I had sex with the Incredible Hulk (and other thoughts on autobiographical fiction)
What is fiction and what is nonfiction? And did that part in the story really happen or did I fictionalize it? And can I write the thing that really happened? ‘Cause even if it’s totally interesting and a kick ass story, people who were there might read it and get mad! What if they yell at me? What if I hurt someone’s feelings? And if I’m writing nonfiction should I include all those parts that totally happened even if they’re boring? And should I change names? And can I say it’s the truth even if it’s not really the truth, it’s really the emotional truth, which still is the truth but a different sort of truth than they mean when they say truth? And what is truth? And do I have to have a pre-defined philosophical outlook on those issues or at the very least read a whole bunch of philosophical texts about these issues before I can become a writer? Of fiction? And do I have to say I’m a writer of fiction or a writer of nonfiction and what is the difference and can I cross genres? And if someone reads my stuff and asks, “Hey, that part where the girl drinks cough medicine and falls down the stairs, did that really happen?” can I be all cryptic and say, “Art is a mysterious vice,” or all emotional and say, “How can you even ASK me that!” or all offended and say, “Would you ask such things of Proust?” and then launch into a really long monologue about Proust’s actual relationship with Albertine and what was fictionalized and what wasn’t, followed by lightning-fast name dropping of every writer I can think of who used their real lives in their stories which would probably be, like, all of them. Then you’ve got the flip-side of all that—the writers of nonfiction who fictionalize their stuff. For example, Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair. Were these guys just writing fiction? What’s the difference between that and lying? Does it have to do with the writing itself, or just how it's marketed? And how does what's going on with A Million Little Pieces fit into all that? (although we can't automatically assume he's guilty, 'cause it just happened so the jury’s still out).
I wonder: I know there's a specific ethical code that journalists are held to. Do writers of fiction also have a responsibility to their readers? Of what sort? And what about that blurry place between those two extremes, the place where creative nonfiction sits?
Rhetorical questions are fun ‘cause you can spend a lot of time in bars (or on blogs) discussing them, often with people you don’t know, who are very drunk and happen to overhear your conversation and want to throw in their two cents. Also: they're good subject matter for essays and panel discussions. Also: they're great for procrastination because they suck up loads of time that you could be spending actually writing, and, at the end of the day, there aren’t any concrete answers, so you can come back tomorrow and keep on discussing and considering and contemplating.
In the meantime, I’m going to go write a story about what happened to me yesterday: I drank too much cough medicine and fell down the stairs.
Comments
I like this latest entry, Megan. And yeah, an author really can chew this over while avoiding the act of writing.
The only rule I would like to see followed is this: that non-fiction writers don't lie. Just like journalists should stick to the facts, so should memoirists, biographers and historians.
Fiction writers on the other hand, have the freedom to create, lie, embelish, or be excruciatingly honest. Sometimes, truth is stranger than fiction and makes for a good scene or story. But these are discrete moments in time that I try to capture for myself; and perhaps one day, my readers.
The flipside of that equasion is this:
A liar in your novel can provide the conflicting spice to flavor the entire book. And the more outrageous, the better. Is she/he a compulsive liar who is also smarter than the protagonist? Do they tell amazing stories? Maybe he/she only lies some of the time and the protagonist has to find out what is true. As a society, we are constantly 'filtering' from the media, our friends, our government, even our history.
DaVinci plays upon this to great advantage. We know we've been lied to and it's a deep psychological impulse to seek out the truth.
That's my advice to the best new authors of 2006 or 07. Have at least one of your characters lie some of the time. Even if you're an honest Abe. Some of your characters shouldn't be.
Posted by: Julie | January 10, 2006 2:29 PM
Ohhh, I am going to totally disagree with Julie on "memoirists" should not lie...bascially we are all lying to some extent when we write in general. There is no way in hell we can remember every last detail that happened in a moment...we can try...we can attempt, but the truth of the matter is we are far beyond that moment that we are memoir/non-fictioning about so our details of that moment will change. Given, we shouldn't invent things when we are telling non-fiction(I mean, it would be funny if someone was writing a biography about George Washington and instead of talking about Martha he talks about how Mr. George was gay and had many boyfriends and liked Madonna--take that America--tangent). Anyway, writers are all liars in their own right. They are telling what happened to the best of thier memories--and if we need to tweak things to get the emotional aspect of the human heart going, than so be it...I don't care if Frey didn't go to jail for three months or for a day--I care that he went. I care that he is human. I care that he is living a life that I would/will never lead but had the balls to tell me something about it--whether every detail is real or not, he stilled changed my view on life/humans/struggle...and, really, isn't that what writing is all about?
