Let Me Tell You a Story

I’ve been meaning to tell this story for a while, now. I stopped getting the New Yorker in print in 2023, when I downsized from a big house to a much smaller apartment. I kept the 2023 New Yorkers that I hadn’t read in two piles (one by my reading chair in the Living Room, and of course, one in the bathroom). In 2025, I began to read these “outdated” issues. Of course, so much is relevant almost three years later. In the July 10&17, 2023 issue of the New Yorker is an article by Parul Sehgal titled “Tell No Tales” that is both compelling and enlightening.  Ms. Sehgal’s sub-title is “Storytelling has been sold as the solution to everything.  But it comes at a cost.” I had to read this.

Ms. Sehgal starts with the story of Scheherazade, the famous storyteller of “Arabian Nights” who in order to stay alive, tells a tale with a cliff-hanger at the end of the night, so that the king has to keep her alive to hear the next installment of the story. She details the number of contemporary writers, some in homage to Scheherazade, some as a guide to “brand management, serialized content, mastering the attention economy—the unwitting inspiration, and occasional face, of the shifty and shifting tangle of alibis that goes by ‘storytelling.’”(according to Ms. Sehgal).

Will storytelling save us? Sell our products? Our companies? I have noticed that where companies used to have a tab on their websites called “about us” the more prevalent term these days is “our story.” And who doesn’t love a good story?  So, of course, we now have marketing firms who will sell you their storytelling skills. Politicians, economists, business strategists, even doctors aim to tell a good story to inspire and get allegiance from their intended audiences.

Ms. Sehgal asks the important question: What is the alternative to story? Data? Not yet, she says. She worries that stories can lie or confuse. But she also thinks that fighting fake facts with real facts will not work. She asks if perhaps plot isn’t important, perhaps fragments, “swarms” of words are what we feel and understand.

I relate to this idea of the swarm of ideas as I look at the portfolio of my projects over the past 40 years. Perhaps there is a unified plot, or maybe there are many stories: of our team, our clients and consultants, and artisans and contractors, who all share the desire for a happy ending? Do our lives depend on a good story like Scheherazade’s? Is life like a good long walk, with a beginning and end?

What swarm of words and ideas is in your story? I’d love to hear from you.