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A compelling and very readable polemic. --Financial Times
French writer Salmon here treats us to the useful spectacle of a relentless polemic against a ubiquitous idea widely held to provoke only positive feelings. As used by branders or politicians, 'storytelling' is, on his argument, a sedative, suppressing the desire for truth in favour of satisfying narrative form. --Steven Poole, Guardian
French writer Salmon here treats us to the useful spectacle of a relentless polemic against a ubiquitous idea widely held to provoke only positive feelings. As used by branders or politicians, 'storytelling' is, on his argument, a sedative, suppressing the desire for truth in favour of satisfying narrative form. --Steven Poole, Guardian
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Ever since its emergence, humanity has cultivated the art of telling stories, an art that is everywhere at the heart of the social bond. But since the 1990s, first in the US and then in Europe, this art has been colonized by the domain of public relations and triumphant capitalism, and relabelled with the anodyne name of storytelling. This has become a weapon in the hands of marketing, management and political gurus, so as to better format the minds of consumers and citizens. Behind the advertising campaigns, but also in the shadows of victorious electoral campaigns from Bush to Sarkozy and Obama hide sophisticated storytelling management or digital storytelling technicians. It is this incredible hold-up of human imagination that Christian Salmon reveals here, after an enquiry into the ever greater number of applications for which storytelling has been mobilized. Marketing now depends more on the history of brands than on their images, managers have to tell stories to motivate their employees, soldiers in Iraq train themselves on computer games conceived in Hollywood, and spin doctors construct a political life as if it were a narrative. Salmon unveils here the mechanics of a storytelling machine, far more effective than Orwellian visions of totalitarian society. The subject that it wants to create is a bewitched individual, immersed in a fictive universe that filters perceptions, stimulates feelings and frames behavior and ideas.
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4 reviews
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Sensationalism - Not the treatment this subject deserves
1 July 2010
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Salmon is concerned about the growth of applied storytelling: storytelling used to persuade, sell, or educate. In particular, he rails against the use of stories and storytelling in business and politics, in seven chapters with titles like these:
- The New "Fiction Economy" (about manipulating workers emotionally so they can, in turn, fool customers)
- Turning Politics Into a Story (about the role of narrative in recent presidential politics in the U.S.)
- Telling War Stories (about video-game-like, immersive military training) and
- The Propaganda Empire (Karl Rove, Fox News, the internet and more.)
Salmon sees all these trends as combining to form a frightening replacement of a reality-based world with a series of "shared fictions" (p.67). His claim is that storytelling puts emotions over rational thought, elevates entertaining fiction over hard reality, and replaces political skill with "fictional competence."
But I believe that, like all tools, storytelling can be used for good or bad, to illuminate the nature of reality or to conceal it. Salmon, to be sure, puts his finger on some disturbing uses of storytelling. But he focuses blame on the tool, not on those using it or even on those of us who allow ourselves to be manipulated.
I would have loved a good book about the dangers of mis-applied storytelling. But this isn't it.
Salmon writes like a muck-raking journalist. He is good at assembling many examples of storytelling-as-deception and assembling them into an alarming montage. But he has clearly spent more time compiling examples than constructing a penetrating analysis of them - or suggesting a reasonable corrective for society.
To make things worse, his writing is frequently lacking in the logic that he glorifies. He often uses examples that don't support his conclusions. He uses emotional language in an apparent attempt to prejudice the reader against his targets. (For example, people in favor of storytelling are most often referred to as "gurus" in his book, whereas those critical of it are "researchers.")
He doesn't appear to have noticed that the emphasis during the Industrial Age on "discipline" and "rational argument" has failed to make us happy or peaceful. Most importantly, he doesn't seem to notice that storytelling's increased presence is in part a reaction to the suppression of important aspects of the human experience.
Altogether, his implied story has more in common with tabloid journalism than with reasoned analysis: "We are being manipulated by unseen forces that are taking over the world. Be afraid!"
To see Salmon's book as being about storytelling is, in spite of its title, missing the point. It's really about dangerous trends toward manipulation through narrative. If this were well-argued, it would be a valuable addition to the literature about storytelling.
Storytelling deserves better critics. I hope that the coming years produce them.
- The New "Fiction Economy" (about manipulating workers emotionally so they can, in turn, fool customers)
- Turning Politics Into a Story (about the role of narrative in recent presidential politics in the U.S.)
- Telling War Stories (about video-game-like, immersive military training) and
- The Propaganda Empire (Karl Rove, Fox News, the internet and more.)
Salmon sees all these trends as combining to form a frightening replacement of a reality-based world with a series of "shared fictions" (p.67). His claim is that storytelling puts emotions over rational thought, elevates entertaining fiction over hard reality, and replaces political skill with "fictional competence."
But I believe that, like all tools, storytelling can be used for good or bad, to illuminate the nature of reality or to conceal it. Salmon, to be sure, puts his finger on some disturbing uses of storytelling. But he focuses blame on the tool, not on those using it or even on those of us who allow ourselves to be manipulated.
I would have loved a good book about the dangers of mis-applied storytelling. But this isn't it.
Salmon writes like a muck-raking journalist. He is good at assembling many examples of storytelling-as-deception and assembling them into an alarming montage. But he has clearly spent more time compiling examples than constructing a penetrating analysis of them - or suggesting a reasonable corrective for society.
To make things worse, his writing is frequently lacking in the logic that he glorifies. He often uses examples that don't support his conclusions. He uses emotional language in an apparent attempt to prejudice the reader against his targets. (For example, people in favor of storytelling are most often referred to as "gurus" in his book, whereas those critical of it are "researchers.")
He doesn't appear to have noticed that the emphasis during the Industrial Age on "discipline" and "rational argument" has failed to make us happy or peaceful. Most importantly, he doesn't seem to notice that storytelling's increased presence is in part a reaction to the suppression of important aspects of the human experience.
Altogether, his implied story has more in common with tabloid journalism than with reasoned analysis: "We are being manipulated by unseen forces that are taking over the world. Be afraid!"
To see Salmon's book as being about storytelling is, in spite of its title, missing the point. It's really about dangerous trends toward manipulation through narrative. If this were well-argued, it would be a valuable addition to the literature about storytelling.
Storytelling deserves better critics. I hope that the coming years produce them.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Disappointing - Poor Arguments
4 May 2010
Format:Hardcover
I was disappointed and found this book to be unpersuasive. The author makes statements about broad changes in our society, with few facts or arguments to back them up. For example in one passage he describes how simply making a purchase at a modern retail store is an act of participation in a narrative, but he never explains how or if this would not have been true 20 (or 200) years ago. I wanted to learn about how institutions and politicians are manipulating the hard-wiring of the human brain and using stories to get what they want; instead the book provides lots of anecdotes (heh) and heavy borrowing from others to demonstrate that everyone's talking about storytelling these days. He seemed to have few concrete statements of its own, and looked like the author simply lexus-nexus searched for the word "storytelling" and provided citations for every instance he could find.
4 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Imaginative, thoughtful, well-researched look at the rise of storytelling
13 Mar 2010
Format:Hardcover
This is an excellent book. It considers the rise of storytelling in all manner of contemporary settings - from politics and management to advertising and the military. It is critical of the ways that storytelling can be used as tools for coercion and manipaulation. It draws on a huge range of research and ideas, yet is very readable. 'Storytelling' made me think about lots of things - I highly recommend it.
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