I.

In a recent-ish piece for NPR, “A Deathbed Story I Would Never Tell,” Robert Krulwich describes an incident in the life of physicist Richard Feynman. It is 1945, and Feynman’s young wife has just died:

The nurse records the time of death: 9:21 p.m. He is empty with loss. What few things she had, he packs up; he arranges for a cremation, walks back into her room and sees that the clock had strangely stopped ticking. The hands are frozen at 9:21, the very moment of her death.

Feynman refused to believe this was anything but coincidence, and that, Krulwich insists, shows the difference between a storyteller and a scientist. As an avowed storyteller, “I couldn’t do that,” Krulwich insists. “I would want to, almost need to, imagine a higher audience for a moment like that.”

This alleged dichotomy—storytelling vs. science—is familiar to me. I grew up in a family of scientists: my father was a physicist for NASA, my mother a college chemistry professor and research chemist, my sister an aerospace and mechanical engineer. And that’s just my immediate family. My point is, though I may be a storyteller myself, I know something about scientists and what makes them tick. Moreover, my dad had a particular fondness for Richard Feynman, and he gave me copies of Feynman’s two memoirs, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman and What Do You Care What Other People Think? when I was about eight or nine. They were hilarious, and I loved them.

So the NPR essay struck a chord with me—it’s a prime example of how scientists and storytellers tend to treat each other: like one is from Mars and the other is from Venus. Says Krulwich:

Storytelling is what humans do. It’s part of our nature —but natures, I’ve noticed, differ. I am not a scientist. I don’t have a mind for what they do, which is to stick, doggedly, to hard facts, keeping emotion out of the room. It’s a discipline for them, a way of being, that makes them, well, scientists.

Actually, Krulwich makes a few surprising errors in this piece—for example, Feynman’s wife did not have Hodgkin’s disease, but tuberculosis, and in fact, the confusion over Arlene’s disease is one of the stories (yes, stories!) Feynman tells in his memoirs. But the most surprising error is more fundamental: he mischaracterizes both what scientists do and what storytellers do. We think of science and storytelling as polar opposites: Research versus art. Cold, hard facts versus hot, gushing emotion. But the truth is, they’re not even opposite sides of the same coin. They’re joined together on the same Möbius strip.

II.

Scientists are, at heart, what-iffers. They are pokers and prodders. They are perpetual kids at play in the sandbox of the universe. Every science experiment boils down to this: what if I took this scenario and let it play out—what would happen? The child scientist wonders, what if I mix bleach and ammonia? (Answer: run.) The adult scientist wonders, what if I take this gene and change this little part of it? What will happen then? They may have ideas about what will happen: I think it’ll foam up. I think it’ll protect you from diabetes.

But often, when the scenario plays out, things don’t turn out as expected. The scientist pauses. Hmm. That’s weird. And almost always, the unexpected is more interesting than the expected. Take an experiment by another scientist in Krulwich’s essay, Ernest Rutherford. In his most famous work, Rutherford fired tiny particles at a tissue-thin leaf of gold foil. Based on the understanding of atoms at the time, he expected the particles to shoot through the metal in a straight line, like bullets through fog—and some did. But others riccocheted off at an angle. Some bounced straight back into a startled Rutherford’s face, leading him to say, “It was as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a sheet of tissue paper and it came back to hit you.” Maybe, he realized, they had the layout of the atom all wrong. (They did.)

So when the unexpected happens, as a scientist you perk up in delight. The universe has surprised you. You poke and prod a little further: Okay, so what if I mix THESE two things? What if I change this other part of the gene? You draw up a new scenario, a half-step different from the last, and let it play out, again and again and again, until you manage to pin down one small corner of truth.

Because let’s dispel two misconceptions here here: (1) that scientists steer their work with the precision and efficiency of steamship captains; and (2) that they are dispensers of infallible truths. Nothing about science is efficient. You pick and feel your way, as if through a very large, very crowded, very dark room. And in the end, what you have is your best guess as to what would happen, your most informed answer to this one what if. If you’ve done a good job, others will look at what you’ve done and say: Yes. This is important. And I believe you.

