Tags
Autobiography, Biography, Experience, Experience: A Memoir, Jules Renard, Julian Barnes, Life, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Amis, memoir, Narrative, Nothing to Be Frightened Of, Philosophy, Storytelling, Theodor Lessing, Wisdom
“Perhaps because my professional days are spent considering what is narrative and what isn’t, I resist this line of thought. Lessing described history as putting accidents in order, and a human life strikes me as a reduced version of this: a span of consciousness during which certain things happen, some predictable, others not; where certain patterns repeat themselves, where the operations of chance and what we may as well for the moment call free will interact; where children on the whole grow up to bury their parents, and become parents in their turn; where, if we are lucky, we find someone to love, and with them a way to live, or, if not, a different way to live; where we do our work, take our pleasure, worship our god (or not), and watch history advance by a tiny cog or two. But this does not in my book constitute a narrative. Or, to adjust: it may be a narrative, but it doesn’t feel like one to me.
My mother, whenever exasperated by the non-arrival or malfeasance of some goofy handyman or cack-handed service engineer, would remark that she could ‘write a book’ about her experiences with workmen. So she could have done; and how very dull it would have been. It might have contained anecdotes, scenelets, character portraits, satire, even levity; but this would not add up to narrative. And so it is with our lives: one damn thing after another—a gutter replaced, a washing machine fixed—rather than a story…”
Julian Barnes, writing in his memoir about mortality Nothing to Be Frightened Of.
“Experience is the only thing we share equally, and everyone senses this… I am a novelist, trained to use experience for other ends. Why should I tell the story of my life?
I do it because I feel the same stirrings that everyone else feels. I want to set the record straight… The trouble with life (the novelist will feel) is its amorphousness, its ridiculous fluidity. Look at it: thinly plotted, largely themeless, sentimental and ineluctibly trite. The dialogue is poor, or at least violently uneven. The twists are either predictable or sensationalist. And it’s always the same beginning; and the same ending … My organisational principles, therefore, derive from an inner urgency, and from the novelist’s addiction to seeing parallels and making connections.”
Martin Amis, in a section from the introductory chapter of his memoir Experience.
__________
There’s something spurious about the metaphors we use as shorthands for life. Unsolicited advice-givers and glib bumper stickers will tell you life’s a race. It’s a game. A dance. A journey. A beach.
So could life also be a narrative?
As with other such comparisons, this seems to me to be a half-baked utterance of pseudo-philosophy – an indicator not of life’s simplicity or our grand comprehension, but of our simplicity and of life’s fundamental opaqueness. Life is a ______. There have been forests felled to produce libraries to try in vain to fill in this blank; still we want a noun. Barnes hits on le mot juste when he calls this impulse atavistic. It’s the same reason we call God a Father or a Shepard: without these metaphors we are as stupefied as children.
Though as quick fixes for men with metaphysical headaches, these metaphors do serve to obscure as much as clarify. In a stunning utterance scrawled in his journal in 1897, Jules Renard reprimanded himself at the moment of his father’s death. “I do not reproach myself for not having loved him enough,” Renard lamented, “I do reproach myself for not having understood him.” So too I fear will be our assessments as we look back on lives lived as jauntily as if they were dances: enjoyable, sure, but what kind of a party was it?
“I don’t know why we are here, but I’m pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves” was the response Wittgenstein gave to Renard’s quandary. Easy for a suicidal genius to say, but what about for the rest of us? Implicit in Wittgenstein is the assumption that we are here to discover truth about ourselves and the world before we leave it; after all, apart from the transcendental, what other “why” could we have? But notice Wittgenstein’s initial qualifier. That trepidation is compacted into the paragraphs from Barnes and Amis above, and maybe it’s actually the essential clause. Perhaps, next time you hear someone say “life’s a _____,” the proper response is to shrug and simply repeat that mad Austrian’s first three words.
mlandersauthor said:
So, do these men’s memoirs have any sort of story outline?
jrbenjamin said:
Both are very free-flowing in terms of structure. I have posted highlighted sections from each on my site; take a look if you’re interested. Barnes’s book is just fantastic. No other way about it: it’s an achievement. 300 pages on the subject of mortality — it’s funny, serious, deep, anecdotal, philosophical, historical. It contains so much levity and so much anxiety. As someone fixated by the subject of death, I consider it one of my favorite books — one which really stirred my thinking when I first picked it up 2 years ago.
Amis’s Experience has shining moments and dull interludes. I’m interested in him and his family, so I read it with interest. It’s written with Amis’s typically ecstatic, perhaps overwrought prose, but also manages to have piercing moments of reflection on childhood, fatherhood, love, and loss.
