The transformative power of storytelling

Storytelling is a noble art, and I guess I should think so. In one way or another, I’ve been chasing stories my entire working life in a never-ending effort to discover the most effective way to tell them.

At UNT Health Science Center, where I ended up after almost 40 years in the newspaper business, the president calls my team his “storytellers.” I can’t think of a higher compliment he could have paid us.

Even before I made a living by finding and telling stories, I sought them diligently as a kid, tracking many of them down at the Howard County Library in Big Spring. I devoured the entire Hardy Boys series – following Joe and Frank and their buddy Chet as they hopped in their jalopy and pursued criminals all over the countryside.

Then I moved to the science fiction section – soaring to the stars and traveling back in time to roam with the dinosaurs – and on to countless other books that carried me away from the dull, dusty streets of West Texas and took me around the world and beyond.

I was particularly entranced by the tales of Robert E. Howard, an author of fantasy stories set in a mythical time and place. If the name isn’t familiar, his most famous character probably is – Conan the Barbarian.

Howard lived most of his life in Cross Plains, Texas, only a few miles from where I was born. He, too, was intoxicated by stories – stories of his own making that took him out of Cross Plains, a tiny dot on the map peopled by peanut farmers and tradesmen, and took him to the ancient land of Cimmeria. There, Conan, a fearless warrior stout of heart and handy with a blade, fought wizards, defeated armies single-handedly and rescued half-clad slave girls.

What Howard’s racy novels were doing on the staid and sanitized bookshelves of Howard County Library, I’ll never know. But I found them and spent a delightful summer with my head buried in their gory, mystical and sexy pages.

As I grew older, my taste in literature matured. By 13, my two favorite authors were Ernest Hemingway and Leon Uris, the latter a best-selling author in the 1950s, '60s and '70s of such novels as Exodus, Armageddon and Battle Cry. I decided I wanted to be a writer like them, to tell stories like they did, stories that would mesmerize readers like their stories did me.

When I discovered both had worked for newspapers before becoming authors, that settled things. I would be a newspaper man, learn the writing trade like my heroes and eventually become a novelist.

As a young reporter, I ran across a book that had a profound impact on my life and my world view.  During a frenzied 72-hour reading marathon, I consumed Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men, an exquisitely told tale about the corrosive lure of power, the inescapable burden of guilt and the soothing balm of love.

Great literature can change the course of our lives, and great stories can teach us lessons we carry with us forever. So it was with Warren’s magnificent opus and me. It taught me the world is a messy, complicated place, and I began to question my childish notion that it divided neatly into clear-cut issues of black and white. After reading of Jack Burden's final decision to "go into the convulsion of the world," I would never look at life the same way again. The boy had become the man.

Some years ago, I received additional insight into the power of storytelling. During one of my trips to Mexico City as the Dallas Morning News’ international editor, I came across a photograph in a weekend street market not far from the DMN bureau there.

It shows a Mexican farmer leaning on the wall of his home, his saddled horse standing ready beside him. In the mid-distance, a wisp of smoke rises from a mountaintop.

It’s a striking photo, very atmospheric, full of shadow and mystery. The farmer stares pensively ahead, his arms crossed, his mood impenetrable.

In some ways, it’s a stereotypical image of Mexico, from the battered sombrero on the farmer’s head to the long serape in which he’s wrapped. But it also demands explanation and illumination. I stood looking at it for a long while before moving to the next artisan’s stall.

But I couldn’t get the photograph out of my head. I turned back and studied it for minutes more. The photographer, a distinguished man in his 70s, white hair swept back from his forehead, watched without comment as I peered intently at the photo and, again, moved on.

On my third pass, he rose from his chair and approached me.

“I think perhaps I should tell you a story,” he said in perfect English.

“He is waiting for his wife. Soon they will leave their home for safety. Because you see, the smoking mountain is a volcano that erupted back in the 1940s in a cornfield in Michoacan. In less than a week, the man’s home and fields will be covered in lava forever.”

The photographer had read me correctly. I was captivated and enthralled by the image, but it took the story attached to it to close the deal. The photograph now hangs in a front room of my home, above the stuffed leather chair where I do most of my reading.

Stories, you see, are important. They are vital. They bring meaning and offer context to the world. Oregon author Brian Doyle said they “are ways to jazz your life – and maybe that shoves us a little closer toward light.”

In my current job, we look for stories that illustrate the important work we do at the Health Science Center and for stories that demonstrate how deeply invested we are in the Fort Worth community.

It’s true that we concentrate on stories that celebrate our successes rather than dwell on our failures. But we’re governed by the conviction that we craft a stronger, more compelling message if we employ the allure of good story-telling, rather than a rah-rah, strongly promotional approach.

At a recent conference I attended in Seattle, where editors of university publications from across the country gathered, one of the main messages was about the effectiveness of story-telling. The emphasis was on finding good stories and telling them in the most effective way. Marketing and promotion rarely came up.

During the meeting, tributes were offered up to Doyle, longtime editor of the University of Portland’s Portland Magazine. A regular at the annual gatherings, he died last year of cancer.

 “I am a storycatcher,” he once said, “charged with finding stories that matter, stories about who we are at our best, who we might still be, because without stories we’re only mammals with weapons.”