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A New York Times 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
- Sales Rank: #20157 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Mariner Books
- Published on: 2013-04-23
- Released on: 2013-04-23
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.25" h x .74" w x 5.50" l, .48 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 272 pages
Features
- Used Book in Good Condition
Amazon.com Review
Jonathan Gottschall on The Storytelling Animal
What is the storytelling animal?
Only humans tell stories. Story sets us apart. For humans, story is like gravity: a field of force that surrounds us and influences all of our movements. But, like gravity, story is so omnipresent that we are hardly aware of how it shapes our lives. I wanted to know what science could tell us about humanity's strange, ardent love affair with story.
What inspired you to write this book?
I was speeding down the highway on a gorgeous autumn day, cheerfully spinning through the FM dial, and a country music song came on. My normal response to this sort of catastrophe is to turn the channel as quickly as possible. But that day, for some reason, I decided to listen. In "Stealing Cinderella," Chuck Wicks sings about a young man asking for his sweetheart's hand in marriage. The girl's father makes the young man wait in the living room, where he notices photos of his sweetheart as a child, "She was playing Cinderella/ She was riding her first bike/ Bouncing on the bed and looking for a pillow fight/ Running through the sprinkler/ With a big popsicle grin/ Dancing with her dad, looking up at him. . ." And the young man suddenly realizes that he is taking something precious from the father: he is stealing Cinderella. Before the song was over I was crying so hard that I had to pull off the road. I sat there for a long time feeling sad about my own daughters growing up to abandon me. But I was also marveling at how quickly Wicks's small, musical story had melted me into sheer helplessness. I wrote the book partly in an effort to understand what happened to me that day.
But don't you worry that science could explain away the magic of story?
I get this question a lot. The answer is "No! A thousand times, no!" Science adds to wonder; it doesn't dissolve it. Scientists almost always report that the more they discover about their subject, the more lovely and mysterious it becomes. That's certainly what I found in my own research. The whole experience left me in awe of our species--of this truly odd primate that places story (and other forms of art) at the very center of its existence.
Children come up a lot in this book, including your own children. . .
Yes, I spent a lot of time observing my two daughters (in this I took my cue from Darwin, who was a doting father, but not shy about collecting observational data on his large brood). I got lucky. My girls happened to be 4 and 7 during the main period that I was working on my book. This is the golden period of children's pretend play. And I was able to observe them spontaneously creating these fantastic wonder-worlds, with these elaborate and dangerous plots. I noticed that my girls spent almost all of their awake time in various kinds of make-believe. And I was invited to enter those worlds myself, to play the roles of princes and Ken dolls and monsters. I learned a lot about the nature of story from my girls. Story and other forms of art are often seen as products of culture. But this perspective is one-sided. Story blooms naturally in a child--it is as effortless and reflexive as breathing.
Are dreams a form of storytelling?
Yes, they are. Dreams are, like children's make-believe, a natural and reflexive form of storytelling. Researchers conventionally define dreams as "intense sensorimotor hallucinations with a narrative structure." Dreams are, in effect, night stories: they focus on a protagonist--usually the dreamer--who struggles to achieve desires. Researchers can't even talk about dreams without dragging in the basic vocabulary of English 101: plot, theme, character, scene, setting, point of view, perspective. The most conservative estimates suggest that we dream in a vivid, story-like way for more than six solid years out of a seventy-year lifespan. So dreams are definitely part of the evolutionary riddle of storytelling.
What is the future of story?
In the digital age, people are reading less fiction, but this is because they've found new ways to jam extra story into their lives--on average we watch five hours of TV per day, listen to hours of songs, and spend more and more time playing story-centric video games. I think we are seeing, in video games, the birth of what will become the 21st century's dominant form of storytelling. The fantasy lands of online games like World of Warcraft attract tens of millions of players, who spend an average of 20–30 hours per week adventuring in interactive story. Players describe the experience of these games as "being inside a novel as it is being written." In upcoming decades, as computing power increases exponentially, these virtual worlds are going to become so attractive that we will be increasingly reluctant to unplug. So the real danger isn't that story will disappear from our lives. It is that story will take them over completely.
