I promised to write about the “just” in “it’s just a story,” so here goes. “Just,” an adverb meaning “only” or “simply.” A way of saying that a story (and I’m talking of fictional stories here) is not something to be taken seriously. Unlike, say, reality, which presumably is to be taken seriously. Story slips us into the world of make believe, of the imagination, and in a pragmatic culture those are areas that are looked upon with suspicion. For instance, you have to sell more books to make it onto the New York Times bestseller list for non-fiction than you do for fiction—which is to say, non-fiction outsells fiction by a lot in the United States. Non-fiction, we tend to think, pays concrete dividends. We are more likely to buy a book that will come back to benefit us in tangible ways, whether it is to help us make money, lose weight, raise our self esteem, or whatever else.
I’ve sometimes wondered whether this is why women are bigger consumers of fiction than men, and have been from the 18th century beginnings of the novel when women drove the popularity of Samuel Richardson’s Pamela and Clarissa. The gender stereotypes of men concerning themselves with the outer life and women with the inner seems borne out from attitudes towards fiction. Obviously, the stereotypes are not always true—certainly not in my case since I, although a man, am far more interested in fiction than in non-fiction. But I also know I’m a bit of an exception. I’ve been moderating a public library discussion group for close to ten years and the membership is made up almost exclusively of women. The only time we draw men, it seems, is when we depart from fiction and discuss a book about real life events like, say, The Perfect Storm. In the college where I teach, when one looks at the humanities, women seem more drawn to literature, men to history. As I say, there are plenty of exceptions so I don’t want to push this too far. But the overall point I’m making is that there’s a kind of suspicion of story among certain sectors of our society.
Obviously I believe that stories are more than “just stories” and see them as vital to our health and well-being. Maybe we think of stories as trivial because of the way they operate. Stories rely on symbols, so-called figurative language, and therefore speak to us indirectly. We may be visiting our biggest issues in a story—say, our longing for a meaningful relationship with another person—only they seem to be happening to made-up people (say, Elizabeth and Darcy). Maybe the more pragmatic of us are impatient with the indirection of stories.
But maybe that indirection is the key to their power. In fact, maybe the magic of stories lies in the fact that we think we’re just playing and having fun whereas we are actually working through critical life questions. If that’s the case, then thinking of stories as “just stories” may be a way of shielding this important exploration activity from the petty clutter of day-to-day life. We read a story and we can say (to ourselves as well as to others), “Don’t mind me, I’m just having fun.” Whereas in fact we may be trying to work out life and death issues such as who am I, what does my life mean, why is there suffering, what does it mean to live authentically, and what is the right thing to do in this or that case. These are hardly questions that deserve the appellation “just,” but maybe “just a story” allows us to engage in existential wrestling under the radar.