The hero at the end of the book

On the Stories Scientists Tell, Ursula Le Guin, and the Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction

“What will be your next big splash?”

It was an expected question from a committee hoping to hire a senior biologist, but I found myself unable to answer the way I knew I should.

They were looking for a hire that would elevate the reputation of their already prestigious research institute, and this was my chance to show that I was that person. But I couldn’t do it. I was just so tired of posturing, of pretending that researchers have control over the results of our experiments, of taking credit for communal work. I didn’t want to spin our research to sound more relevant or important, to engage in what we called “wanking” in grad school. I didn’t want to

So I answered honestly, knowing even as I did so that I was dooming my candidacy.

“I don’t really operate that way,” I explained. I’d talked about the many directions our research could go, and it was a long list. “I work collaboratively with the people in my lab to select projects that they find intriguing, or that help them develop a skill they need, or that have a timeline that fits their other goals. There are so many interesting questions out there that we always find something interesting to ask.”

This was a truthful response, but it was not a winning one. The committee members looked away from my face, down at their notes. They did not want this answer, so vague and undefined. They wanted a plot, a narrative, a story, a forcefully thrown spear. They wanted me to cast myself as the hero of my lab, so that they could see me as another hero of their institute.

Ursula Le Guin and the Carrier Bag of Fiction

As I mentioned in my last newsletter about narrative shapes, I have developed an aversion to scientific hero stories. In that post’s discussion section, fellow recovering academic Jenn Zuko suggested that I look at Ursula Le Guin’s piece “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction”, and I am so glad that she did!

In this masterfully written piece, Le Guin uses the hunter/gatherer dichotomy of anthropology as a lens through which to explore storytelling. She proposes that the spear story, the one about the hero who must kill someone or something, has dominated our imaginations for too long. Le Guin argues that the story of the basket or net or carrier bag has been neglected:

“We’ve heard it, we’ve all heard about all the sticks and spears and swords, the things to bash and poke and hit with, the long, hard things, but we have not heard about the thing to put things in, the container for the thing contained. That is a new story. That is news.” —U. Le Guin

Could the stories we tell about science be more of a carrier bag and less of a spear?

Scientists love spear stories. In our seminars and cover letters and fellowship applications, we cast ourselves as heroes on a quest—slaying the knowledge gap, passing the test of new techniques, battling other scientists for supremacy. The story of discovering the structure of DNA is written this way. The story of discovering and developing CRISPR gene editing is written this way. The story of developing the COVID vaccine is written this way.

Those are famous examples, but I think we tend to see the head of any lab as a hero in ways that are untrue and unhealthy. Yes, the leader of the lab is responsible for setting the stage, for turning weird ideas into testable hypotheses, for making larger connections. They do important intellectual work. But they are not the only ones contributing, and, if they are honest researchers, they do not know what will be a “splash” until the data has been collected and analyzed.

I mean, I do get it—it’s easy to empathize with a hero story about someone else. And many of these stories really, truly do have heroes.

But there’s so many OTHER stories we could tell. What if nature was the hero, instead of the scientist? Or, what if the story of scientific discovery was the story of gathering, of folks exploring the experimental wilderness, collecting observations and data and seeing what happens when they are put into the same carrier bag? What if our carrier bags could hold negative results and confusing data and that one observation that contradicts our pet theory—and that was okay? And what if what mattered wasn’t what you killed, what you think you’ll kill tomorrow, but what you are able to hold and examine and consider with honesty and insight?

When you don’t want to be the hero anymore

“The Hero has decreed through his mouthpieces the Lawgivers, first, that the proper shape of the narrative is that of the arrow or spear, starting here and going straight there and THOK! hitting its mark (which drops dead); second, that the central concern of narrative, including the novel, is conflict; and third, that the story isn’t any good if he isn’t in it.” —U. Le Guin

To be clear, I didn’t always think this way. In fact, I was pretty good at telling a hero story about myself, good enough to get a tenure track position, tenure, an outside offer, and funding from that “people not projects” foundation. And to be frank, I liked thinking of myself in this way; it fed my ego as much as it served me in my career.

But as I grew older and more successful, and as I was able to be more honest with myself about what contributed to that success, I couldn’t cast myself as a hero anymore. I wasn’t out to slay dragons or make splashes. I was out to understand plants a little better, and help some young scientists move forward in their careers. Sometimes we did get a big splash—and that was fun, I’m not going to lie. But most often it was more of a drip than a splash, just learning one more fact, gathering a bit more data, analyzing things a little differently, letting a student ask something they wanted to know the answer to.

It was a good way of doing things—both for my mental health and I think for that of my lab members as well— but it didn’t translate into opportunity for me. Instead, refusing to be a hero came across as failing to have a vision, as lacking scientific leadership. No matter that we had a solid record of discovery and publication and grants, no matter the institute’s stated focus on training, no matter the egregiously low number of senior women in the department I was interviewing with—when I couldn’t participate in the hero’s story, I was no longer desirable.

The irony of all of this

“If it is a human thing to do to put something you want, because it’s useful, edible, or beautiful, into a bag, or a basket, or a bit of rolled bark or leaf, or a net woven of your own hair, or what have you, and then take it home with you, home being another, larger kind of pouch or bag, a container for people, and then later on you take it out and eat it or share it or store it up for winter in a solider container or put it in the medicine bundle or the shrine or the museum, the holy place, the area that contains what is sacred, and then next day you probably do much the same again — if to do that is human, if that’s what it takes, then I am a human being after all. Fully, freely, gladly, for the first time. “ —U. Le Guin

It has probably not escaped you that, despite saying that I don’t like hero stories, I’ve cast myself as the hero in this essay! Look at me, standing up for what’s right and good, marching out of academia on principle, killing the institution with my sharp, pointy words! I know that’s how I’ve written this piece, and many pieces before it, but it is absolutely not the story I want to tell. It’s not the way I see my experience in academia, or leaving it, or life outside of it. But it’s going to take more writing skill and creativity than I have (yet) to tell my story honestly and differently.

I’m feeling hopeful, though. Many of the ways I’m learning to think about writing—weaving, braiding, constructing—also describe old ways of making containers. If I can grow to see my writing as a mason jar, then I can shake things and find what rises to the top. Or I can dig down into the bottom corner of my writing tote bag, where the old gum wrappers and wadded up covid masks are, to discover what else is down there. I can ask how ingredients in each essay speak to each other, how they speak to me, and find out if they speak to others.

How beautiful, too, that I don’t even need to be a collector; I can be a thing that is collected. Here in our hillside home, I am gathered by the mountains, hemmed in by sheets of rain, protected by towering evergreens and bounded by ferns. Held by the cupped hands of the Pacific Northwest, I don’t need to be a hero or a writer, a hunter or a gatherer, to make a big splash or even a little one. I don’t need to be the main character of any narrative. I can just be.

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Discussion Section

• What do you think is the reason for our hero obsession in academics? Is this just the way people are built, or is it something about the culture that could be changed?

• Any other narrative shapes or metaphors? A commenter reminded me of John McFee’s wonderful writing about writing, and all the diagrams he used to organize his stories.