III.

At heart, writers, too, are what-iffers. Where the scientist pokes and prods the atom, the brain, the genome, the writer turns on society, human behavior, the human heart. Every attempt to write a story boils down to the same question: what if I took this scenario and let it play out—what would happen? So-called genre writers do it all the time: What if robots could feel emotions? What if teens had to fight each other for survival? But literary fiction writers do it, too. What if three girls in swimsuits walked into a grocery store? What if a mother found a blood clot in her baby’s diaper? What if a lawyer defended a black man in the deep South from a charge of rape—and his young daughter watched it all unfold? Like an experiment, every good story starts with a what-if.

As a writer, you may have ideas about where the story will go. The clerk is going to get together with the girl in the pink bikini! The lawyer’s going to convince everyone that Tom is innocent! And then you start writing, letting the scenario play out, and things veer off course. Characters surprise you, wiggling their way into situations you did not intend, balking when you try to kill them off, or save them, or make them call their mothers. Out of nowhere, an astronaut brother appears, or a mute old man, or a golem. Suddenly you find yourself in the jungle, at the hospital, atop the Empire State building. The writer pauses. Hmm. That’s weird. And almost always, the unexpected is more interesting than the expected.

So when a story takes an unexpected curve, as a writer you, too, perk up in delight. The universe of your story has surprised you. You expected none of this, and yet you feel, in your bones, that this is right. You poke and prod a little further. Okay, so what if Scout confronts the angry mob at the jailhouse? What if the clerk quits his job? You draw up a new scenario, slightly different than the last, and let it play out, again and again and again. You stick to the hard facts of the story as you discover them, silencing your own emotions, killing your darlings, until you manage to pin down one small corner of truth.

And you fight the same misconceptions: despite the Hollywood image of a writer tapping industriously at the typewriter, nothing about writing is efficient, either. Writers pick and feel their way through the same very large, very crowded, very dark room. And each story, even when it’s finished, is your most informed answer to this one what if, your best guess at truth, anchored in total fiction. If you’ve done a good job, others will look at what you’ve done and say: Yes. I believe you. And this is important.

IV.

Both science and stories struggle to make meaning—however small—from the apparent chaos around us. And sometimes, small truths are enough. Understandably, Krulwich—like many others—wants Big. He wants to feel

as though the universe had somehow noticed what had happened, that some invisible hand slipped into my world and pointed, as if to say, ‘We know. This is part of the plan.’ [...] I just want to imagine that the things that happen to me just might have — and deserve — the attention of the universe.

But can you imagine a story in which the main character’s clock stops at the exact moment his wife dies? Cliche! the critics would shout. Club us over the head a little more, please? It’s so easy to conflate “storytelling” with “symbolism,” or maybe with “sentimentality”—to forget that in the best stories, the meaning is made not in the telling, but in the mind of the reader.

So let me give you another example of science and storytelling. Here’s a passage from Feynman’s memoir: the moment of Arlene’s death, written some 40 years after the fact. He has raced from Los Alamos to Albuquerque—hitchhiking the last 30 miles after not one, but two flat tires—to find that his wife no longer seems to see him, or anyone.

I kept imagining all the things that were going on physiologically: the lungs aren’t getting enough air into the blood, which makes the brain fogged out and the heart weaker, which makes the breathing even more difficult. I kept expecting some sort of avalanching effect, with everything caving in together in a dramatic collapse. But it didn’t appear that way at all: she just slowly got more foggy, and her breathing gradually became less and less, until there was no more breath—but just before that, there was a very small one.

[...] I sat there for a while, then went over to kiss her one last time.

I was very surprised to discover that her hair smelled exactly the same. Of course, after I stopped and though about it, there was no reason why hair should smell different in such a short time. But to me it was kind of a shock, because in my mind, something enormous had just happened—and yet nothing had happened.

[The next day] I called the towing company and got back the car, and packed Arlene’s stuff in the back. I picked up a hitchhiker, and started out of Albuquerque.

