Could it be that the story is a structural component of language?
I've attended many ComiCon events over the years. Among the events are interviews of actors, writers, artists, etc. After these interviews, people queue up to a microphone and ask questions of or offer comments to the guests. Nearly every time, somebody says something like, “I was in a really dark period in my life when your show came out. And watching it helped me to get through it all.” Or somebody might say, “If I hadn’t had the example of the characters in your book, I’m not sure I would be here today.” That’s some heavy stuff for an event filled with people dressed like Princess Leia and The Incredible Hulk.
Humans have always told stories because we need them like we need food and oxygen. Stories are more than frivolous adornments in our lives. They bind us together and push back the darkness.
This makes the point so well. You taught me something. I’ve been guilty of writing off the comicon world as juvenile. I’ll never do it again. I need to respect that their stories are deeply affecting people, not just entertaining them.
Same with romance. I don't read it, but I don't like it when someone denigrates the genre. Romance is the largest genre, by a mile! Those stories connect with their readers in a way that doesn't with me (in general), but I respect that romance resonates deeply with them.
I think of stories as an early warning system of life. They may teach us something new, warn us of dangers, live vicariously through others, and feel all the feels without having lived it ourselves. We laugh, we cry, we see new things. Have you ever read something that made you cry? It's not happening to us, but it is. Our brain doesn't see the difference if we are engaged.
Yes, I agree and would argue that Aristotle said as much in 'Poetics', so we're in good company! He says historians write what has happened, while poets write what could or would happen...(and of course I paraphrase)...the better the quality of the story telling, the more believable the character and the problem with which they are presented, the more the audience is able to FEEL, and therefore the deeper the experience. We can try out life 'risk free' through stories. I also think he asserted that audiences walk out of a comedy (in the traditional sense, a 'happy ending story') blind but walk out of a tragedy with eyes wide open (through the arousal of pity and fear). Powerful stuff.
We got asked this at university by Rob Macfarlane. Or a version of it - why do we share the intuition that those who have read more fiction are likely to be wiser, more moral, or etc, given the great evidence for well-read people being awful?
I think stories necessitate cognition about emotions and relationships, and that these develop useful skills - as well as a bank of references - which we carry into other parts of our lives. But they are not the only way such skills can be developed, nor probably the most direct. It might be that their most important (and sufficient) function is to give us pleasure.
Robert Macfarlane is a grand example of a creative writer who, like George Saunders, is as genially provocative to read in relation to what story is and why story telling is vital as his works are to read for delights of the stories he tells.
As I've suggested in responding to Katrina's comment I happen to think the two questions - posed to you by Robert Macfarlane and posed to us by our Story Club Peer - are actually, though related, not quite versions of the same question but rather distinct and different.
Taking us into realms philosophical this thread, though as ever here in Story Club via a very down to earth practical route. Where we are going to arrive I'm not sure but, so far, what a journey to be enjoying.
Great question from Macfarlane. Re "It might be that their most important (and sufficient) function is to give us pleasure"--I generally agree, with the note that "pleasure" doesn't have to equal happiness, fun, or any of those so-called "positive" emotions. For example, I just became acquainted with the story, "The Things They Carried," a couple of years ago and, although it's an understatement (bordering on ridiculous and I sincerely hope not insulting) to say it was not at all a pleasurable experience in the conventional sense, I am so pleased I had the opportunity to read such a great, great story.
Your university professor's question is actually far more interesting and pertinent than the rather unoriginal original question that headlines this discussion: "What is the purpose/utility of stories today?" Every serious reader and writer knows the answer to this question. Even though it may be a subjective answer.
I love this question -- and it's one I've been thinking about for the novel I'm writing. I live in the Bay Area -- and George's phrase about the 'stories fading' in our culture is something I've been thinking about alot -- e.g. Instagram and TikTok and the rise of the 7-second story, if you could even call it that). And then, of course: AI. Hearing that future ChatGPT (or maybe present?) can write a novel (and pirated the novels of 200k) authors to build the dataset was initially just such a moment of: what about humanity and stories written by humans?! But then I thought about art -- and how Monet calendars and prints have been around for years -- but people still want / want to see the real thing.
So perhaps this is optimistic, as I love literature so much -- I think there will always be a place for human-written stories. Stories are fundamentally human. They are windows and mirrors -- ways to better understand ourselves (mirrors) and the world (window). It's amazing how a story can make me feel so seen and/ or make me feel like I'm really seeing someone else. Stories are vessels of emotion. We read them for entertainment, for joy -- for the ability to feel. And I wonder: can a robot ever do that? (Maybe, but even if they can, will we trust it as 'real'?)
And stories have the ability to show us a fundamental human truth: we are all changing, all the time.
"Stories are fundamentally human. They are windows and mirrors -- ways to better understand ourselves (mirrors) and the world (window). It's amazing how a story can make me feel so seen and/ or make me feel like I'm really seeing someone else."
Such an insightful observation, rendered so eloquently.
We've had to work through wave after wave of the evolving challenges driven by advances in technology which have engendered new thinking and developments in human-machine interfacing / relationships. It's not the Generative AI that bothers me, personally, so much as the Human Goons who seem hell bent on exploiting it for their own ends: which seem to be that twinned 'gods' of money and power, driven by myopic addition to acquiring more and yet more of both. For me it is not going to be AI that puts the yoke and choke on anyone, rather it'll be some of our 'fellow' human beings.
