Writers can’t always be trusted when they talk about the power and importance of story. We have a vested interest and can get sentimental, promoting the immense power of story, of narrative, as inherently benign.
Even when a writer is famously sceptical of narrative, such as Joan Didion, the sentimentalists overrule her. As Zadie Smith pointed out recently in The New Yorker, one of Didion’s most famous lines – “we tell ourselves stories in order to live” – is now quoted as if Didion is celebrating story rather than warning about delusion.