Review
A jaunty and insightful new book...[that] celebrate[s] our compulsion to storify everything around us. (New York Times Sunday Book Review, Editor's Choice)
"[An] insightful yet breezily accessible exploration of the power of storytelling and its ability to shape our lives...[that is] packed with anecdotes and entertaining examples from pop culture." The Boston Globe
"The Storytelling Animal is informative, but also a lot of fun.... Anyone who has wondered why stories affect us the way they do will find a new appreciation of our collective desire to be spellbound in this fascinating book." BookPage
"Stories are the things that make us human, and this book's absorbing, accessible blend of science and story shows us exactly why." Minneapolis Star Tribune.
"This is a work of popular philosophy and social theory written by an obviously brilliant undergraduate teacher. The gift for the example is everywhere. A punchy line appears on almost every page." The San Francisco Chronicle
"A jaunty and insightful new book...[that] celebrate[s] our compulsion to storify everything around us. —New York Times Sunday Book Review, Editor's Choice
"[An] insightful yet breezily accessible exploration of the power of storytelling and its ability to shape our lives...[that is] packed with anecdotes and entertaining examples from pop culture." —The Boston Globe
"The Storytelling Animal is informative, but also a lot of fun.... Anyone who has wondered why stories affect us the way they do will find a new appreciation of our collective desire to be spellbound in this fascinating book." BookPage
"Stories are the things that make us human, and this book's absorbing, accessible blend of science and story shows us exactly why." —Minneapolis Star Tribune.
"This is a work of popular philosophy and social theory written by an obviously brilliant undergraduate teacher. The gift for the example is everywhere. A punchy line appears on almost every page." —The San Francisco Chronicle
"A lively pop-science overview of the reasons why we tell stories and why storytelling will endure..[Gottschall's] snapshots of the worlds of psychology, sleep research and virtual reality are larded with sharp anecdotes and jargon-free summaries of current research... Gottschall brings a light tough to knotty psychological matters, and he’s a fine storyteller himself."
—Kirkus Reviews
"They say we spend multiple hours immersed in stories every day. Very few of us pause to wonder why. Gottschall lays bare this quirk of our species with deft touches, and he finds that our love of stories is its own story, and one of the grandest tales out there—the story of what it means to be human."
—Sam Kean, author of The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements
"Story is not the icing, it’s the cake! Gottschall eloquently tells you ‘how come’ in his well researched new book."
—Peter Guber, CEO, Mandalay Entertainment and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller, Tell To Win
"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, University Research Professor and Honorary Curator in Entomology, Harvard University
"The Storytelling Animal is a delight to read. It's boundlessly interesting, filled with great observations and clever insights about television, books, movies, videogames, dreams, children, madness, evolution, morality, love, and more. And it's beautifully written—fittingly enough, Gottschall is himself a skilled storyteller."
— Paul Bloom, Professor of Psychology at Yale and author of How Pleasure Works
"Like the magnificent storytellers past and present who furnish him here with examples and inspiration, Jonathan Gottschall takes a timely and fascinating but possibly forbidding subject — the new brain science and what it can tell us about the human story-making impulse — and makes of it an extraordinary and absorbing intellectual narrative. The scrupulous synthesis of art and science here is masterful; the real-world stakes high; the rewards for the reader numerous, exhilarating, mind-expanding."
— Terry Castle, Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities, Stanford University
From the Back Cover
“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
Most helpful customer reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful.
Uneven in Terms of Reading Enjoyment
By Eric Selby
Much of this 200 page book I found interesting and, in some cases, fascinating. However, there were parts where I simply lost interest, thinking that Jonathan Gottschall didn't need to go into as much detail. I also found the photographs annoying in places. They are poorly done, even iconic ones, and often there on a page without comment. There is another issue I have will I will address later.
