Trump's support is cratering - not because he tried to mount an insurrection, but because he failed

 I wrote an essay years ago entitled Radicalisation and the Fifth Column that threatens to undermine America from within, but though it looks prescient today, I don't think I had the faintest idea what was going to ensue once Donald Trump was elected president. That essay was about the (now very tame looking) move by Tea Party senators to use a government lockdown to stymie Obama's healthcare reforms. In it I argued that Ted Cruz, a strident voice at the time, represented a sort of radicalisation that had its roots in the Dirty Harry/Hans Solo/John McClane trope of Hollywood action men. Hollywood, I argued, has long promoted an image of a maverick lone wolf who alone can see through the corruption and ineptitude of officialdom and indeed government itself. They therefore choose which laws to follow and which to break, and in doing so are lauded as heroes. A large swathe of Americans, I argued, have become radicalised by this incessant diet of anti-establishment machismo to the extent where they regard destructive rulebreakers as more worthy of respect than the forces of law and order themselves.

Well, it seems now as if that process of radicalisation was both deeper and broader than I suspected at the time. My tone then was one of wry amusement at the quirks of a society that spent too much of its time watching movies. Ted Cruz and his like seemed a bit of a joke - an irrelevance in the brave new post-racial world that Obama's election had summoned up. How wrong could I be?

Trump's presidency, viewed from over the pond, was disturbing for two main reasons. The first (and truly terrible) reason was the substance of what he was doing - reinforcing white supremacy and brutal prejudice against immigrants and Muslims; destroying international collaborative structures; and giving aid and succour to dictators across the world. The second reason was almost as bad though. In all this time it was clear that for all his stupidity, narcissism, misogyny, ineptitude and racism, nearly half of the population of the USA liked what he was doing. And then, when he capped his four years with the most callously ignorant mismanagement of a global pandemic, the response of 74 million of his fellow Americans was to attempt to give him four more years as president.

And then the final act. An attempted insurrection that, had it not been hamstrung by its own ineptitude, could have led to Trump being installed as permanent dictator (he often promised to his rallies that he would serve 8 or maybe 12 more years). Shortly after the failed invasion of the Capitol, Trump's allies began turning against him and his popular support collapsed, to the point where (according to Pew) it now stands at a mere 29%. Leaving aside that even that figure represents near enough 90 million Americans who still reckon Trump is the man for the job, one might assume that this is evidence of the US finally coming to its senses.

Well, yes and no. It is worth remembering that the defection of Trump's allies was nowhere near immediate. Even after being shut away for their own protection whilst an unruly mob stormed the Capitol, 147 Republican lawmakers continued the attempt to defy the will of the People by voting against the certification of the electoral votes.

Since then the mood has unquestionably changed though. Ten Republicans voted to impeach and a growing number of senators are suggesting that they might even vote to convict. And in the wider population, though Trump's aggregated popularity still stands at 38% or so, it is plummeting at an unprecedented rate. One might assume that this is because of the emerging understanding of just how potentially terrifying the Capitol invasion was, and I am sure things like the death of Officer Sicknick have disgusted many. However I would argue that the main feature for Trump's falling popularity is not the realisation that he is a narcissistic sociopath (that surely was always obvious) but the fact that he is also a proven loser. 

Just for a moment imagine that the mob had seized and destroyed the electoral votes, had maybe taken some prominent Democrats and 'turncoat' Republicans hostage and had then been called off by Trump and instructed to hand their hostages over to the authorities. Imagine then that Trump had declared a state of emergency, cancelled the election results as fraudulent and instigated martial law (he has packed out the pentagon with sycophants and clearly has supporters in the armed forces, if not at the highest level).

The question is, would his popular support then have cratered? I am afraid to say that if anything it would have hardened. This would have been Trump definitively doing the thing his supporters had been praying he would - taking on the Swamp.

But his support has cratered, so why? I wrote a while back another (then tongue-in-cheek) essay, suggesting that the continued support for Trump could be explained by another Hollywood trope, the High School bully The thing is about bullies, while they reign supreme everybody wants to be on their side, but when get their comeuppance those same people turn against them. And maybe the explanation is as simple as that. For all the grand-guignol theatrics and the violence-and-hate-laden conspiracies, Trump's Great Awakening/Kraken Unleashed/Trust the Plan (other melodramatic terms are probably available) wannabe coup was a failure.