Posted by: Byron | January 10, 2006 3:19 PM
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0104061jamesfrey1.html
This would probably interest you.
Posted by: Ashley Pflaumer | January 10, 2006 6:01 PM
Here -- you don't have to research all of them, somebody already did it for you!
http://www.hanasiana.com/archives/001096.html
Posted by: Christopher | January 10, 2006 10:46 PM
i think if you call it fiction (and you should if it is) then all bets are off.
so say if you're writing a biography of someone else, not your place to massage the facts, eh?
but writing one of yourself? perhaps best to label it "this is MY truth about what happened to me" so when you find out your memory of one afternoon in jail suddenly stretched to three months when you wrote about it, well, it would still be a truth to you. and maybe people wouldn't get so bent out of shape about it. :)
that said, i wasn't on the james frey bandwagon anyway. me no do nonfiction. or most of the time anyway.
Posted by: carolyn | January 11, 2006 8:50 AM
I'm didactic as hell when it comes to the truth, which made for some really ugly philosophy classes. Anyway, Byron, I think you're mistaken in saying that all writers are liars. There is a difference between uttering an untruth and lying, because lying imputes an intent to deceive. To lie, you want to have to make someone believe something that isn't true. But I can think of many untruths I've uttered where I was just mistaken.
The trouble with Frey is that he claimed (and still claims) to use no deceit, and the reason this is a big deal is because of the amount of trust people put into his promises that this was the truth. The whole drama of his book is that it (allegedly) happened to a real person who was able to emerge from such a life and become a functioning human being. Without those circumstances being real, the drama disappears.
To my mind, much of the blame lies with Doubleday, who took his novel submission and told him to go home and make it nonfiction. It's easy to fictionalize the real--just add a few details that didn't happen and voila. But to nonfictionalize the fake, that takes some sort of superhero's skill set. No wonder there's fake stuff in the book, it was an impossible task. All he had to do was admit to some embellishments at the outset, and none of this would have happened.
Posted by: Jonny Mess | January 11, 2006 4:25 PM
Well said, Carolyn. I wasn't on the Frey bandwagon either, but his book had an interesting cover, a child's hand covered in colorful sprinkles.
Is it just me or does it seem like a lot of our literary lights are losing some of their vibrance? I mean, look at Jane Smiley, writing a book on 13 ways of looking at a novel. Is she running out of story ideas? Then there's Salman Rushdie. I confess that I've never read him and his last book, Shalimar the Clown, fails to inspire my interest. The very title sounds repulsively boring. Even Margaret Atwood's latest books fail to interest me. Has anyone read Oryx and Crake?
I think this is our call to the keyboard, writers. Those voracious readers must be fed!
Posted by: Julie | January 11, 2006 5:43 PM
by the way, Megan, are you okay since you took that fall?
Posted by: Julie | January 11, 2006 6:38 PM
I've read Oryx and Crake. I'm a Margaret Atwood junkie. It was good, a little sci-fi-ish, a little possibilities-of-the-future-ish.
Part of the problem is that publishers WANT non-fiction. Readers want non-fiction. It's part of this whole stupid "reality" show bandwagon we're all being dragged by. What viewers of these reality shows don't seem to realize is that much of what they're watching is either scripted or edited to maximize the drama. And creative non-fiction should be given the same license. I agree that Frey could have avoided all of this from the beginning by stating what should have been the obvious-that he embellished a little.
Readers want to believe that what they are reading is true, whether or not what they're reading is fiction.
There's my two cents, for whatever it's worth. Oh, it's worth two cents! I think I got up too early today.
Oh, and Megan? I've done gone and tagged you, my friend. You must write five weird things about yourself and tag five other people to do the same. See my blog for the details. You have my explicitly stated permission to pretend you don't know what I'm talking about and to just blow it off entirely.
Posted by: Viki | January 14, 2006 8:26 AM
Just came across this "news" story this morning in the Trib.
What's worse? That a guy wrote a book full of fabrications and called it truth, or someone trying to sue him for consumer fraud?
I hope my attempt at inserting a link in comments works.
Chicagoan sues James Frey for consumer fraud
Posted by: Viki | January 16, 2006 11:45 AM