I happen to think the point about novelists approaching the subject of biography is compelling, so I put them together for this post. I agree that life isn’t a narrative, as much as it may seem like a story — or a movie or a book or something else — to us. From the outside, the metaphor simply does not hold up.
Ronald E. Shields said:
I find the subject fascinating and have genuinely enjoyed reading this post. What do you make of the idea that consciousness is in some way a narrative? I recently came across an article about the subject and would be curious to know your thoughts. That is if you have the time and patience for a philosophical neophyte.
I am partial to the notion that we are the stories we tell ourselves. I have read Daniel Dennet’s ‘Consciousness Explained’ and if I understand him correctly he is saying something along those lines.
I am including a link to the article in ‘Philosophy Now’ in case it might interest you.
http://philosophynow.org/issues/85/Spinning_Narratives_Spinning_Selves
Just want you to know your site has become, along with Maria Popova’s ‘Brain Pickings’ one of my favorite go to sites for intellectual stimulation.
Thanks,
Ron
jrbenjamin said:
Ron,
Thank you very much for the nice words. To see my site compared to Popova’s site is a huge compliment. I have heard that (very generous) comparison before, and emailed Popova about it; from what she has said, she is now an occasional reader of my posts.
Unfortunately, I clicked the Philosophy Now link, and since I am not a subscriber, cannot read it. It seems interesting. I have read portions of Dennet’s book, and generally like his scholarship. I should probably return to it.
My take on the subject may be summarized simply: human lives are not narratives. A human life is a series of contingent events that, since we are pattern-seeking mammals, may appear to form a coherent story either in retrospect or while it is in progress. I am not sure of what the wider implications of my believing this may be; I simply think it is undeniable. David Horowitz, in his solid but short memoir ‘The End of Time’, draws some worthwhile parallels with this metaphor narrative, including that the arc of life does have a sort of rising-climax-falling structure. Though Horowitz points out in a very lucid section that while we physically (and sometimes mentally) do see our powers wane, we nevertheless can defy this pattern with the force of our emotions or “soul”. (I’m doing a bad job paraphrasing; take a look at Horowitz’s book to see more.)
For some reason human beings really have this — again the word is essential — atavistic desire to think in terms of stories. And we would like to see ourselves as both the narrators and lead actors of our own drama/comedy/farce/tragedy. Shakespeare’s “All the world’s a stage…” is an explicit nod to this.
What do you think? Do you think human life can be thought of as a story?
Ronald E. Shields said:
I do not believe human life is a narrative…it is a series of contingent events, which as Rorty points out we choose to ignore so that we may convince ourselves we have created the past that created us…at least I believe that is one of his points in ‘Contingency, Irony and Solidarity’
The difficulty I encounter is the question of what consciousness is. I think Dennet gives us a coherent biological answer to the consciousness question…which is different, it seems to me, from the question “is life a narrative?” Perhaps I am asking the same question in two different ways? Rorty is definitely considering ‘selfhood’ as a thing or process which is contingent, and Dennet is clearly considering something called ‘consciousness’ that is the result of biological processes. These words, it seems to me, are used by these philosophers to describe the same phenomenon, and if this is correct I cannot come down on Rorty’s side.
In the end, I believe our individual consciousnesses are an internal dialogue comprised of images and language. Human life, as lived in the world outside our bodies is a different animal that is a series of contingent events over which we have a sliding scale of control, and thus depend upon healthy doses of irony and solidarity.
http://philosophynow.org/issues/85/Spinning_Narratives_Spinning_Selves
perhaps this link will get you through to the article…if not, I was able to read it by searching on google for “consciousness is a narrative” and scrolling down to the article that begins “Spinning Narratives. I am not a subscriber either.
mlandersauthor said:
They sound like fascinating reads!
So my question then is simply this. If life is not a narrative, how can you write a memoir? Isn’t a memoir, by definition, stories out of a life? I lived, I learned, I summarized with stories of my experience?
I have long been contemplating life, death, creative inspiration, and narrative and I think at this point I would almost compare narrative to CliffsNotes or a zipped computer file. As Amis mentions, experience is something we share equally. A narrative is a summary version. The creator is a human, full of experiences and capable of forming them into a more succinct version, the narrative. The reader is also a human and capable of reading the narrative and decoding it back out into some larger things.
My question is simply, if we function within the bounds of story, what’s the use of pointing out that our stories aren’t truly stories when it doesn’t change how we interpret them or their meanings in our future decision making?
jrbenjamin said:
A zipped file. That’s very clever.