And in Hollywood, nobody likes a loser.

The narrative of conspiracy theories

 I wrote some time ago (here) about the universal nature of narrative in the ways we engage with the world. Just recently I have become aware of a striking illustration of that phenomenon. In the period after Trump's defeat in the election I (unwisely) responded to a Twitter thread about how fishy it was that Alaska and North Carolina had still not been called for Trump, when Pennsylvania and Arizona had been called for Biden.

The responses to my contribution gave me a glimpse of the dark and dangerous rabbit hole that seems to have swallowed up the large numbers of Trump supporters who are buying his 'Big Steal' conspiracy theories. Of course I knew about the prevalence of conspiracy theories in contemporary far-right 'politics' - QAnon anybody? - but it was interesting watching new theories being constructed in real time. I shan't bother with the details - something about pro-Biden states being called too early and pro-Trump states too late, so that the corrupt Lamestream Media could create a false impression of Biden having won - but what I noticed was some of the language, which people on this thread exchanged without feeling the need to expand or explain what, to outsiders, seemed very cryptic messages.

And the word that jumped out most was 'narrative', often used alone. Here is one example: "And they called Virginia with 1% reporting. Narrative." Another: "If you think that matters you haven't been paying attention. Narrative" and a third, simply: "Narrative, you cocksucker."

This got me thinking, and I suddenly realised that narrative is in fact completely central to any conspiracy theory. You see, the creators and disseminators of conspiracy theories face a fundamental problem in that they generally have little or no actual, hard evidence on which to base their claims. So what do they do? They use what in QAnon world are actually called breadcrumbs: little snippets of largely unconnected or irrelevant 'facts' that they suggest are in fact intrinsically and causally related and together reveal a massive, previously untold story.

This is precisely the way narrative works. History may be (in Alan Bennett's immortal words) "One fucking thing after another" but we simply cannot prevent ourselves connecting those things: this happened because that happened. We construct a narrative to make sense of the things, because that gives the world meaning.

But in conspiracy theories the human narrative imperative has a very powerful effect: it draws the listener in and makes them entirely complicit, and in a sense the less clear or relevant the base 'facts' of the conspiracy theory are, the more powerfully they draw people in. Why? Because it is the listener who is making the connections themselves and the listener who is, in a sense, constructing their own narrative out of them. And the more other people say, "That's ridiculous, those facts don't lead to that conclusion!" the more they can say, "you just don't understand. I can see the narrative that connects them but you can't, because you are stupid/ a Democrat/ a Remainer/ blinded by mainstream media etc etc."

In fact, any attempt to persuade a conspiracy theory victim of the absurdity of the narrative they have bought into risks itself becoming part of the same narrative: "You would say that, because you're obviously [insert appropriate insult here]." 

So how can conspiracy theories be combatted? Well, one way is simply not to pay much attention to them. To frame it, yet again, in narrative terms, the despised and rejected truth-teller who fights tirelessly against the hordes who deny his truth (and yes, it's largely a masculine image, I believe) is a heroic figure. The deluded fantasist who walks the streets shouting whilst others simply ignore him is not.

The continuing mystifying support for Trump and the hollywood trope of the High School bully

 I am sure I am not the only one who daily checks Project 538's Trump approval tracker to see whether the latest examples of the US president's stupidity, boorishness, racism, support for foreign tyrannies or attempts to subvert his own country's democracy have 'moved the dial' of the American electorate's approval of him. Only to find that they haven't.

And therein lies something of a mystery. Whilst Trump was an insurgent candidate, playing the outsider card, I sort of understood how people could choose to overlook his misogyny, crudeness, ignorance, short attention span... (I could go on) because they wanted somebody to go in there and shake things up a bit. Many Americans' lives no longer come even close to the dream they were promised, and the easiest people to blame are the (undoubtedly self-serving and out-of-touch) politicians who ply their trade within the Beltway.