I like your question about robots as they are imitations of us, just like stories. Robots and stories put out what we put into them.
Ian McEwan's novel 'Machines Like Me' explores the questions of robots, stories, truth, and relationships as only Ian McEwan can do. I've read the novel three times and never tire of it.
Another novel length story addressing the terroir of AI is Kazu Ishiguru's 'Klara and the Sun'. Another top notch story that both entertains and provokes thought and reflection well beyond the milestone of last full stop has been attained.
Loved Machines Like Me--and all McEwan novels I've read so far. I understand there's been some debate about whether McEwan actually wrote it though, or if an AI did. Haven't really investigated the idea, but it's certainly an interesting one, if not also potentially terrifying (at least to me).
Wow - I didn’t know about that. It’s such an emotionally evocative novel; I’d be surprised if it was written by AI. And it reads so much like McEwan‘s other work.
Perhaps the role of older human written stories is to provide source material for futuregenerative AI engines And to be subsumed.into the next generneration of artificial literature.
Two things came to mind for me that feel very related:
1) Stories, as they've always done (i.e cave paintings), continue to keep us safe. They guide. They warn of danger. They tell where, and how, to find nourishment (physical, emotional, spiritual). Etc.
2) They remind us that we are human. Which feels more important than ever, given the AI times we're entering.
We are human and humans have long lived, often but not always lived better, with advancing technology.
What are the stories that are being told about 'The AI Times' that give rise to concern for you Garrett?
How do you perceive the challenges that are arising?
What stories occur, or might occur, to you to help ensure we - on the human side of the relationship equation - rise to evolving a positive modus operandi between Our Human Selves and Generative Machine AI?
Dang! Good question! And one that I have asked myself quite a few times. I have come up with an answer for myself, maybe it is useful for somebody here.
***Stories explain to us our lives. ***
Life doesn’t seem to make sense a whole lot of the time. Life is unjust, rewards the bad gals & guys, punishes the good ones.
Stories are different. In stories, (invented) life makes sense. There’s reasons why something is happening, there is less chance, less injustice.
By inventing stories we imagine a better life, one that makes more sense and is more just than the real friggin’ affair we all live in.
Yes your considered answer is one that strikes 🎯 a mark Martin.
Stories, as texts, stay as they were; stay ready for us to re-read; read more closely on one or more revisits; read, potentially, with deepening insight into what in our view the story is about and how it is working and communicating with us. Helps us, more often than, to get an enhanced handle on who we are and what's going in that fast flowing life we lead outwith Story Lands.
I've been struck by the range and diversity of the comments sampled in this thread so far. Thanks for yours, so pithy and so well pitched in just six words.
When I was young and first fell in love with fiction I believed that stories would teach me everything I needed to learn about life: how to communicate with people; how to work a job; how to love someone. Years later after abandoning teaching and rejecting "all that ivory tower stuff" I plunged myself into what I then considered the real world--the public defense of people accused of crimes, locked in jail without money to make bail. That world was so real that after a while my heart and my mind just gave up. Now, retired, at 66, I've come back to (modern) literature to give me comfort, distraction, voyeuristic excitement, and yes, to also teach me about the lives that are being lived now, in 2024.
I think literature teaches us, as Sheila Heti would say, how a person should be. We find our role models. For me Alice in Wonderland, Nancy Drew and later in life, Madame Bovary (admittedly not the best choice). We read, we change course, we read, we make a life decision, we read, we die a good death. For me, that's good bang for the buck.
Tamra, I did the reverse. Law first. Teaching second. Maybe we aren’t designed to have just one job. But I’m with you that writing feels the most satisfying.
I don't think I have a good answer off the cuff, but I spent the morning pondering some very relevant recent reflections on the importance of literature by Pope Francis, so that I could write about them over in my own Substack. That's a shameless plug, but I have enough shame not to link. : )
A very pertinent link to post into this thread Peter and so, serendipitously, recent too,
I've enjoyed reading it, erudite as you would expect of a Pontiff who in his time has been educator.
I was born into, raised and educated in, a Catholic setting up the age of 18. It's quite a while since I read or heard read such a Letter and this on the Role of Literature is a very good read... so long, speaking from my POV, that I strip out the specifics of who is writing, to whom and why in recognition that this is a text which is touches and draws on much that is universal. It, to put this point slightly differently, has the positive quality of taking the conversation out Beyond the - sometimes, again in my view based on experience, blinkered - Pale of Catholicism and so offering insights to Anyone of Any of Our World's Cultures.
It's 9 substantive sections and the 42 paragraphs written through them could bear re-reading slowly and reflecting on, one bite size chunk a time, gently over an extending window of time. An ideal go to source on which, perhaps, to build some form of 'A Personal Path to Meditation on Literature and, in particular, the Purposes / Utilities of Stories in Our Cultures Today'.
Genially provocative, very much so. I commend reading it to others, who can and will make of what isn't (don't be misled by the numbers I've dropped in above) a long or longwinded read.