For me the book confirms what I have long suspected: all of us live much of our lives in the land of fantasy but we seldom talk about it, probably believing that others will think one is crazy to admit that truth. But I readily admit it. I go to sleep telling stories. When I walk I tell stories. We all tell stories when we are engaged in sex. And don't deny it!
The opening chapter, "The Witchery of Story" is a great way to get started into this book. That may sound like a rather obvious thing to write, but in this case it is especially true. We don't want to live the lives of those who inhabit the pages of stories do we? But fiction would not sell if it told of our ordinary lives. Right? The author sets this up well.
I think "The Riddle of Fiction," the second chapter is excellent with one very important exception. The author makes an assumption which apparently Vivian Paley, the author of "Boys and Girls" also made in her so-called research: that all boys gravitate toward play that involves guns and the like whereas all girls gravitate toward dolls, etc. That is just so not so! And I, as a gay man, ought to know. Maybe he meant to say--but he didn't--that a majority do. But I sought any opportunities I could to play with my sister's dolls, leaving my toy guns to gather dust. And I know of many lesbians who had little use for dolls but a lot of use for the activities straight boys were involved in. Today one would think an author would take this into consideration. Dr. Paley's research is old. But quite clearly the author is writing only from a heterosexual's point of view. So off went one star because of that! So there!
I teach writing and literature. So I found "The Mind Is a Storyteller," the fourth chapter, really fascinating, that a majority of authors are probably bipolar. That must be why my writing isn't as good as I would want it to be. I am no bipolar. But when I read the chapter, I put the pieces together along with the drug addiction and alcoholism we associate with so many of these writers: Capote, Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, Faulkner, Coleridge, Virginia Wolfe... A seemingly endless list. This sentence fascinates me: "Even college students who sign up for poetry-writing seminars have more bipolar traits than college students generally." There is no footnote for one to use to go to the author's souce, another flaw in the book in my opinion. And this: "People who are mentally ill tend to ahve more artists in their families...." Again no attribution to this statement although there is an extensive bibliography at the end.
I really enjoyed the last chapters: "The Moral of the Story," "Ink People Change the World," "Life Stories" and "The Future of Story." Indeed we do experience a lot of story telling today by a lot more people. That alone is fascinating given how our reading population is significantly less per capita than in the past. But not our media savy population who seek out all types of stories.
Chapter 6, "The Moral of the Story" isn't want you might expect, not about Aesop-type stories but instead about religions and their stories. Let me give you an example (page 119): "Guided by the holy myths, believers must imaginatively construct an alternate reality that stretches from the origins straight through an entire shadow world that teems with evidence of divinity. They must be able to decode the cryptic messages in the stars, the whistle of the wind, the entrails of goats, and the riddles of the prophets... Religion is the ultimate expression of story's dominion over our minds. The heros of sacred fiction do not respect the barrier between the pretend and the real." Then this two pages later: "We have religion because, by nature, we abhor explanatory vacuums. In sacred fiction, we find the master confabulations of the storytelling mind." Amen to that! And, of course, as the author then writes, the same is true of national myths. Just think about all the fictions of American history, the George Washington chopping down the cherry tree and not lying types of fictions. And then all of the virtues rewarded types of stories we have created. Humans just love to tell stories, often making claims about them being factual, all directed toward improving human behavior. But what is lacking in this chapter is how so many of these fictions have been the roots of wars.
Yes, I am convinced that I am right: much of our day and night is consumed in the stories we play out in our heads. Too bad we don't admit it and enjoy telling those tales, including the ones about the neighbor we would just love to see run down by a monster truck! And don't tell me all of us don't create those types of stories. All the time.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
Engaging book, but acts as an introduction to the topic
By Dixita Patel
Jonathan Gottschall looks into how and why humans are pulled to stories, making various cases and presenting interesting theories along the way. In my opinion, this book is a solid introduction to the subject, but not a fleshed out exploration. In this review, I would like to go through the most engaging parts for me and why I have come to certain conclusions or opinions.