It wasn’t more than five miles before … BANG! Another flat tire. I started to curse.

The hitchhiker looked at me like I was mentally unbalanced. “It’s just a tire, isn’t it?” he says.

“Yeah, it’s just a tire—and another tire, and again another tire, and another tire!”

We put the spare tire on, and went very slowly, all the way back to Los Alamos, without getting the other tire repaired.

Tell me that—though he sticks to the cold, hard facts, though he refuses to ascribe any divinely-prescribed meaning to the moment—his heartbreak doesn’t come through here. Tell me there isn’t a small truth here. Tell me this isn’t a story.

Further Links & Resources

• Listen to the NPR story discussed in this essay, Robert Krulwich’s “A Deathbed Story I Would Never Tell.”

• Curious about Richard P. Feynman’s memoirs? Read an excerpt from Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! or pick up a copy of What Do You Care What Other People Think?

The Fiction Project is an opportunity to tell stories in a different way by fusing text and visual art. Add your voice to this year’s coast-to-coast tour and create new work grounded in the act of writing. After traveling across the country, the Fiction Project will enter into the Brooklyn Art Library’s narrative collection, archiving your stories to share them with the public.

Anyone – from anywhere in the world – can be a part of the project. To participate and receive a journal that will travel with the 2011 tour, start by choosing a theme to the right.

The themes (there are dozens) range from “It will be fun, I swear” to “Things that changed other things” to “Lines and grids” – open to interpretation and enticing, as you can see. The deadline to sign-up for this year’s Fiction Project is March 31, 2011. Your stories and drawings could go on an odyssey from Winter Park, Florida to Seattle, Washington – a nice new year’s present to them, don’t you think?

Nashville Review was founded with two guiding principles: that our venue would be inclusive to all forms of storytelling, and that it would be both free and available to everyone. Thus, NR seeks to feature those forms of writing not often recognized as literature—music, comics, film, creative nonfiction, oral storytelling, dance, drama, art—alongside the more traditional forms of fiction and poetry.

Check them out, you won’t be sorry. One word of warning: if you’re at work, you could get lost for hours in just the one issue. Proceed with caution.

All year I’ve been waiting for Obama to flex his narrative muscles, to tell the story of his presidency, of his Administration, to tell the story of where our country is going and why we should help deliver it there. A coherent, accessible, compelling story—one that is narrow enough to be held in our minds and hearts and that nevertheless is roomy enough for us, the audience, to weave our own predilections, dreams, fears, experiences into its fabric. [...] But from where I sit our President has not even told a bad story; he, in my opinion, has told no story at all. I heard him talk healthcare to death but while he was elaborating ideas his opponents were telling stories. Sure they were bad ones, full of distortions and outright lies, but at least they were talking to the American people in the correct idiom: that of narrative. The President gave us a raft of information about why healthcare would be a swell idea; the Republicans gave us death panels. Ideas are wonderful things, but unless they’re couched in a good story they can do nothing.

What do you think? Is Diaz on to something here? Is the lack of presidential narrative part of what’s hampering Obama?

Via.

This book announces its subject with the title; a hakawati, as we learn, is a professional storyteller. And in case we lose sight of the novel’s focus, each of its four sections opens with a series of epigraphs testifying to the power of stories, from sources as diverse as the Koran (“And as to poets, those who go astray follow them”) and Baybars, which stretches across the novel, is told within another story by an emir who hopes, through the telling, to ensure his child will be a boy–further testament to the power of (and power of believing in) stories.

Zahir Baybars ruled Egypt from 1260-1277 AD / image from Touregypt.net

With this ever-shifting narrative, a reader may not immediately feel a strong attachment to any one of the stories–but each individual story sets its hook, giving us just enough of a deathbed scene, of a piece of family history, or of a fantastic tale to draw us further in.