Thanks, Rob. I'm glad that you found the letter interesting and worth reading. I agree that, while it will obviously speak in certain ways to Catholics or to Christians generally, the pope's concerns have universal scope. I thought it was a letter that could be read with appreciation by people from a range of perspectives. I also think you are right that many of the individual paragraphs bear sustained reflection--there is often a lot packed into them, perhaps more than initially meets the eye.
I've now also read your related piece posted on your From My Bookshelf Substack. It's a helpful commentary which complements the original Letter, for example in picking and posting the text of some quotes referenced more indirectly via footnotes.
What's more I've enjoyed dipping into, if I recall correctly, seven of your 'installments' posted on From My Bookshelf. Each stimulating and so diverse yet sharing the benefit of your light yet serious writing style, underpinned by your obvious commitment to maintaining the strong underpinning of applying the rigour of decent intellectual standard in the penning of each piece.
I may well become a Subscriber but will mull a while before doing so, simply because I am chary of finding myself the regular recipient of more excellent posts - each, to link and echo a word and phrase used by you, 'a serendipitous rabbit trail' - than I can keep pace with or reliably engage with. Even as I write I'm sensing myself inclining to earlier rather than later Subscription... "Dang, that Peter, he do but write real fine. Can't say fairer, or other, than I find!" 😂
Rob, thanks again--for the subscription, of course (since I see you took the plunge), but even more for the kind compliments. I'm glad that you enjoyed what you found and hope there will be more to interest you along the way. I may have to slow the pace once the semester begins soon, but we'll see what I can manage. (About being the regular recipient of posts: it's a dilemma, isn't it? There's a lot of good stuff out there. I think either one has to be pretty ruthless about subscribing to only a very few select things, or one has to accept that one will often hit "delete" on things without reading. Otherwise they accumulate in the inbox... as I know too well.)
Thanks for this link and the one to your own article, Peter. I am not a religious person, but I've always regretted I never took the undergrad "Bible as (and?) Literature" course offered at my university back in the day. I didn't realize at the time how much it would have benefited my understanding of a lot of English lit. In any case, looking forward to reading what you've posted.
Annemarie, thank you for the nice reply. As I just replied to Rob also, I think the pope's letter can speak to people even outside his religious tradition because the concerns he raises are of universal interest. I hope you'll enjoy reading it (as well as my own piece, if you find time for it).
I can't read all the comments this week, there are just too many. So I'm guessing someone has already said what i'm about to post (and no one's gonna read this anyway--it's too far down the page...oh, well). But, my answer: We are stories and everything in our heads is a story, and everywhere we look we are making stories in order to make sense of where we are in space and time. I mean, the "utility" of stories? We'd be brain-dead without them. The purpose? There is no real "purpose"--that just doesn't make sense as a question, it's like asking what is wet about rain? We ARE stories. Our purpose is not to be stories, but because we ARE stories, we are able to write stories about what our purpose is. End.
So much for endings eh Mary. In each of our endings, awaiting us beyond the last full stop, is the seed of our next beginning. Isn't this the never ending story that is this life?
A pithy, powerful, provocative post Mary. No two folks have, yet, said quite the same things but oh so many variations of response to the theme we've got laid out, as a most lively un-etherised, subject patiently putting up with our dissections here in Anatomy of Story 101. what a delight venturing into this (Interactive) Office Hours turns out to be.
Thanks for making your way through the comments and finding mine, Rob. To "not cease from exploration" seems to be your watchword! And yes, we arrive back where we started, hopefully with something gained, something learned. The search continues--we look outward when the answer is always inside. Life so often seems to me to be the tale of the wizard of oz. She had the power all along to go home--but had to make the long journey before she could return and know the place as for the first time.
When my son, Paul, was still small I, exasperated, said something like
"Shut up shop. Give us a break. Questions, questions, non-stop, questions. Five quiet minutes. Please?"
He paused, thought, for a whole moment, replied: "Why? I'm a kid. I want to know everything!"
The question posed, and George's light touch framing of and teeing up of it, takes us - in its way - to The Heart of the Matter, not because we are facing a life changing moral crisis like Scobie in Grahame Greene's novel but because it invites us each to get closer to just why it is that we are, each in our way, so interested in Story.
Who can guess, indeed what would be the purpose of utility of doing so, what item of Joycean ephemera George is going to pivot this evening's next stage in the story of our consideration of 'Clay' upon? I relish not knowing and look forward to the unexpected.
Dare say I'll be reading you later Mary, over on unfolding Clay III Channel.
For me, stories are a way of making sense of the world around us, processing the complexities of being a human being. I don't believe this needs to be something we know is even happening, and most of the time it's better that we don't know. But yeah, great question.
A few emails below your email notification today about this question of the purpose of storytelling, was my weekly email from James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits. He quoted James Baldwin on this very subject:
"You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves can we understand them in other people. An artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian. His role is to make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are."
Thanks Lauri- I love Baldwin quotes and here is another from his Paris Review interview:
Similar to the one you quoted, I think this is a good answer to the question what is the purpose of stories- the purpose for the writer, anyway---
"When you are standing in the pulpit, you must sound as though you know what you’re talking about. When you’re writing, you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know. The whole language of writing for me is finding out what you don’t want to know, what you don’t want to find out. But something forces you to anyway."