Neverland never leaves us
The book begins by setting up the stage for this fascinating topic. It starts guiding us through various ideas (and even a test) to prove how bewitching stories can be. Gottschall uses the idea of Neverland throughout the book and it is mentioned in the first chapter. He starts by noting that children love spending time creating stories and enacting them. Then, he writes, "We may leave the nursery, with its toy trucks and dress-up clothes, but we never stop pretending. We just change how we do it. Novels, dreams, films, and fantasies are provinces of Neverland." He points out that humans never stop their involvement with stories. This seems quite true since there are many executives and producers that use story to move their customers and audiences. From the old ages where storytelling was mainly word-of-mouth to now where storytelling takes form in TV, movies, and even video games, stories have attracted us and I think they always will.
Why does Neverland never leave us?
The true question is why story has not been eliminated from human life through evolution. Basically, there has to be some sort of purpose for story. Otherwise, it would not have pursued to stay with us for so long. Some people think that fiction is used for a lot of things, like exercising the mind, passing down experiences, or forming a social glue among people. However, what if the alternative is considered? In my opinion, Gotschall introduces one of the most interesting theories here. Perhaps fiction is for nothing at all. It serves no purpose. At first, I thought this was a very poor argument to make. After all, story is all around us. If it was for nothing, wouldn't it have been eliminated through evolution, like mentioned before? Then, he makes his case, "Story may educate us, deepen us, and give us joy. Story may be one of the things that makes its most worthwhile to be human. But that doesn't mean story has a biological purpose." Although it seemed hard to believe (and I didn't want to think all my hours reading books were wasteful), it opened my mind. Maybe stories are for the sole purpose of enjoyment. We do many things that we have no value or need for, so maybe story is one of them.
Not just empathy, but sympathy
Humans cannot have stories if there is no conflict. If there is a story with no problems or interesting scenarios, the story is not at all engaging. The story does not elicit a response. Here, Gottschall finally started to bring in some science. As a current student in an introductory neuroscience class, I had been waiting for a neurological and scientific inquiry into why stories charm and move us. In one case, scientists used fMRI machines to monitor audience reaction. While watching the movie The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, it was discovered that "When Eastwood was angry, the viewer's brains looked angry, too. When the scene was sad, the viewers' brains also looked sad." With brain scanning, scientists were able to see that mirror neurons started firing in the brain. This caused the audience to have real, strong emotional responses that coincided with the story being told. They would not just empathize with the characters, but sympathize with them. However, this exploration into mirror neurons was short. There is not much more that Gottschall included, not that there needed to be any more with the point he was making. Still, I would have liked a little more meat, a little more scientific background into this topic. Also, there are some cases where audiences react more strongly to one scenario than another. It would have been great to learn the reasoning behind this. After all, not all movies elicit brilliant responses and become box office hits.
Jouvet's Cats
It is really strange to think about dreams, how they occur, why they occur, what causes one dream compared to another, etc. Gottschall explains some well known theories, such as one from Freud and the random activation theory (RAT). Jouvet's cats were intriguing to read about (again, my bias towards neuroscience coming into play). Jouvet severed the connection in the brain stem that signaled for paralysis in sleep in a few cats. During sleep, the cats would experience many scenarios of capturing prey or avoiding predators. Apparently, the dream world is filled with trouble. Again, there seems to be no story without conflict and since dreams are riddled with stories, they are riddled with conflict. Now that I think back to my own dreams (or those that I remember), it seems like they are all filled with trouble, sadness, or some sort of mission to resolve a dilemma. Perhaps dreams act as simulators then, preparing us for problems in the real world. This is something to think about.
To clean the chicken coop, of course!