Trump is no longer an insurgent, however. The big beasts in 'the swamp' are now generally his creatures (even if he spends a great deal of his time deriding and condemning them) and he is making almost no attempt nowadays to present any agenda for change. In 2016 the slogans of 'lock her up'. 'drain the swamp' and 'build the wall' might have been crude, simplistic and fundamentally meaningless, but at least they gave the illusion of an agenda for change, but this time round there isn't even a pretence.

And yet, according to opinion pollsters, at least 40% of Americans (that's 120 million people!) say that they approve of the job Donald Trump is doing and will vote to give him four more years (if not more) to carry on doing it. I could list all of the appalling, incompetent, shameful things that Trump has done or not done, said or not said, but it would make no difference. That 120 million seems to be an absolute floor, of people who (as Trump himself boasted) would carry on supporting him even if he shot somebody dead on Fifth Avenue.

So, why? Some factors are clear of course. Trump's increasingly strident dog whistles towards the overlooked white underclass no doubt have an effect, because they allow the Bob Ewells of 21st Century America to rally behind a leader who can shout their resentment from the rooftops. Another factor is the facebook-enabled siloisation that insulates people from any opinion that challenges their own. Yet another is the appallingly partisan nature of US politics that separates everything into red and blue and blinds many to anything beyond that. There have been many thousands of words written by much more knowledgeable commentators than me on these and other factors.

But still...

One hundred and twenty million people. If they stood in a line, 10 abreast, they would reach from LA to New York. All saying Donald Trump is doing a pretty good job, and we want more, thanks very much. 

Of course, one possibility is that all 120 million are racist, misogynist enablers who simply don't care about the suffering of their fellow Americans or the future of the planet, but might there not be a slightly more forgiving narrative to add into the mix? It's not that I think the well-worn traditional arguments, like those I have listed above, are wrong, it's just that they are all problematic in some way as a means of explaining such a high floor to Trump's popularity, particularly now that he is no longer an insurgent outsider. So my additional factor to consider is this: the experience that many Americans seem to share of having been bullied at High School. I don't know this first hand of course, but you can learn a lot about a society by considering its fairy tales, and in more movies than I care to admit to having watched, the villain is the jock who wields unquestioned power to intimidate and harass in the corridors of a High School.

In these fairy tales the jock is always dethroned, whether by the nerd or the cool outsider, but that is clearly wish fulfilment. In reality, jocks in US High Schools seem to benefit from a high degree of official protection, because of their financial value to the school (High School football for instance is very, very big business) and the only sensible response to their bullying, I imagine, is not to challenge them - indeed to try and get on their side.

If this is indeed the case, then it provides a ready-made reason for millions of (otherwise not vile) people to want to be with Trump rather than against him. Bullying is the very essence of his personality and he has shown many times how vindictive and cruel he can be, to the extent even of saying that 'Red' states which elect Democrats had only themselves to blame for coronavirus deaths and deserved no support.

When a bully that powerful and impregnable is standing with his acolytes in front of your locker, are you really going to tell him you don't like him very much?

The narrative of election victories

The results of the 2015 UK General Election have been described as extraordinary now more times than I can count, and everyone is scratching around for explanations as to why the pollsters got it so wrong and why two neighbouring countries with a shared heritage should have elected two such entirely different sets of political representatives- broadly, England (except for London) going Tory/UKIP and Scotland going to the left of Labour.

(One VERY important caveat here, by the way. Though Cameron's victory is being hailed as if it were virtually unanimous, his party received well under 40% of the vote and still has a majority slimmer than John Major's in the 90s. Still...)

The SNP whitewash has been categorised south of the border (and particularly by the tabloids) as a nationalist, anti-Union and even anti-Labour surge but actually it seems to have been in a sense more extraordinary than that. A country which has always been if anything more socially conservative than its neighbour has apparently swung politically to the left of the most left-wing of the UK-wide parties. The SNP is anti-Trident, anti-austerity, pro-progressive taxation and increased welfare spending and pro-immigration. The Siriza of the UK, or more akin to pre-Blair Labour than anything else. The Tories whom the English elected, meanwhile, argue for reduced taxation and the taking of a flamethrower to the Welfare State.