The point about life not being a proper story stems from the contention that an entire life — rather than episodes within said life — is not a story. Sure there are some periods — some conversations, nights, or weeks spent traveling — that have the definite look and feel (in retrospect) of narratives. But nevertheless: your full life is not a story.
It is not a story, properly conceived, because it’s too chaotic — it has none of the overarching patterns and pace that, say, a novel has. Sure, you could call it a story — but as Barnes points out, what an uneven, boring story it would be. Amis elaborates: life also lacks the dialogue and variety that narrative demands (the ending and beginning are always the same).
Anyways, this boils down to a question of definition, really. You could call it a narrative, and I respect people who think of life that way: it’s a metaphor as valid as any other I’ve heard. Barnes spends part of his memoir discussing friends of his who talk about life in that way. But regardless, he, like me, does not agree when he looks at human life.
mlandersauthor said:
Woah, this adds a lot of clarity and drastically changes my interpretation of the original post. I was taking everything in a far more philosophical and cognitive direction.
I definitely understand what you’re saying here and I would agree that, depending on the life in question, most do not follow any clear story. It is interesting to see that a narrative can span a matter of moments in a day or a thousand years, and a life time could theoretically fall in this range if the entire thing was orchestrated in a particular way. I wonder if it’s not our own lack of motivation and understanding that leaves us so far away from existing in a coherent story. Surely a life set aside for a goal from childhood that follows through with that goal exists as a narrative, albeit possibly a boring one.
I’m immediately reminded of Fitzgerald’s Benjamin Button and the movie Big Fish.
mlandersauthor said:
Sorry to keep bogging you down here, but I have another question for your consideration.
If you do believe that we should try not to process life as a narrative (I’m not assuming your implying that), how does that change the definition of relationships, I things, events, and people?
I would assume relationships could not carry a history of interaction if their interconnection were simply defined by current proximity.
jrbenjamin said:
That’s a good question. Barnes’s says this need is “atavistic,” and it is. It’s also reflexive: we do it automatically.
I guess I simply do not think of my own life in that way. Personal relationships? Not sure; some of them read like “stories,” but more of them read like “history” — full of banal, bumbling, very human moments. Not the spectacular, numinous stuff of fiction writing.
nancytinarirunswrites said:
Thank you for this “deep” post and for all those who contributed comments. It will take me hours to digest it all! Can’t wait to read Barnes’s memoir. As a writer I am always struggling with how to limit my stories; how to create a narrative or a “contained” story that doesn’t include all of the constant tangents and random and incidental events that real life throws at us. It is so hard to end any story based on real life–there is always more that seems relevant.
jrbenjamin said:
Very well said. I’m glad you’re picking up a copy of Barnes; be warned: in addition to clever and funny, it is very heavy and alternatively melancholy. Still, it is one of my favorite books.
If you like audiobooks, it’s also available in that format. Barnes’s voice is fantastic, so it’s worth checking out.
mlandersauthor said:
I’ve had so many deep thoughts because of this post that I just went ahead and wrote a response article. 🙂
Thanks for the instigation of valuable thoughts! http://mlanders.com/2014/02/27/is-life-a-narrative/
jrbenjamin said:
Awesome. Clicking the link now…
deborahbrasket said:
Interesting post and conversation in the comments. I don’t think a literal transcript of our lives could ever amount to a narrative. But it’s the raw material out of which we may weave a narrative, always in hindsight. I think certain themes and motifs and climatic scenes would emerge if sought. But to find those patterns, we’d have to clear away a lot of rubbish.
I think we are meaning-making creatures. Everything means something to us–a look, an event, a person, a car, the act of blogging and commenting. It’s something we add to the actual thing-in-itself, which probably has no meaning, except what we supply. And changes with each individual perception of it.
So are our lives narratives? No. Do we derive meaning and create our own coherent, narrative arcs from them? We can, if we consciously choose to do so. I think we can even choose to create meaningful futures for ourselves. Although, like any good narrative, it will be full of twists and turns and unexpected events that don’t always go the way we had supposed or hoped they would.
Which is how it goes when I write any story. I’m always surprised by how it evolves in ways I had not originally imagined. I never know how it will end till I get there. And I discover the themes and motifs and narrative arcs after the fact, looking back. Of course, in writing, I can always tweak things to make those arc more clear or interesting. Which we can’t do in our human lives. Or can we?
Don’t we sometimes find our memories of childhood events are faulty and rewrite them to take in new memories or insights and information? Our pasts aren’t written in stone after all. I wonder how much “truth” there is in the histories of world events we write and read about? The dates, perhaps. The people involved, probably. The places, little doubt. All else? Highly suspect. Or at least open to revision.
Thanks for the food for thought.
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