Opening the vein of paradox: Realizing the doom and glory of knowing who and what you are. The doom of mortality, the glory of the pure potential of being. Everyone we have known and loved will die, yet all are eternally held in this one heart. In the midst of change, what is the unchanging light we offer to the world by being exactly who and what we are?
This James Baldwin quote expresses my exact feelings about why I read, and fortifies me to persist in the struggle to put my own ideas, feelings, stories, into words.
Do persist Judith, whatever the struggle, you know it makes sense.
Thank you for that kind message!
Thank you posting this Lauri. I love James Baldwin and what he shared with the world. So articulate and so heart felt.
I think this is a great point and just wrote about something similar. Story and literature allows us to realize the trials we are going through are nothing new under the sun. Even fictional characters can inspire us to triumph over obstacles. Or help us realize those obstacles aren't so big after all.
Wow, yes, I like this--reflects to me the Buddhist idea of interdependence, connection, that in pain or pleasure, we are all connected, for there is no one who can experience anything that someone else, probably many someones, haven't also experienced. Thus, we are connected to each other as a human family in all our emotions and experiences. I love stories for reflecting this reality in a creative and artistic way. I also love the intellectual challenge of following along in another's world/universe. It takes an artist to take us there!
Yes, Baldwin says it beautifully (again). Thank you for sharing!
Perfect.
Oh, I'd forgotten about that Baldwin quote. I'm so glad you shared it :)
I think stories have the same purpose they’ve always had: to connect us to each other.
I could write a zillion words about it, but you already know what it’s like to connect with other humans and why that matters, so there’s no need.
I truly believe that there are no stupid questions, not questions that are intentionally stupid anyway. But this question is so basic, so fundamental as to what it means to be human that I'm a bit surprised that it's even been asked. So I suppose, then, that I'm taking a shot at a response because I believe the answer is so simple as to not miss: we tell stories because we can't not tell stories. It's a biological imperative, storytelling, much like breathing or digesting. Telling stories---around a campfire, scratched into the wall of a cave, relayed in gossip, put in book form or pixilated and read, drawn or painted, or made into audio form and heard, or watched as in a play or a movie----is a human function. And as for the ". . . in our culture today" phrase in that question, that only attaches an unnecessary qualifier, as if stories may have been relevant and necessary in some other age but questionable in our own. There have always been stories, as there has always been breathing. How could there not be stories? That might be the more challenging question to ask, futile as it would be to pose. To not tell stories is to be inert. To not tell stories is to not be alive. We humans tell stories because we can't not tell them.
And yet every once in a while we come across a human who doesn’t know how to tell a story. My mother in-law was one such person. She’d simply talk with no beginning, no middle, and certainly no end in sight. Drove me nuts.
I have a couple of people like this in my life too. I chalk it up to narcissism. They’re not telling stories. They’re just releasing a flood of data from their heads and they somehow think it’s important other people. I think actual storytelling carries an awareness of audience, of a gift being offered to others.
Don't you think that's very harsh, to attribute it to narcissism? After all, the narrator has noticed every detail of their story, often in the way others could not. They are poor spontaneous editors, these homespun Lawrence Sternes. Maybe the problem lies in the highly literate ear.
We’re just talking about across a dinner table, those that dominate conversation with seemingly no story, just rambling— Not writing— there’s a place for “floods of data” as Kurt puts it when writing, even if edited out later.
Yes Sea! If I dump a load of data and ideas and feelings and notes about what a character buys at the hardware store into my shitty first draft, they are valuable - to me, to sort through later, to revise, to discard. But if I'm at your house for dinner and I ramble on about everything that happened to me today, and yesterday, and everything that happened to the cousin of the guy who drove me here in an uber, who by the way wore the cutest hat, and did I tell you about my own hat that I made when I was in middle school?......then I am just selfishly sucking all of the oxygen out of the room. Definitely narcissistic. Definitely not a gift to my listeners. Definitely not actual engagement. And I definitely know people like this.
Kurt, it’s like we were in the same room!
I think it’s narcissistic behavior, too. It’s so tedious.
Well, okay, maybe your mom-in-law didn't know how to tell a story, maybe the simple mechanics involved were lost on her somehow, but that didn't mean she didn't have a story to tell or that she didn't try to tell it. The original question was why we tell stories not how to perfect the means of telling.
I think you're right – in order to answer the question in the context of its being asked, we're all making an assumption about what constitutes a story in the first place. You could say some people enact the telling of a story orally because they like the attention (we're only human, after all) – and this could be true whether or not the listener decides the story is worthy or not?
It ended up being a great discussion here!
And considering it's SC, the discussion is likely not over yet! Your comment about your MIL made me think of Florence Foster Jenkins. She was a NY socialite back in the '30s & '40s, very wealthy & somehow convinced that she could sing. And not just sing, but sing opera! The problem was she was truly awful, awful, awful. Years of professional coaching & still she couldn't carry a tune. (Like we all breathe and tell stories, as I argued above, I believe, as did she, that we also sing. Not always well, but quality isn't at issue.) That didn't stop her, though. Many years ago I came across something that she said after she'd rented out Carnegie Hall & gave a concert (which, for the audience, must have been its own form of penance & which the critics of course panned), something that I jotted down & have kept in my stash because it informs my own opinion about making art, about the undeniable need for it as a human function, and that was: "Everybody said I couldn't sing. But nobody said that I didn't." Your mom-in-law may be in the same camp!