So how did that happen? One argument of course would be that the Scots have, en masse, moved politically to the Left whilst England (and Wales, it appears) have moved to the Right. To some extent this is no doubt true, but in a sense saying that does no more than restate the original question, with no real explanation. So why has it happened?

Well, one explanation, that is appropriate to the (vague) themes of this blog is the issue of narrative. I have argued before (here for instance) that there is a strong narrative imperative in the way we view the world. As a species we use narrative to construct and inform our view (political and otherwise) of the world, and a simple, clear narrative is more powerful than any logical argument, however clearly stated. And it seems to me that this election has shown that fact more clearly than ever, because the parties that won were the ones with the clear narratives.

First, the Tories. Like any political party facing an election it presented the electorate with a hero quest narrative and they did it very well: there was a goal (the Long Term Economic Plan), a serious danger to escape from (the nameless horrors of the global economic crisis), a villain (the Labour party, which single-handedly, recklessly and with malice aforethought created that global economic crisis), various perils to be navigated (Europe, immigration, financial perdition) and of course an element of comedy (Ed Miliband). Essentially of course there was a hero (David Cameron). I will come to the hero bit in a minute, but it is worth pointing out that there was even a mini-narrative for the election campaign itself (Lynton Crosbie's assertion that polls would not budge until a sudden last-minute swing when people realised they couldn't afford the Miliband risk) and a useful prop (the jokey note to a 'friend' left by the Labour finance minister).

The SNP had an equally strong hero quest narrative. They also had a goal (the establishment of a Scottish Shangri-La), a serious danger to escape from (austerity and the Tory dismantling of the Welfare State) and a villain (a three-headed monster, the ThatcherBlairCameron). Their unexpected, but archetypally Scottish, heroine was Nicola Sturgeon, a feisty wee woman who rose to superstar status.

The UKIP narrative started simple and direct (I have just eaten, so really don't want to spell it out) but began to lose its clarity as Farage back-pedalled from some of the more extreme crap spouted by supporters. It is maybe for that reason that, thank God, UKIP began fading in the polls and didn't achieve their breakthrough.

So what of the losers? Well, I don't think I am the first to point out that neither Labour's not the LibDem's narrative was in any way clear or comprehensible. The LibDems villain was (sort of) the coalition partner they had been in bed with for five years. The danger to be escaped was both (sort of) the same as the Tories' and (sort of) the Tories themselves. Labour's danger to be escaped was in some ways their own past in government (never a strong start...). Business was both a villain and an ally and the prop they used to counter the Tories' treasury note was both literally and metaphorically a tombstone.

(On a side note, it is quite extraordinary how Labour failed to construct a coherent narrative out of the Tories' record, with its failure to eliminate the deficit, bring down immigration or protect the NHS from top-down meddling. It is also extraordinary that they only once seemed to mention that the bogeyman economic crash was brought into existence by policies on bank deregulation that the Tories of the time condemned as not going far enough!)

The disappointing performance of the Greens was another illustration of the narrative imperative. The key moment was Nathalie Bennett's 'brain-melt' in that LBC interview. This was presented as going to the trust issue- that potential voters lost trust in her competence- but I think it was simpler than that. Her inability to recall her party's policies on social housing showed that she had quite literally lost the plot (or forgotten the narrative she was attempting to outline). The Greens have always presented a clear narrative (danger to be avoided- environmental catastrophe and villain anyone who recklessly pursues economic growth) but this time they seemed sometimes to forget themselves what it was and they paid the price.

So what of the heroes of these respective narratives? There is not much point discussing the inadequacies of Clegg and Miliband in that regard. Flawed heroes are all very well in literature, but not for politics. Miliband came across as a decent, well-intentioned geek, Clegg as an unprincipled, power-hungry wannabe, but what they had in common was the fact that both lacked an indefinable something that both Cameron and Sturgeon (for all their diagrammatic dissimilarities from each other) had in spades- self confidence. Clegg knew that the fresh promise he had held out in 2010 was tarnished beyond repair by the student fees betrayal (and more) whilst Miliband was, and no doubt still is, in some sense still the nerdy boy who used to shut himself into the library of Haverstock School every lunchtime.

