The Endgame
Toronto, December 3, 2023
The story of your life
In my last newsletter I mentioned Joan Didion’s famous remark “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” (It’s the opening line of Didion’s 1979 essay The White Album.)
The most important story we tell ourselves is the story of our own life. We tell it to try and give meaning to the events bombarding us like a never-ending shower of meteorites. Telling the story of our own life helps us move through chaos, weave new information into the fabric of our being, plot a new and unexpected course if we have to. As Didion suggests, creating and telling our own story makes it possible to live.
If you are a writer the telling of stories may be life itself. Daniel Halpern, poet, publisher, editor, and friend of Joyce Carol Oates, said, “if Joyce didn’t write, she wouldn’t exist.” When asked about this comment, Oates said “Dan has to say something.” (See the fine profile of Oates by Rachel Aviv in a recent issue of The New Yorker.)
Life evolves and so the story of your life has to be constantly rewritten. Something new, important, unpredictable, good or bad, often demands attention and understanding. When UK prime minister Harold Macmillan was asked by a reporter what was the hardest part of politics, he replied, “Events, dear boy, events.”
Sometimes the new thing will not seem immediately significant. It might be a seemingly casual comment from a friend about your relationship, a comment that takes on weight over time. It might be an idea in a book that, as you mull it over in the middle of the night, changes the way you think about something in the world. It might be a desperate, developing political tragedy in some far-off place that breaks through your usual emotional indifference to what does not touch you directly.
Sometimes this new thing is obviously and immediately important. It might be the diagnosis of a serious and chronic health issue. It might be financial disaster (“How did you go bankrupt?" “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”) It might be birth of a child or a grandchild. It might be the death of someone you love. It might be the discovery of a profound family secret. It might be an obvious betrayal, by you, or of you. It could be many things. Whatever it is, it must be integrated into your personal narrative. The story of your life has to be rewritten, yet again.
We all do this story telling. Some of us do it more assiduously than others. Some—the solipsistic among us—may even be obsessive about it. Writers will, of course, write it all down. The Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgård has written six autobiographical novels, collectively entitled My Struggle.
Normal people are inclined to take things easy. They will reflect on their life episodically, compiling fragments here and there, for the most part not bothering about it all that much unless suddenly confronted by a baffling and overwhelming crisis or extraordinary good fortune. And I suppose there are some insouciant people who will avoid the task altogether, at least consciously. Why bother, they may ask. What’s the point? Take it as it comes, that’s the smart thing to do, they tell themselves.
If you do see the point of reflection, you will be overtaken by the urgency of it as you get old. The older you get, the richer and more complicated your life story will become, the harder it will be to make sense of it, and the less time you will have to do the job. The very old often feel the need for what geriatric psychiatrists sometimes call “life review,” an attempt to make sense of and assess a long life. What was it all about?
The last chapter is not written until it is. When the late Henry Kissinger was 100 years old he went to China (in July, 2023) for a meeting with President Xi Jinping. Ah yes, Henry Kissinger. Statesman? War criminal? I wonder about the story of his life that Kissinger told himself.
Notes
In #43 I mentioned Clint Eastwood. And in #46 I offered a link to Sarah Vaughan’s rendition of “Misty” by Erroll Garner. Last night I was reading Ian McEwan’s new novel Lessons and was amused to read this line: "And if he played “Misty” languorously, someone might come over and leave a pound note on the piano. One American lady who did, told him he looked like Clint Eastwood." As I suspected, in the end, everything fits together.
My severest critic (not quite) has a birthday tomorrow. Congratulations to him.
Thanks for a delightful morning reflection!