books, stories work as both entertainment and a kind of shopping mall of the self. ‘Culture provides each person with an extensive menu of stories about how to live,’ writes McAdams, ‘and each of us chooses from the menu.’ We build our sense of who we are by ‘appropriating stories from culture’. Turning our lives into myth, he writes, ‘is what adulthood is all about’. Our story gives our life meaning and purpose. It distracts us from the chaos and hopelessness and dread of the truth.