So what about Cameron and Sturgeon? Well, both had one enormous thing in common: neither had anything like as much to lose as either Miliband or Clegg. Cameron had already announced he would not be standing again after this election and Sturgeon wasn't standing at all. For Sturgeon, anything even vaguely close to what the polls were predicting was always going to be a vast improvement on any previous SNP performance and for Cameron, even if he lost he could pretend that he had sacrificed himself and his political career in the greater national interest and laboured on with the politically unpopular 'tough choices' that only he was brave enough to make (sorry- had to stop for a while. I feel a bit sick).

But there is something deeper still about the nature of both of these heroes. Utterly different in almost every ways, their cultural heritage has gifted both of them a sort of fearlessness that removed the self-doubt which condemned Clegg and Miliband to oblivion. Cameron's fearlessness is born of entitlement- the utterly impervious arrogance of the public school elite, which I have discussed here for instance. This innate self-confidence was boosted by the fact that I really don't think that he (or Gideon or the rest) actually care that much. They haven't got Thatcher's passion or Blair's messianic zeal. They're just doing it all for kicks.

Sturgeon has a different sort of fearlessness. Her's is the 'fuck it, why not?' of the perennial Scottish underdog. She is an Archie Gemmill for the 21st Century, nutmegging the Dutch goalie as Scotland celebrated yet another heroic sporting failure at the 1978 World Cup. She (and all Scotland) knew that however many SNP MPs they sent to Westminster it was unlikely to make a lot of difference so they really had nothing to lose, and God, did she make the most of it.

So how important is this sort of fearlessness to elections in general? Utterly crucial, unfortunately. Thatcher had the fearlessness of the zealot while Major was racked by self-doubt and tempered by reasonableness. Blair was positively Messianic whilst Brown was clearly tortured by inner demons. Some US presidents (Reagan, George W Bush. Need I go on?) have had a fearlessness that is born of stupidity but interestingly Obama- clearly beset with self-doubt of his own when  it comes to actual, policy delivery- seemed able to either simulate or genuinely experience a sort of selfless embodiment of some higher force when contemplating the large and abstract concepts of government.

So there you go. And the implication is obvious really. If Labour wants to return to electoral success (and that is not a redundant question- Miliband often came across as terrified of the idea), then what they need to construct is not so much a coherent set of policies as a compelling narrative. And, like it or not, the primary quality they need in their leader is neither intellect nor compassion nor even political vision, but self confidence.

How you can watch a film without seeing it

Here's an odd thing. I watched Cool Hand Luke the other night and it was as if I had never seen it before. Not that I had forgotten it, just that I don't think I ever really saw it properly the first time I watched it. In my memory it was one of those 60s/70s all-American movies about a maverick hero, somewhere on the continuum between One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. I recalled two specific scenes from it- the egg-eating bet and Paul Newman singing "Plastic Jesus." Both of these I remembered as sort of absurdist and anti-heroic in the best traditions of these sorts of films- Paul Newman as the ultimately unknowable Man With No Name.

And then when I watched it again all these decades later it had become a film all about faith and the loss of faith, with an almost didactically precise relationship to the key themes and concepts of Christianity. For a start, Luke (the central character) is much exercised by his own loss of faith. That is what the scene of him singing "Plastic Jesus" is all about. He has just heard that his mother has died, and sits alone on his bunk bed with the banjo that is his only physical reminder of his home life singing a song about the absurdity of religious faith- or at least the sort of faith that means that "going ninety I ain't scary/So long as I got the Virgin Mary/Assuring me that I won't go to hell." Newman's last scene takes place in a church where he has gone to confront God, addressing him as "Old Man" and concluding that he is a "bit of a hard-ass too." It is there that he is shot and killed.

