I like to hear a good yarn. And it's got to be told in a certain way. It can't be too self-referential because that's just either boasting or, worse, confession. It can't go on for too long, either, because that ends up being boring or self-aggrandizing or both. And it has to have some narrative piquancy, too, some plot twist or surprise ending. I mean, why would we slog through Edgar Allan Poe's lugubrious prose in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" if not for the fiendish deeds of the orangutan? (Haven't read it yet? Don't know about the orangutan? Check it out.)
Though for the purposes of this examination, Poe is not a good example. Because as it turns out, science may support a positive correlation between good storytelling and species survival—and Poe wasn't directly involved in species survival, having had no children. But to put the theory simply: good story telling leads to good sex and that leads to lots of babies. Or at least that's what novelist Jennifer Vanderbes claims in a piece for The Atlantic in which she cites the evolutionary hardiness of some story-telling Pleistocene-age folks over their less-gifted-at-gab counterparts who died out by the beginning of the Holocene epoch.
Now if you're confused about the difference between "Pleistocene" and "Holocene," don't worry; I was, too before I Googled it. Basically it's this: The Pleistocene epoch is so very old that it ended about 12,000 years ago, around the last ice age. The Holocene epoch began then and it's the one in which we are living. And if Jennifer Vanderbes is right — and I'm still not convinced she isn't spinning yarns rather than reporting science — the tribes that were bad at stories died out even before the Holocene began while the more imaginative clans had a 1 percent increase in birthrate. Even at 1 percent, you can imagine what a monumental number of babies were born over such a long span of time.
This leads her to conclude that "Stories also offer nuanced thought maps....This heightened emotional intelligence might, in turn, prove useful when forming friendships, sniffing out duplicity, or partaking in the elaborate psychological dance of courtship..." All of which, she says, leads back to the Darwinian imperative: Sex.
And that brings us back, briefly, to Edgar Allan Poe. Though a master story weaver, there's no evidence to suggest Poe was much of a lover. As noted, he left no heirs. But Jennifer Vanderbes isn't doing a one-to-one correlation like good storyteller = fertile parent. Instead she's positing (along the lines that "Good fences make good neighbors") good stories make more babies.
I confess, I don't see the science in it. On the other hand, who needs science to support something as obvious as this?
A well-told tale is life-affirming, even life-giving. Think of Scheherazade. She told those stories as if her life depended on them. And it did.
And think of those stories in Genesis that have formed the backbone of Judeo-Christian mythology. Didn't it say right there in Chapter 1: "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth"?
Apparently we listened and heeded.
The Greek myths live on and on, their gods and goddesses populating children's books and Disney movies and three of them — Hermes, Zeus and Pan — even appear in Irish writer John Banville's recent book, "The Infinities.'' And what are they doing in a novel ostensibly about a dying theoretical mathematician? They are stimulating the procreative instinct and, being gods, they do it well.
I'm not sure Jennifer Vanderbes has the science to back up her claim. But she's got me convinced. And "let me tell you a story" just may be the best pickup line of all.
Jo Page's email address is jopage34@yahoo.com. Her website is at www.jo-page.com.