Oh! I think they made a movie about her didn’t they? Wasn’t it Meryl Streep? Maybe I’m imagining things. Yes I’m fascinated by that when people think they’re really good at something and they don’t seem to care if they are or not and can’t seem to improve and move forward.
I know it's a different story, but this story makes me think of the bad opera singer in Citizen Kane, the which of course was based on Hearst and Marion Davies.
The "every once in a while" is becoming more frequent in my experience. More and more people talk as per your MIL. This thread made me think they don't read enough, or absorb their reading differently, and thus don't learn story mechanics. Hence their telling of stories suffers....and so do we as their listeners.
That could be. Interesting.
May be tedious, pointless etc etc but she's still telling a story; just a horrible and shapeless one. Put between covers and you'd close it after 2 pages. I'd be careful though, when talking about story writing (which is what this club is all about, no?) even putting strictures of "beginning, middle and end" is too confining. There are plenty of examples out there where this trilogy is deconstructed, broken up and still lifted up into the realms of the beautifully written; what's the beginning, middle and end of the Joyce story we're currently kicking around?)
On the page and in art, rules are meant to be broken, but conversation is an art as well. Those on “send” and never on “receive “ ramble on with no relationship to the listener.
My MIL: same. I just do not get it. I call her mode "broadcasting KMOM."
It was hard for me to get used to at first. She's no longer with us, but I still meet people who want to tell a story, or so it seems, then "broadcast" as you say for a long, long time, not letting anyone interject, not pausing, but then there's no "ending." No, "And...scene." Long stories: they better pay off, people!
I am reminded yet again of St. Francis, who must have been speaking directly to me as a youngster feeling invisible and misunderstood when he said something like, Seek to understand, rather than to be understood. I could change it to, See, rather than seeking to be seen. Listen, rather than needing to be heard. Say yes, rather than closing my heart. Breathe, rather than seeking protection in tension.
This comment is so timely— I was just speaking with a friend about how maybe these ways of interacting— talking non stop— is a way to handle stress, fear, or pain. In the end, I have to be more patient with this style of communicating. I’m the one that has to breathe. But it is incredibly soul crushing.
Yes. You (and me) are the ones who need to breathe, to relax into the sense of being.
I agree. One psychological explanation is that stories are simulations that we run to understand the world and our relation to it. This is necessary because our senses perceive an enormous amount of chaotic and unstructured information and our brains have a very difficult time processing it and making sense of it. This reason for stories is only one part of the picture but an important one.
Rosanne - I made much the same point in my post. If I'd read yours first I might have just stopped typing and applauded.
Wow. And thanks. As you say in your own post, story is built into the machine.
I love your response, Roseanne! I feel exactly the same way.
My two cents: stories are catharsis in a world that doesn't always make sense. They are a way for us to explore the road not taken or just to have some adventure with a measure of control (as in: reading a genre that always has a happy ending). We can escape from our daily lives and be entertained, have joy, or just an opportunity to cry over something less meaningful than a personal tragedy.
Yes, yes, yes!
Stories let us live outside of our own experience. Which allows us to connect, empathize, and bands us together.
Conversely: what consequences flow from not allowing ourselves to be 'entertained' by stories? Constraints on our propensity and capacity to connect, empathise and band together to our individual and collective benefit?
Not sure we can avoid stories. Every news story is structured as a narrative, most conversations are a sharing of anecdotes, or ideas about them, and even non-fiction is usually arranged in a narrative structure. Could it be that the story is a structural component of language?
Fascinating idea. Imagine trying to tell a story without verb tenses.
I've attended many ComiCon events over the years. Among the events are interviews of actors, writers, artists, etc. After these interviews, people queue up to a microphone and ask questions of or offer comments to the guests. Nearly every time, somebody says something like, “I was in a really dark period in my life when your show came out. And watching it helped me to get through it all.” Or somebody might say, “If I hadn’t had the example of the characters in your book, I’m not sure I would be here today.” That’s some heavy stuff for an event filled with people dressed like Princess Leia and The Incredible Hulk.
Humans have always told stories because we need them like we need food and oxygen. Stories are more than frivolous adornments in our lives. They bind us together and push back the darkness.
This makes the point so well. You taught me something. I’ve been guilty of writing off the comicon world as juvenile. I’ll never do it again. I need to respect that their stories are deeply affecting people, not just entertaining them.
Same with romance. I don't read it, but I don't like it when someone denigrates the genre. Romance is the largest genre, by a mile! Those stories connect with their readers in a way that doesn't with me (in general), but I respect that romance resonates deeply with them.
I think of stories as an early warning system of life. They may teach us something new, warn us of dangers, live vicariously through others, and feel all the feels without having lived it ourselves. We laugh, we cry, we see new things. Have you ever read something that made you cry? It's not happening to us, but it is. Our brain doesn't see the difference if we are engaged.