The film is not just about Luke's loss of faith either- it is about the process by which we all construct and abandon figures on who we fasten our faith. Luke is a quite explicitly Messianic figure in the film- achieving victory through physical suffering and performing a variety of miracles which turn him into an object of bemused veneration amongst the other men. Miracles? Well, yes. There is the miracle of the fight with Dragline, in which Luke wins by means of being beaten so severely and relentlessly yet refusing to give up that Dragline eventually walks away, subsequently becoming Luke's greatest disciple. There is the miracle of the poker game when Luke transforms a collection of "nothing" into the "cool hand" that gives him his name. Then there is the miracle of the road, when Luke transforms the attitude of the work gang and changes the unending task of tarring the road into a joyous celebration that makes the road (in the men's own words) disappear.

Finally of course there is the miracle of the eggs. To win a bet, Luke eats fifty hard boiled eggs. It is an intensely unpleasant physical trial, in which his stomach becomes distended and taught as a drum and he is left virtually comatose. Yet even though the effect of his actions in the short term is to deprive most of his fellow inmates of their hard earned cash it is pretty clear that this act of near-martyrdom is in a sense done for the benefit of the other men. The number fifty is hardly accidental- we are frequently reminded that there are fifty inmates in total in the block- and the image of Luke at the end is explicitly Messianic- lying on his back, his legs crossed at the ankles and his arms stretched to either side.

The film is not so much about Luke as Messiah though (whatever some presumably Christian websites would have you believe). It is about the other men's faith and loss of faith in him. From early on they see him as different to them, and particularly once he has successfully escaped (before being betrayed and recaptured) they begin to venerate him. Dragline receives a photo of Luke on the outside, with two girls, and it becomes almost a religious icon- another inmate paying Dragline an entire bottle of soda for it. When Luke returns he is exasperated by the other men's idolising of the symbol he has come to represent and tells them that the picture is a "phoney" but it makes no difference until the guards' relentless sadism eventually breaks him and he hangs onto their legs and begs for mercy.

Here we see the bitter loss of the other men's faith, symbolised by the tearing up of the iconic photo. They become dispirited and lost as Luke toadies to the guards, as if the breaking of his spirit has broken something profound in them too. Eventually Luke escapes again, and it is in the penultimate scene that the Messianic parallels become most explicit. In the aforementioned church, and as Luke is communing with his "old man" he is betrayed by Dragline (as Judas), who brings the police and prison guards to him, leading to his shooting by "the man with no eyes", an enigmatic symbol of relentless oppression. Our last sight of Luke is in the back of the prison officers' car. He is alive, but clearly not for long, and an enigmatic smile plays on his lips. And as the car pulls away the "man with no eyes" mirror sunglasses are crushed under a wheel, symbolising Luke's eventual and paradoxical victory over death itself.

The last scene though is, in a sense, the most telling. Here Dragline is regaling other inmates with an account of Luke's life and death and here, it is clear, the process of mythologising him reaches its conclusion. Lukehas been transformed in death from a fellow-inmate to a symbol of death and resurrection and we are left, thanks to Dragline, with a series of still images of the strange and distant smile that defines his character throughout the movie.

So why didn't see all this the first time I watched the movie? It seems almost painfully obvious now, but maybe I just wasn't experienced enough at stepping back from a story and seeing it in the light of this sort of symbolism. The fact is I enjoyed it then- recommended it to friends and remembered the lyrics of the Plastic Jesus song almost perfectly. So what does that show?well maybe that it is indeed perfectly possible to watch and enjoy a film without really seeing it.

The narrative imperative

The other day I was walking down Green Lanes when I passed a young woman pushing a buggy, a mobile phone held to her ear. She was speaking so loudly into it that it was impossible not to overhear the following:

Woman (into phone): I don't care what he says. I'm not dropping the charges.
she puts the phone away into her handbag and, looking around, speaks to no one in particular
Fucking bitch.
She bends over the buggy and speaks to the child in it
Don't worry sweetie. Mummy's alright now.

Immediately I knew. She was a victim of domestic violence. The person on the other end of the phone was a friend or relative of the perpetrator, seeking either to pass on his tearful apologies or to threaten her into taking no further action. However she was standing firm, envisaging a new life for her and her baby, freed from the man who had made her life hell.

