A NYTimes.com Editor's Choice
A Los Angeles Times Book Prizes Finalist
“A jaunty, insightful new book . . . [that] draws from disparate corners of history and science to celebrate our compulsion to storify everything around us.”
—New York Times
Humans live in landscapes of make-believe. We spin fantasies. We devour novels, films, and plays. Even sporting events and criminal trials unfold as narratives. Yet the world of story has long remained an undiscovered and unmapped country. Now Jonathan Gottschall offers the first unified theory of storytelling. He argues that stories help us navigate life’s complex social problems—just as flight simulators prepare pilots for difficult situations. Storytelling has evolved, like other behaviors, to ensure our survival. Drawing on the latest research in neuroscience, psychology, and evolutionary biology, Gottschall tells us what it means to be a storytelling animal and explains how stories can change the world for the better. We know we are master shapers of story. The Storytelling Animal finally reveals how stories shape us.
“This is a quite wonderful book. It grips the reader with both stories and stories about the telling of stories, then pulls it all together to explain why storytelling is a fundamental human instinct.”
—Edward O. Wilson
“Charms with anecdotes and examples . . . we have not left nor should we ever leave Neverland.”—Cleveland Plain Dealer
Read More
Publishers Weekly
This at times cloying and circular extended essay—parts sociology, anthropology, psychology, and literary criticism—seeks to answer one of those sticky questions about human nature: why do we have a fundamental need for story? For Gottschall, who teaches English at Washington & Jefferson College, story serves an evolutionary purpose; it’s hard-wired into our brains. Story creation, like dreaming, helps us judge wrongdoing. It is also how we “practice the human skills of social life”—even if we don’t consciously remember the story and its lessons. Gottschall interprets “story” broadly: even the vagaries of memory are a form of fictionalization: false memories show how one’s past, like one’s future, is a realm of fantasy for which we are hard-wired. But Gottschall’s evolutionary argument is circular: we are hard-wired for fiction because it is good for us; and we are drawn to fiction because our brains are wired for it. Yet if the argument and approach are scattershot, the writing can be engaging. 74 photos. (Apr.)
From the Publisher
"Gottschall brings a light touch to knotty psychological matters, and he's a fine storyteller himself." Kirkus
Children's Literature - Barbara L. Talcroft
Our lives are enveloped in story, from childhood play to oral storytelling, memoirs, theater, television series, films, and songs. We tell ourselves stories, making up for flawed memories, and spend hours dreaming in stories we hardly remember. Gottschall takes readers through the many kinds of storytelling that affect our lives and asks how this propensity for fiction developed in the human brain and what good it has done us in a nonfiction world. He, along with anthropologists and psychologists, explores the evolution of story as a way of sexual selection (see Denis Dutton's The Art Instinct; Bloomsbury, 2009), a source of information in dealing with fraught situations, or as enjoyment of sex, violence, and aggressive humor without the risk of participation. Stories, Gottschall says, consist of a hero, trouble or conflict, and a search for alleviation; they draw us in to discover what happens and help us navigate life's challengesstories are good for us. Especially thought-provoking is Gottschall's discussion of stories and myths of religion and nations. Do these inspire people to behave better or are they a hindrance to logical thought and action? He comes down on the side of story as a way of uniting a society in common purpose, helping each other, and enabling the community to stand firm against enemies. Such stories have their dark side, too: Hitler took as a model for his life and career Wagner's Rienziwith catastrophic results. Will advancing technology make fiction obsolete? Gottschall believes storytelling is evolving to other forms: reality shows, computer games, and sophisticated MMORPGs (massively multiplayer on-line role-playing games), allowing participants to be heroes or villains in another world; story could take over human life. Readers who work with children and their stories will be grateful for Gottschall's thoughts about a sane future for the power of storytelling. Reviewer: Barbara L. Talcroft
Library Journal
Gottschall (English, Washington & Jefferson Coll..; Literature, Science, and a New Humanities) views narrative in terms of evolutionary biology in this insightful consideration of all things story. Witty and admirably self-restrained in examining arguably overimaginative storytellers and interpreters from Freud to 9/11 "Truthers" to James Frey, Gotschall suggests that individual story fixations are driven less by unconscious mysteries and more by an innate need to share, problem-solve, and have fun. While he predictably discusses stories from a variety of religions, his analytical observations about young girls at play, the codes of World Wrestling Federation performance, the ritualized arcs of reality TV, and the Lake Woebegone principle—we all think we are above average—are unconventional, entertaining, and instructive. Although the result is a collection of wide-ranging samples that do not altogether cohere, this effect is well suited to a book more concerned with stories than story. The work complements such emergent popularizations of neuroscience as Jonah Lehrer's equally anecdotal How We Decide. VERDICT Although this will interest neuroscientists, evolutionary biologists, and cognitive psychologists looking for creative takes on their complex research, it will mainly appeal to a general readership with a literary bent. Recommended but not essential. [See Prepub Alert, 11/3/11.]—Scott H. Silverman, Earlham Coll. Lib., Richmond, IN
Kirkus Reviews
A lively pop-science overview of the reasons why we tell stories and why storytelling will endure. Gottschall (English/Washington & Jefferson Coll.; Literature, Science, and a New Humanities, 2008, etc.) knows that any book about telling stories must be well-written and engaging, and his snapshots of the worlds of psychology, sleep research and virtual reality are larded with sharp anecdotes and jargon-free summaries of current research. His thesis is that humans' capacity to tell stories isn't just a curious aspect of our genetic makeup but an essential part of our being: We tell stories--in fiction, in daydreams, in nightmares--as ways to understand and work through conflicts, the better to be prepared when those conflicts arise in reality. To that end, novels are usually "problem stories" that have strong moral underpinnings. That also helps explain why there are so many fake memoirs, he argues--the instinct to give a conflict-and-resolution arc to stories leads many memoirists to tweak (and even invent) details to fit the pattern. Gottschall uses research into mental illness as a way to explore the intensity of our narrative urge, and he explores how imagined characters can have a real-life impact. (Consider Hitler's obsession with Wagner operas, or the influence of Uncle Tom's Cabin on abolition.) Though novels may change or become less popular, writes the author, the instinct for story is deathless, and his closing pages explore recent phenomena like live-action role-playing and massive multiplayer games for hints of what future storytelling will become. Is World of Warcraft better or worse for our brains than novels? Is violent storytelling a cause for concern? The author discusses such concerns only glancingly. For him, one kind of storytelling is largely as good as any other, but he convincingly argues that story goes on. Gottschall brings a light touch to knotty psychological matters, and he's a fine storyteller himself.
Read More