Yes, I agree and would argue that Aristotle said as much in 'Poetics', so we're in good company! He says historians write what has happened, while poets write what could or would happen...(and of course I paraphrase)...the better the quality of the story telling, the more believable the character and the problem with which they are presented, the more the audience is able to FEEL, and therefore the deeper the experience. We can try out life 'risk free' through stories. I also think he asserted that audiences walk out of a comedy (in the traditional sense, a 'happy ending story') blind but walk out of a tragedy with eyes wide open (through the arousal of pity and fear). Powerful stuff.
We got asked this at university by Rob Macfarlane. Or a version of it - why do we share the intuition that those who have read more fiction are likely to be wiser, more moral, or etc, given the great evidence for well-read people being awful?
I think stories necessitate cognition about emotions and relationships, and that these develop useful skills - as well as a bank of references - which we carry into other parts of our lives. But they are not the only way such skills can be developed, nor probably the most direct. It might be that their most important (and sufficient) function is to give us pleasure.
Robert Macfarlane is a grand example of a creative writer who, like George Saunders, is as genially provocative to read in relation to what story is and why story telling is vital as his works are to read for delights of the stories he tells.
As I've suggested in responding to Katrina's comment I happen to think the two questions - posed to you by Robert Macfarlane and posed to us by our Story Club Peer - are actually, though related, not quite versions of the same question but rather distinct and different.
Taking us into realms philosophical this thread, though as ever here in Story Club via a very down to earth practical route. Where we are going to arrive I'm not sure but, so far, what a journey to be enjoying.
Great question from Macfarlane. Re "It might be that their most important (and sufficient) function is to give us pleasure"--I generally agree, with the note that "pleasure" doesn't have to equal happiness, fun, or any of those so-called "positive" emotions. For example, I just became acquainted with the story, "The Things They Carried," a couple of years ago and, although it's an understatement (bordering on ridiculous and I sincerely hope not insulting) to say it was not at all a pleasurable experience in the conventional sense, I am so pleased I had the opportunity to read such a great, great story.
Your university professor's question is actually far more interesting and pertinent than the rather unoriginal original question that headlines this discussion: "What is the purpose/utility of stories today?" Every serious reader and writer knows the answer to this question. Even though it may be a subjective answer.
And your answer, to either question (which I read as quite distinct, different and dang good), is... ?
Genuinely curious to know if you care to share Katrina. For me the fourth 'd' has definitely been 'difficult', to answer that is.
I love this question -- and it's one I've been thinking about for the novel I'm writing. I live in the Bay Area -- and George's phrase about the 'stories fading' in our culture is something I've been thinking about alot -- e.g. Instagram and TikTok and the rise of the 7-second story, if you could even call it that). And then, of course: AI. Hearing that future ChatGPT (or maybe present?) can write a novel (and pirated the novels of 200k) authors to build the dataset was initially just such a moment of: what about humanity and stories written by humans?! But then I thought about art -- and how Monet calendars and prints have been around for years -- but people still want / want to see the real thing.
So perhaps this is optimistic, as I love literature so much -- I think there will always be a place for human-written stories. Stories are fundamentally human. They are windows and mirrors -- ways to better understand ourselves (mirrors) and the world (window). It's amazing how a story can make me feel so seen and/ or make me feel like I'm really seeing someone else. Stories are vessels of emotion. We read them for entertainment, for joy -- for the ability to feel. And I wonder: can a robot ever do that? (Maybe, but even if they can, will we trust it as 'real'?)
And stories have the ability to show us a fundamental human truth: we are all changing, all the time.
"Stories are fundamentally human. They are windows and mirrors -- ways to better understand ourselves (mirrors) and the world (window). It's amazing how a story can make me feel so seen and/ or make me feel like I'm really seeing someone else."
Such an insightful observation, rendered so eloquently.
We've had to work through wave after wave of the evolving challenges driven by advances in technology which have engendered new thinking and developments in human-machine interfacing / relationships. It's not the Generative AI that bothers me, personally, so much as the Human Goons who seem hell bent on exploiting it for their own ends: which seem to be that twinned 'gods' of money and power, driven by myopic addition to acquiring more and yet more of both. For me it is not going to be AI that puts the yoke and choke on anyone, rather it'll be some of our 'fellow' human beings.
I like your question about robots as they are imitations of us, just like stories. Robots and stories put out what we put into them.
Ian McEwan's novel 'Machines Like Me' explores the questions of robots, stories, truth, and relationships as only Ian McEwan can do. I've read the novel three times and never tire of it.
Another novel length story addressing the terroir of AI is Kazu Ishiguru's 'Klara and the Sun'. Another top notch story that both entertains and provokes thought and reflection well beyond the milestone of last full stop has been attained.
Loved Machines Like Me--and all McEwan novels I've read so far. I understand there's been some debate about whether McEwan actually wrote it though, or if an AI did. Haven't really investigated the idea, but it's certainly an interesting one, if not also potentially terrifying (at least to me).
Wow - I didn’t know about that. It’s such an emotionally evocative novel; I’d be surprised if it was written by AI. And it reads so much like McEwan‘s other work.