What, then, is going on? What do the title and the epigraph point to? The Hakawati is a monument to the story, exploring its nature in several ways. First, it strips of detail the majority of the constituent stories—largely those set in the mythic past. Thousands of miles are traveled in a sentence, battles are fought in a paragraph, and a jinn’s lair receives only the simplest of descriptions. And most of these stories follow a set pattern. We know that the hero will prevail, that the villain will be undone. This sounds like a weakness, but instead it is a challenge—to the reader, to the writer, to the story itself.

Rabih Alameddine / photo from the author's website

With the bareness of such stories, Alammedine asks, “What is the least I can give you to keep you hooked? How little does a story need?” In so doing, he puts the story under a microscope in hopes of discovering its most necessary parts, then reduces it to only those integral pieces. All that remains is motion and conflict. The story moves forward, the hero faces difficulty, and we follow, even if we know what we’ll find at the end. And yet, it’s not quite that simple. Stories are never easy things, and even as Alammedine shaves more away he shows just what and how much a story truly needs. These reductions would not succeed were it not for the characters that inhabit them and the particularity of vision that guides them. Motion and conflict, then, are only enough if they combine into something—depth of character, depth of vision—greater.

But this is just a minor experiment. The Hakawati’s larger project is to provide a template for the way we understand ourselves and our world. As we read on, and as we keep all those epigraphs in mind, we begin to understand what the book is doing. Mythic stories—of Baybars, of jinn and demons—are interposed with stories of the narrator Osama’s personal history and the history of his family. Here we learn of his grandfather’s birth, there we read of the twinned lovers Shams and Layl, elsewhere we read a vignette from Osama’s undergraduate years at UCLA in the seventies, and still somewhere else we find another installment in the story of Baybars and his companions outwitting the evil Arbusto.

In putting these stories together, Alameddine puts together the mythic and the personal, and the subtle point here is that to the individual these stories hold equal weight. Each builds Osama’s self, whether by illuminating his family (the portrait that emerges of Osama’s father, Farid, through these multiple stories is beautifully complex) or his cultural past. To him, the story of how his grandparents meet is as mythic as the story of Baybars. The first story is shared by only a few, the last by many, but both are equally important to shaping the consciousness that is Osama.

paperback edition

For Osama, who, in the present moment of the novel, has returned to Lebanon to be at his father’s deathbed, the stories transmitted in the novel are the full catalog of the stories that make up his being. We are all made up of stories, the novel suggests, personal canons of pivotal moments in our lives as well as fleeting experiences that make up our selves, and our selection of these stories is haphazard. Each story’s power over us comes not from any causal importance, but from its being told. For instance, the story of how our grandparents met could make a claim to importance based on its indispensability to our existence—if they don’t meet, we don’t get born. But none of us actually thinks about that moment, allows it to shape us in any way, unless it’s a story that has been repeated, that has become part of our family lore and so a building block, however small, of our identity. The stories that define us follow a separate logic than the logic of fact and record. It’s this logic that guides the novel’s structure. The novel meanders because Osama’s identifying stories meander. And the order isn’t constant. This is the chain of stories sparked by his being at his father’s bedside. The stories that define us are fluid, rising and falling in importance depending upon where we are in our lives.

We don’t see that much of Osama in this novel. Most of the stories here are stories of other people. But by the end we understand these stories are Osama—are the stories that make up his being in this moment. In reading them, we have traced his consciousness, and by the time we finish, we know him.

Further Resources

- Watch a 2008 interview on Titlepage.tv with Simon Winchester, Aleksandar Hemon, Rabih Alameddine, and Nam Le. Description of the episode, via Titlepage.tv:

Four authors discuss the riveting, global stories in their latest books, the strengths and beauty of the English language, and whether any writer can (or even should) try to represent an entire culture.

- Listen to Jacki Lyden’s interview with Alameddine on NPR’s All Things Considered:

- You can also read Lieron Devlin’s 2002 interview with Alameddine from the Mississippi Review Online after the release of the author’s book I, The Divine (Norton, 2001).

- Here are two of Alameddine’s short stories, published by Zoetrope.

- Buy one of the author’s books from your local independent bookseller.