The mind likes to invent stories, even if they are not real. An experiment conducted by Gazzaniga with split brain patients truly entertained me. Because of the way the visual system works, many split-brain patients were able to process images presented to both their left and right visual fields. One patient was shown a chicken's foot to the left and a snowy scene to the right. He was told to pick up two cards with pictures on them with both hands. He chose a chicken card with his right hand and a shovel card with his left hand. When asked why, he said he chose the chicken card because he saw a picture of a chicken's foot. However, he said he chose the shovel card not because he had seen the snowy scene, but because a chicken coop can be cleaned out with a shovel. It seems as if the initial images had been processed correctly in the brain and his hands chose the correct cards. However, the reasoning for one of the cards was a subtle lie. The brain didn't understand why the left hand had chosen a shovel due to the severed connection between the two halves of the brain. So, it made a reason up, to clean the chicken coop. This result was seen with other images and tests with different patients as well. It seems like the brain needs to create links. If it does not know the truth or reason behind something, it will create one. The brain will create stories naturally. This idea is quite scary... yet wondrous at the same time.
How fiction influences reality
I really liked reading the chapter on how "Ink People Change the World". It was interesting to learn of Adolf Hitler's fascination with Wagner's compositions and how they may have influenced his life of conquest. Although this chapter is more about speculation and theories that cannot be proven, I liked reading it since I do believe some stories compel and move people enough to make changes in reality. Gottschall says, "... when we are absorbing in a story, we drop our intellectual guard. We are moved emotionally, and this seems to leave us defenseless." Scientific explanations and research were not mentioned in abundance here. Yet, the idea that fiction can change real life doesn't seem difficult to believe after learning about how strongly we relate to it, feel it.
Style, Structure, and Overall Review
The book starts off at a great pace, building excitement for the coming chapters. It sets up the stage for this mysterious thing only humans seem to do: storytelling. Of course, the book is made more interesting by the way the author writes. His personality is clearly woven into the writing as he tries to interact with his readers through tests and relate to them through his personal recollections. I could do without some unnecessary pictures. At times, the images did not even have captions or explanations in the main text of the book. Still, Gottschall relays information well and the experiments mentioned were complimentary to the theories discussed. I do think the subject is too broad to be captured in this number of pages and at times, I needed to clarify which idea was proving what. Perhaps if the number of topics were reduced and more thorough investigating was done, I would personally be more satisfied with the organization and explanation of the material. Moreover, I wanted a more neurological background to our storytelling nature. I wanted to understand what exactly in our mind clicks and turns with story. I believe addressing this would give the book more substance, but it works as a great introduction to the material without it. In summary, this book gave a brief yet enjoyable introduction to our fascination with story. The author does try to research various materials, as shown in the long bibliography at the end. So, I would definitely recommend this book to a friend or anyone interested in taking a dip in the subject.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Entertaining and edifying but not authoritative
By Abner Rosenweig
Gottschall presents story as central to human life. We are "Homo Fictus," he says.
The first few chapters look at children's play, fiction, and dreams, and conclude that an essential function of story is to prepare us for life's inevitable difficulties by running us through thousands upon thousands of trouble-based scenarios.
The next few chapters reveal story's centrality in daily life as meta-social narrative; as personal identity narrative; and, as moral compass; and, Gottschall demonstrates how fictions worm deep inside our minds, parasite-like, and exert a vast influence on our daily behavior. Hitler, for example, is shown to have been profoundly guided by Wagner's opera "Rienzi."
The book concludes by considering story's future, showing how fiction is encroaching more and more upon the territory of reality, and how we may soon be saturated in virtual worlds of illusion (more than we already are, if this is possible).
I recommend the book wholeheartedly to anyone interested in story; however, it left me wanting depth and comprehensiveness. It feels more like a series of charming magazine articles than a coherent work attempting to deeply master and illuminate its subject.
The book nicely conforms to the mold of popular contemporary non-fiction: fast-paced and peppered with anecdotes and soft social science research; provocative, but it doesn't make you think too hard (this can be a good thing, depending on what you're looking for).
There was room here, with a little more patience and a little less attention to commercialism, for a stellar, substantial book. The Storytelling Animal fails to provide definitive statements or true revelations, but it never fails to provoke and entertain.
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