Theresa’s a story ‚by’ Sheila Heti published in The New Yorker a few months back called „According to Alice“ that was written with AI. It was a very strange read…but not without narrative power, I’d say. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/11/20/according-to-alice-fiction-sheila-heti
Thanks so much for the link!
Perhaps the role of older human written stories is to provide source material for futuregenerative AI engines And to be subsumed.into the next generneration of artificial literature.
Two things came to mind for me that feel very related:
1) Stories, as they've always done (i.e cave paintings), continue to keep us safe. They guide. They warn of danger. They tell where, and how, to find nourishment (physical, emotional, spiritual). Etc.
2) They remind us that we are human. Which feels more important than ever, given the AI times we're entering.
RE: 2)
We are human and humans have long lived, often but not always lived better, with advancing technology.
What are the stories that are being told about 'The AI Times' that give rise to concern for you Garrett?
How do you perceive the challenges that are arising?
What stories occur, or might occur, to you to help ensure we - on the human side of the relationship equation - rise to evolving a positive modus operandi between Our Human Selves and Generative Machine AI?
As Ursula K. Le Guin said, "We read books (and stories) to find out who we are."
OH YES!! Exactly,
Hi there,
Dang! Good question! And one that I have asked myself quite a few times. I have come up with an answer for myself, maybe it is useful for somebody here.
***Stories explain to us our lives. ***
Life doesn’t seem to make sense a whole lot of the time. Life is unjust, rewards the bad gals & guys, punishes the good ones.
Stories are different. In stories, (invented) life makes sense. There’s reasons why something is happening, there is less chance, less injustice.
By inventing stories we imagine a better life, one that makes more sense and is more just than the real friggin’ affair we all live in.
Cheers, everybody, Martin
Yes! "Stories explain to us our lives" resonates with me very much. Not just our lives, but maybe life, through our particular lense..?
Yes your considered answer is one that strikes 🎯 a mark Martin.
Stories, as texts, stay as they were; stay ready for us to re-read; read more closely on one or more revisits; read, potentially, with deepening insight into what in our view the story is about and how it is working and communicating with us. Helps us, more often than, to get an enhanced handle on who we are and what's going in that fast flowing life we lead outwith Story Lands.
I've been struck by the range and diversity of the comments sampled in this thread so far. Thanks for yours, so pithy and so well pitched in just six words.
I love the way you put that.
When I was young and first fell in love with fiction I believed that stories would teach me everything I needed to learn about life: how to communicate with people; how to work a job; how to love someone. Years later after abandoning teaching and rejecting "all that ivory tower stuff" I plunged myself into what I then considered the real world--the public defense of people accused of crimes, locked in jail without money to make bail. That world was so real that after a while my heart and my mind just gave up. Now, retired, at 66, I've come back to (modern) literature to give me comfort, distraction, voyeuristic excitement, and yes, to also teach me about the lives that are being lived now, in 2024.
I think literature teaches us, as Sheila Heti would say, how a person should be. We find our role models. For me Alice in Wonderland, Nancy Drew and later in life, Madame Bovary (admittedly not the best choice). We read, we change course, we read, we make a life decision, we read, we die a good death. For me, that's good bang for the buck.
Tamra, I did the reverse. Law first. Teaching second. Maybe we aren’t designed to have just one job. But I’m with you that writing feels the most satisfying.
Nancy Drew is a badass and you don't sound so bad yourself.
I don't think I have a good answer off the cuff, but I spent the morning pondering some very relevant recent reflections on the importance of literature by Pope Francis, so that I could write about them over in my own Substack. That's a shameless plug, but I have enough shame not to link. : )
I will, however, provide a link to Francis's "Letter on the Role of Literature in Formation" for those who are interested: https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/letters/2024/documents/20240717-lettera-ruolo-letteratura-formazione.html. It is about reading stories rather than writing them, but the two questions seem pretty clearly related. It's actually quite interesting and worth a read (also not terribly long).
A very pertinent link to post into this thread Peter and so, serendipitously, recent too,
I've enjoyed reading it, erudite as you would expect of a Pontiff who in his time has been educator.
I was born into, raised and educated in, a Catholic setting up the age of 18. It's quite a while since I read or heard read such a Letter and this on the Role of Literature is a very good read... so long, speaking from my POV, that I strip out the specifics of who is writing, to whom and why in recognition that this is a text which is touches and draws on much that is universal. It, to put this point slightly differently, has the positive quality of taking the conversation out Beyond the - sometimes, again in my view based on experience, blinkered - Pale of Catholicism and so offering insights to Anyone of Any of Our World's Cultures.
It's 9 substantive sections and the 42 paragraphs written through them could bear re-reading slowly and reflecting on, one bite size chunk a time, gently over an extending window of time. An ideal go to source on which, perhaps, to build some form of 'A Personal Path to Meditation on Literature and, in particular, the Purposes / Utilities of Stories in Our Cultures Today'.
Genially provocative, very much so. I commend reading it to others, who can and will make of what isn't (don't be misled by the numbers I've dropped in above) a long or longwinded read.
