January 21, 2025
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Book Review: The Secret to Why the Story Lasts Through the Generations
Storytelling is part of being human. In this non-fiction book, we learn why and how such narratives can also be a trap
Non-fiction
The Narrative Brain: The Stories Our Neurons Tell
By Fritz Breithaupt.
Yale University Press, 2025 ($35)
Humans are animals that tell stories. As soon as we speak, we tell our lives and populate those stories with classic characters: heroes, mentors, villains. In Narrative brainCognitive scientist Fritz Breithaupt explores why we imagine the world in stories, and how the rewards of narrative thinking keep us wired.
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Despite the title, very little Narrative brain it’s about the biological wetware, the neurons and synapses that make storytelling possible. Breithaupt is less interested in the brain scan findings than in how stories evolve as they move between tellers and what the stories serve as what that evolution reveals.
Breithaupt’s inquiry is based on “telephone game” studies, where each participant is asked to tell a story in their own words, and then pass it on to another who does the same. These ongoing exchanges, he believes, help illustrate what narratives do for us. The disjointed stories grow more coherent and logical as they progress, showing how storytelling brings meaning and order to a complex and chaotic world. The emotional thrust of the stories, however, remains the same in repeated retellings, suggesting that the feelings they evoke (such as joy when a thwarted romance unfolds) are at the heart of their appeal. We tell our lives and inhale stories about other lives for the same reason we go to bars and poker rooms: the thrill of the anticipated prize.
Jonathan Gottschall, echoing the author The Paradox of the Story (Basic Books, 2021), Breithaupt warns that our addiction to narrative—however fulfilling—can close off possibilities beyond the confines of our pet stories. Casting ourselves as victims tempts us to continue in that role, and when we want to believe that epic style justice will prevail, we may not accept realities that go in a different direction.
However, Breithaupt remains an optimistic narrative. Our storytelling skills, he says, lead us to master what he calls “playability”—the rendering of endless possible futures in story form, which helps us anticipate and plan for the best of those futures. “Narratives can be a support for our unhappiness,” he writes, “but they are also a means of escape from it.” He goes into little detail about how to achieve that escape; unlike the classic stories that inspired it, Narrative brain it does not build a clear resolution. However, its very open ending—an invitation to reimagine the stories that fit—makes it a timely corrective to our intense desire for certainty.
