The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human and How To Tell Them Better. Will Storr. Abrams Press. NY. 2020.
Soft Cover. Glued. 291 pages. 0.75 lbs. With appendix titled “The Sacred Flaw Approach.” Notes and Sources. Index.
Found and purchased at Pearl’s Books
Tell the story of science integrity. Tell the story of a sincere scientist exploring the boundaries of nature. The story of fungi’s boundary-busting traits. The influence of science on an artist’s perceptions of boundaries. The scientific revolution’s infinite possibilities. The origins of quantum physics and its current path. The science of perception in eating. The perception of nuclear energy. How climate change is perceived. Humanity’s infinite history.
Tell the story of those stories.
The books I’ve reviewed so far on this website have moved me in some significant way. That’s why I reviewed them. But these are non-fiction books, not fictional books with a character I may wonder about days, months, or even years later—instead, they are books about a big idea I think about for days, months, or even years later.
While reading Will Storr’s “The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human and How To Tell Them Better,” I had an insight I just could not let go. This insight influenced how I framed my earlier Review Subject of quantum physics and has influenced the reviews I’ve written since:
Even non-fiction has a protagonist with a fatal flaw answering a dramatic question inside a plot.
Effective non-fiction authors convey their main idea in some compelling way: they write a persuasive story with an idea as protagonist. An idea that has a birth in context, arising out of the blind spot of previous ideas, battling an antagonizing idea or ideas, struggling mightily against the odds and doubts to resolve into answering the final question of what that idea is about, really.
The challenge as a reviewer is multifaceted: to appreciate what that main idea is; then to understand the supporting cast of characters/ideas; then to grapple along with the author on how that idea compares and contrasts with other ideas.
These first three facets correlate to Mortimer Adler’s approach in How To Read A Book: Adler’s first question asks what the book is about; his second asks what is being said in detail; and his third question asks just how true is the idea, in whole or partially?
The fourth of Adler’s questions—What of it?—is also the final resolution for the idea. That is, if I have willingly followed the trajectory of change the author has brought the idea through, from the genesis through arguments with other ideas and into final resolution as meaningful in some way to the subject in particular and to society at large, then I have bought into it. I accept it into my own canon of ideas.
And then, as reviewer I turn around and tell the story of that author’s story. Which aspects of that character, that protagonist, that idea, do I mention in a review? What parts of the author’s story do I repeat? What do I emphasize and how much? Do I convey what I perceive to be their blind spot or ignore it? And how do I couch their idea’s final resting place?
Here’s another way of looking at ‘idea’ as protagonist in another genre of non-fiction:
In our autobiographies, we tell our stories as a sequence of events, or we tell them as a transformation of a way of thinking about ideas; or more often as a mixture of both.
Ask yourself: would you convey your personal story by (for example) where you were born, went to school, first worked, later worked and lived, and where you now live and what you do? Or is your story one of ideas: what you believed as a child, then in college and what you now believe and why?
Often those two approaches are mixed, so you might say: I was born in that location believing those ideas, moved or didn’t move but changed my beliefs or deepened them, so now I am doing this action with these beliefs because of these reasons.
The more interesting autobiography would showcase your own personal flaw and how you dealt with it in your life’s flow. Was it first noticed and addressed at some moment in childhood, adolescence, early adulthood or even later? If you’re middle-aged or older, perhaps you would pick several key times of transformation overcoming multiple personal flaws.
The most satisfying autobiographies I’ve read are the ones in which the author emphasizes the ideas/beliefs they grappled with through their lives’ sequences. Benjamin Franklin’s comes to mind. Well-written biographies do the same, giving us a glimpse into the protagonists’ raison d’etre, as discovered over the course of their lives.
Whether a science-based, non-fiction book—as highlighted in this website—or one’s own personal non-fiction autobiography, the narrative is compelling when the closely-held main idea is challenged then resolved in some way. The best non-fiction will acknowledge those challenges to the author’s main idea, and expertly debate them.
But Storr’s “Sacred Flaw” runs below the surface. In the appendix he quotes the psychologist Professor Jonathan Haidt, “Follow the sacredness. Find out what people believe to be sacred, and when you look around there you will find rampant irrationality.”
One of the main challenges as a reviewer of a nonfiction book is to identify, then deal with, the author’s own blind spot(s). As we saw in the previous post, all humans have physical blind spots in their visual perception, and consequent blind spots in their conception of reality. Authors, no matter how proficient they are in their subject, also have blind spots for their ideas.
As a reviewer, I must determine what the blind spot is, if that blind spot is significant, to what extent, and how much it impacts the truth of the idea presented, wholly or partially. That, in turn, will determine how I answer Adler’s fourth question, how much I will be impacted by, impressed with, and transformed by the author’s idea.
When reading non-fiction, I am looking for the irrationality in the author’s argument. There always is one. The question is just how intruding is that sacred flaw, how broadly does it effect the argument, and, on a personal level (for I too am not perfectly rational) how much does it push my own flaws—I mean—buttons?
And thus we have come full circle in this essay: an idea has been presented that is exploring the dramatic question of how ideas are presented in non-fiction writing. The only problem is, I also have a sacred flaw to which I am blind. What am I missing in this essay?
One flaw in my reviews is an avoidance of overt criticism. One of my main ideas for this web site is to encourage my audience to read the books under review. I find these books compelling and want to share that enthrallment. When reading what I call Standard Book Reviews, a pet peeve I have is that moment where the reviewer seems to feel obliged to offer criticism: it takes the wind out of my sail to reach for that book. I don’t want to create sudden doldrums in your own reading travels.
But I have come close to direct criticism: see The Beginning of Infinity where I call into question how David Deutsch writes off a whole segment of human experience that does not value progress for the sake of progress. Or see how I ask Kim Stanley Robinson what led him to ignore, in The Ministry For The Future, the carbon-free technology of nuclear energy in his hopeful fiction about near-future climate change.
In my Review Letters, I ask authors directly about what I believe are their sacred flaws to their main ideas: Deutsch appears as though he cannot stomach anyone opposed to progress; Robinson wants to seem too liberal to act as though he supports supposedly controversial nuclear energy.
As for Storr? To me it is pointless to comment on what his sacred flaw in this book might be. It just doesn’t intrude on his main idea.
You like to read non-fiction (you’re reading this post, after all). Read your next book with the story concept in mind: what is the author’s main idea as protagonist, the idea’s antagonist(s), the idea’s sacred flaw, and how that main idea is presented in the end, really. If these concepts are clear, it is well-written non-fiction and likely worth your time.
You might start with “The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human and How To Tell Them Better.”
Other reviews that mention this post: Review of The Science of Storytelling, The Consciousness Instinct