SOME ISSUES AND PROBLEMS IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF SELF-NARRATIVES

OUT OF REPEATED ADVENTURES

The biographical aspect of life is not coterminous with the biological. Narrative constructions are the socially derived and expressed product of repeated adventures and are laid over a biological life progression that often extends beyond its storied span. Obviously, this is a social problem of increasing significance in the United States, where a growing proportion of the population enounters retirement while in possession of full physical vigor. Kurt Vonnegut states the problem nicely: “If a person survives an ordinary span of sixty years or more, there is every chance that his or her life as a shapely story has ended and all that remains to be experienced is epilogue. Life is not over, but the story is” (1982, p. 208). The problem of one’s life story being prematurely over is particularly pronounced for the athlete. Two stanzas from Housman’s “A Shropshire Lad” will illustrate the phenomenon:

The time you won your town the race We chaired you through the market-place; Man and boy stood cheering by,

Now you will not swell the rout Of lads that wore their honors out, Runners whom renown outran And the name died before the man.

The problem with athletic fame is that it often sets impossibly high standards for developing the rest of the story of one’s life; indeed such a standard can only with great difficulty be sustained through the period of young adulthood. As matters stand, many young lives suffer the brutal, definitive, and unanswerable fate of “not making the cut,” of not seeing their names on the list taped to the locker room door and thus being consigned to the sidelines, or worse. Difficult as this can be, things become more difficult still for the athlete who has survived many cuts and has even achieved stardom on the local teams; for the day will inevitably come, and it will not be long delayed, when the local star will find that the competition is too tough and retirement is the only option. Even for the greatest of professional sports stars, age or injury or a combination of both will bring about an end to the active athletic career.

The image of vulnerability is apt, for the athlete retiring after a long and successful career is often ill-prepared to meet the challenges of continuing to structure a life story. After all, an admiring public has largely ceased to be interested in the day-to-day activities of the retired athlete. The wise athlete will be prepared for the transition, with recourse to family and occupational preparation that offers entry into a sustaining and sustainable life story. But because the demands of time and attention are so great for high level athletic performance, it is more commonly than not the case that financial, educational, occupational, and familial preparations for assuming a post-athletic life will have been slighted. The failures in retirement are more common than the successes, particularly in sports such as boxing, where educational background is very commonly minimal. The typical dramatic narrative progression is that of tragedy. (See Michener, 1976, for a number of case histories illustrating this point.)

It is possible to overestimate the traumatic effect of athletic retirement, for with a minimum of prudence, the athlete will be reasonably secure financially; and there are, after all, records. Athletic records comprise a kind of mnemonic for revivifying and improving the past. The notion of “living on one’s laurels” is not altogether absurd, for records of past accomplishment can serve as a kind of narrative capital which can be

drawn upon again and again. The ex-baseball star who opens a package store or restaurant emblazoned with his name is borrowing on that capital, but it is perhaps a kind of borrowing that need never be repaid.

The cash value of adventures, after all, is only partly enjoyed at the time of their occurring or being suffered, but realizes itself later as the survived adventure becomes the stuff for enriching one’s story. Travel to remote and foreign places is partly done for the intrinsic pleasure of beholding the strange and unfamiliar. But without the possibility of redeeming the travel by showing photographs and souvenirs, and telling stories to interested friends of how it was – without these possibilities the traveler is cheated of the major value that can be realized from the trip.

Stories, of course, are often improved in the retelling. Eclea Bosi (1979) remarks on the pleasure with which old people she interviewed regarded their youth. Bosi notes that periods of childhood were often objectively characterized by poverty, deprivation, limitations of freedom, and sickness. And yet the old person often views such a miserable childhood with great pleasure and warm nostalgia. Bosi remarks that the reason for this historical foreshortening has to do with the character of youthful perceptions of the world – perceptions that are fresh and full of adventure. No matter how hard the external conditions, the playful gathering in of fresh perceptions of the world comprise essential features – the fundaments – of the life story as it is to develop. Because the role of early remembered experience is necessarily constructive in this sense – even if the experience itself was negative – it is carried forward into the present as something valuable.

The memory of past adventures is not a faithful transcript of the past, since the memory-record serves a constructive purpose. Even so, the keeping of formal and exact records in modern sports has a very important function, for in this fashion comparative possibilities are afforded which greatly enrich the meaning or significance of present accomplishments. Record and history keeping in sports is a modern phenomenon – basically restricted to the twentieth century (Guttmann, 1978). We cannot compare the performance of today’s runners or swimmers with those of ancient times, but we can make direct comparisons that go back 60 years or so. In baseball, the keeping of records reaches manic proportions, and there is an avid interest in the most arcane statistical data; playing with this information becomes itself a sustaining adventure for groups of afficionados (Angell, 1977).

Similarly, horse players are given an overrich supply of information in the standard racing form. For the adept horse player, it is truly

fascinating to study the myriad details of past performances of all the horses in a race. The 20 minutes between races seems to the neophyte an eternity, while to the experienced player the whole time is filled with study: hardly enough time to produce a reasoned prognostication and get down a bet. The reconstructions offered by horse players after the race are creative narrative refinements, for the player will typically report having been led away from the correct pick in the last race only at the last minute, having been beguiled by some quirk or whim to follow a loser. Even losers have satisfying stories to tell about their day’s adventure. Over the long term, the dedicated horse player develops a scholarly erudition for the chosen subject, and the narratives are densely packed (Herman, 1976).

Narrative enrichment occurs both retrospectively and vicariously. Retrospectively, one revises and selects and orders details in such a way as to create self-narratives that are coherent and satisfying and which will serve as justifications of one’s present condition and situation. The autobiographer must describe a story line that somehow or other concludes and coincides just exactly with the known present. Vicarious narrative enrichment is accomplished by the act of identifying with or devoting attention to the myriad adventures occurring or being invented in the world around us. There are sports events, novels, opportunities to gossip with friends, plays and films to attend, and here and there are famous people who sometimes allow themselves to be touched. These are common varieties of vicarious narrative enrichment.

The possibility of retrospective narrative enrichment makes understandable a range of adventurous activities that are otherwise puzzling. Sir Edmund Hillary is said to have responded to a question about why he climbed Mt. Everest with the famous retort, “Because it was there.” But he might have replied, somewhat more satisfactorily I think, “Because you are here and are asking the question.” Imagine how few mountains would be climbed if the story of climbing the mountain could be told to no one, and if memory could not somehow contrive to select and keep positively valued adventures and to delete or evaluatively transform the unpleasant adventure, for there is a lot of pain and hardship in climbing. An unpleasant episode is suffered, and in time is converted into a diverting tale, as it is selectively revised, burnished, and served up for the dilectation of self and others. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales are truly delicious. That their trek could have been thus distilled into pleasure would doubtless have astonished the original pilgrims who were the subjects of the tales.2