Or maybe not. Maybe the "charges" were related to something else entirely and the "Mummy's alright now" was a simple reference to the fact that she had had a cold this morning but was recovering. The point is though that out of this tiny snippet of one side of a conversation my mind had constructed an entire narrative, with an immediacy and force that changed the way I saw the woman and her child.

Which set me thinking about what I have called the narrative imperative: the seemingly unstoppable drive in our minds to construct narratives out of everything we see and hear. We are at it all the time, because narrative is the means by which we draw together strands of observation and memory and use them to predict the future.

Some narratives are simple and entirely predictable: when a cricket ball soars into the air our mind immediately constructs its path as a narrative that allows us to predict where the final scene will occur and position ourselves in an appropriate position to be there. However our mind goes further than that and even as we run our mind is constructing one of two denouements- either the tragicomic one where our hands transform into unwieldy flippers that flap aimlessly at the flying projectile or the heroic one where our dive is perfectly timed and our fingers unerringly clutch the ball to our chests. And in constructing that narrative our brains determine its progress.

Other narratives are more complex and less linear, but I do not believe it is any accident that we use the verb "read" for our analysis of complex situations. So a driver approaching a busy junction "reads" the traffic by constructing a series of interconnected narratives: will that lorry turn left? And will that car overtake it? And what about that motorbike, weaving through the line of vehicles? A police officer similarly "reads" the situation outside a night club at 3 am. Is that group of lads going to wander off drunkenly down the street or are they going to respond to the taunts of that other group? And if they do, is one of them (the one who's putting his hand inside his coat) going to produce a knife?

This process of reading and constructing narratives even applies to static images. When we see an effective piece of photo-journalism we cannot help but construct a narrative that puts that person in that place, and that expression on his/her face. And this applies even to apparently abstract still images. To take a slightly bizarre example electricians use the language of narrative to "read" circuit diagrams: "See, the power comes in here, then that junction box sends it down that spur..." etc. Non physicists use verbs such as "flow" to describe how current works, not because it is a realistic description of what appears to happen (everything happens effectively simultaneously in electrical circuits) but because it allows us to construct a narrative that makes the circuit comprehensible. Film makers understand this. It is why in disaster and action movies lights go off in a sequence rather than instantaneously together when the big explosion goes off.

Perhaps the most intriguingly minimalist expression of our minds' ability to construct narrative is the indie platform game Thomas Was Alone. I have not played it, but the consensus is that its narrative is compelling and imbued with sadness. It has been described as "funny and heartfelt" and its central character as "charming". A central character which, like all its other characters, is a monochrome rectangle.

So why is this? It seems to me that a large part of our conscious mind is devoted to pulling together strands from everything we see and hear around us and combining that mass of data with stuff plucked from our memories in order to construct narratives that help us make sense of the world. I am quite sure that this predates the development of the human brain (how else does a prey species perceive something as a potential threat, or a predator stalk its prey?) but has expanded massively with our brains' increased capacity. So unbeknownst to us, our unconscious mind is constantly constructing narratives, to the point that it is these narratives that help us understand everything around us.

So of what relevance does this have for literature? It is of course central. Narrative is what holds almost all literature together. Even lyrical poetry has a narrative of sorts and it is a rare haiku that does not, for all its often static depiction of a single experience, imply a narrative. Here's a rather sweet one, picked at random:
the first cold shower
even the monkey seems to want
a little coat of straw

In more obviously narrative forms this driving imperative in all of our brains allows authors to imply narratives, often in the subtlest of ways, trusting to the reader to fill in the gaps. So in Browning's My Last Duchess the final act of this chilling story of autocratic power is stated simply in the words:
"This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together."
Out of context it might be possible to misunderstand these lines but by the time we get there in the poem our mind needs no more information than this to construct the narrative of the Duke's cold-blooded murder of his first wife.

An even better example is Alan Bennett's Talking Heads monologues. I unfortunately do not have the text but remember one called Soldiering On. This is the story of a recently widowed woman who is being slowly scammed of her inheritance by her son and whose daughter was sexually abused by her late husband. Except that she does not tell us any of that, and (it being a monologue) neither does anyone else. So how do we know? Because, like it or not, our minds cannot help constructing narratives, in exactly the way I did when I overheard the young woman with the buggy.