Thanks, Rob. I'm glad that you found the letter interesting and worth reading. I agree that, while it will obviously speak in certain ways to Catholics or to Christians generally, the pope's concerns have universal scope. I thought it was a letter that could be read with appreciation by people from a range of perspectives. I also think you are right that many of the individual paragraphs bear sustained reflection--there is often a lot packed into them, perhaps more than initially meets the eye.
I've now also read your related piece posted on your From My Bookshelf Substack. It's a helpful commentary which complements the original Letter, for example in picking and posting the text of some quotes referenced more indirectly via footnotes.
What's more I've enjoyed dipping into, if I recall correctly, seven of your 'installments' posted on From My Bookshelf. Each stimulating and so diverse yet sharing the benefit of your light yet serious writing style, underpinned by your obvious commitment to maintaining the strong underpinning of applying the rigour of decent intellectual standard in the penning of each piece.
I may well become a Subscriber but will mull a while before doing so, simply because I am chary of finding myself the regular recipient of more excellent posts - each, to link and echo a word and phrase used by you, 'a serendipitous rabbit trail' - than I can keep pace with or reliably engage with. Even as I write I'm sensing myself inclining to earlier rather than later Subscription... "Dang, that Peter, he do but write real fine. Can't say fairer, or other, than I find!" 😂
Rob, thanks again--for the subscription, of course (since I see you took the plunge), but even more for the kind compliments. I'm glad that you enjoyed what you found and hope there will be more to interest you along the way. I may have to slow the pace once the semester begins soon, but we'll see what I can manage. (About being the regular recipient of posts: it's a dilemma, isn't it? There's a lot of good stuff out there. I think either one has to be pretty ruthless about subscribing to only a very few select things, or one has to accept that one will often hit "delete" on things without reading. Otherwise they accumulate in the inbox... as I know too well.)
Thanks for this link and the one to your own article, Peter. I am not a religious person, but I've always regretted I never took the undergrad "Bible as (and?) Literature" course offered at my university back in the day. I didn't realize at the time how much it would have benefited my understanding of a lot of English lit. In any case, looking forward to reading what you've posted.
Annemarie, thank you for the nice reply. As I just replied to Rob also, I think the pope's letter can speak to people even outside his religious tradition because the concerns he raises are of universal interest. I hope you'll enjoy reading it (as well as my own piece, if you find time for it).
Peter, I’m interested. Give me your link.
Christine, that's kind of you to ask. Here you go: https://frommybookshelf.substack.com/p/the-voice-that-speaks-through-many. I hope you'll find it interesting.
I can't read all the comments this week, there are just too many. So I'm guessing someone has already said what i'm about to post (and no one's gonna read this anyway--it's too far down the page...oh, well). But, my answer: We are stories and everything in our heads is a story, and everywhere we look we are making stories in order to make sense of where we are in space and time. I mean, the "utility" of stories? We'd be brain-dead without them. The purpose? There is no real "purpose"--that just doesn't make sense as a question, it's like asking what is wet about rain? We ARE stories. Our purpose is not to be stories, but because we ARE stories, we are able to write stories about what our purpose is. End.
Mary - I'd find and read your post even it was 50 pages down the ladder. How's that for fandom? Your perspective is always valuable and welcomed.
OK. Maybe 30 pages down. Don't want to come off like some sort of sycophant...
Agreed. I look for you! Important question. WE ARE MEANING-MAKING ANIMALS.
Ha!
Thank you, Kurt! Much appreciated.
"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."
So much for endings eh Mary. In each of our endings, awaiting us beyond the last full stop, is the seed of our next beginning. Isn't this the never ending story that is this life?
A pithy, powerful, provocative post Mary. No two folks have, yet, said quite the same things but oh so many variations of response to the theme we've got laid out, as a most lively un-etherised, subject patiently putting up with our dissections here in Anatomy of Story 101. what a delight venturing into this (Interactive) Office Hours turns out to be.
Thanks for making your way through the comments and finding mine, Rob. To "not cease from exploration" seems to be your watchword! And yes, we arrive back where we started, hopefully with something gained, something learned. The search continues--we look outward when the answer is always inside. Life so often seems to me to be the tale of the wizard of oz. She had the power all along to go home--but had to make the long journey before she could return and know the place as for the first time.
Yes, Dorothy, exactly.
When my son, Paul, was still small I, exasperated, said something like
"Shut up shop. Give us a break. Questions, questions, non-stop, questions. Five quiet minutes. Please?"
He paused, thought, for a whole moment, replied: "Why? I'm a kid. I want to know everything!"
The question posed, and George's light touch framing of and teeing up of it, takes us - in its way - to The Heart of the Matter, not because we are facing a life changing moral crisis like Scobie in Grahame Greene's novel but because it invites us each to get closer to just why it is that we are, each in our way, so interested in Story.
Who can guess, indeed what would be the purpose of utility of doing so, what item of Joycean ephemera George is going to pivot this evening's next stage in the story of our consideration of 'Clay' upon? I relish not knowing and look forward to the unexpected.
Dare say I'll be reading you later Mary, over on unfolding Clay III Channel.
yep--i already posted over there. I'm so predictable!
For me, stories are a way of making sense of the world around us, processing the complexities of being a human being. I don't believe this needs to be something we know is even happening, and most of the time it's better that we don't know. But yeah, great question.