Saving Ourselves from Story
Recently, I have found myself wincing at the words "story" and "narrative." They just rub me the wrong way. I came across a scholar who explained what I couldn't put my finger on.
He is Yale professor Peter Brooks, author of Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative (1992), a popular assignment for graduate linguistics and English classes. Its release coincided with the beginning of a "narrative turn" in academia and culture, the idea that using the elements of narrative – plot, character, setting, theme, and conflict – is the most effective way to communicate because story is the way humans most deeply understand reality.
Recently, Brooks has written another book, Seduced by Story: The Use and Abuse of Narrative, to warn that our relationships with "story" and "narrative" have gotten distorted and dangerous. Stories have become the most commonly deployed rhetorical mode of discourse in business and public life, driving out exposition, argument, reporting, and even techniques like advertising jingles. Communicators cram more and more types of messages into narratives.
Why is this a problem?
Traditionally, narratives were not presented as a substitute for reality. The "suspension of disbelief” was meant to last only for the duration of the reading experience. Readers entered a narrative, made our way through it, and came out the other side with new thoughts.
In the current zeitgeist, Brooks warns, stories and narratives, from business origin stories to political anecdotes, are deployed to disarm our critical thinking faculties and impose specific interpretations of reality.
The potential remedy he suggests: studying literature.
Studying literature shapes readers who are more conscious of the fact that stories are not real but are crafted, containers the author uses to entertain propositions. Studying literature can train us to step back from an immersive reading or listening experience to formulate crucial questions about who exactly is telling a particular story and what their intention is in doing so.
What roles can writers play in all of this? Dare to write literature. By that, I don’t mean focusing on high-brow or lofty content. Rather, I mean trust your reader and give them some freedom. Don’t write as if you’re designing virtual reality glasses!
For a little fun, listen to this classic 1970's television ad, "What's the story, Jerry?" Jerry Rosenberg and his brother Charles ran an appliance store which he claimed catered to the "working man," and expanded into a multimillion-dollar empire, including producing successful ads for other businesses. Jerry wanted to create a reality distortion field in which he had found a workaround to the pricing requirements of the Fair Trade Act.
In 1974, The New York Times said of the Rosenbergs that they "may well be the first appliance merchants who have made the media the message." Eventually, the City of New York sued his business for defrauding customers, and Rosenberg sued the city for defamation. By 1977, the business was defunct.