Obligitory Truth

Here's another essay. I was given the task of determining whether or not a memoirist is entitled to take creative license with their memoir. Hope you enjoy.

Obligatory Truth

When someone purchases, rents, or steals a book they are looking for something, something they can’t find in their own life. If they purchase a fantasy book, they want to escape and be taken to a different time and place. If they purchase a memoir they are longing to look into someone else’s life. They want to see the kind of experiences they’ve had and how those experiences have effected or even changed the author. Certain assumptions are made by the reader when they come to a book, whether it be fact or fiction. Readers of fantasy know they are not reading reality and therefore give the author license to create otherworldly and even unrealistic stories. Readers of memoir come to the book expecting to be drawn into a person’s life experiences and that those same experiences actually happened. It is memoirists’ duty and obligation to honor the reader’s expectations by telling the truth and refraining from composing or lying about aspects of their writing.

This argument, like every argument has two sides. The first side is justice, truth, and integrity -- a journalistic approach. The second side is art, ideas, and meaning -- a poetic approach. Authors have a choice to make about how they write their memoirs. They must decide which will take precedence, the story or the meaning of the story. Helen Epstein claims, “Because it is so strongly rooted in the specifics of time and place, memoir depends as much on accurate rendition of facts as on the writer’s intellectual and emotional honesty” (“As Best”). The author is forced by the genre, a genre they chose to write, a genre with borders and definition, to not only tell the story but make an emotional connection with the reader. The author must take a journalistic approach to the story to come up with the poetic meaning for the reader. If the foundation of the poetic meaning is false, the story fails and the reader is left betrayed.

Betrayal is avoided when truth is told. Vivian Gornick, the author of The Situation and the Story, disagrees when she writes, “What happened to the writer is not what matters; what matters is the large sense that the writer is able to make of what happened” (91). Unfortunately, readers don’t come to a memoir knowing nor expecting that. Gornick has first hand experience with this issue when in 2003 she admitted to composing characters, events and dialogue for her memoir Fierce Attachments. She defends her actions in an interview by saying, “This is a genre that requires a more educated readership. A memoir is a composition” (qtd. in Beer). Must a reader be educated to determine fact versus fiction? The problem is not with the reader’s education level or IQ but rather the reader’s expectations. If the reader expected fictional writing from the memoirists there wouldn’t be any discussion, but that is not why readers flock to memoirs, they come for truth. Readers read memoir because they long for someone’s real life experiences, and if those real life experiences are fiction, the rug has been torn out from under them.

The question is raised, why would an author want to do this? Why would an author purposely invent scenes, or characters in a memoir? Scott Eyman proposes, “Nobody wants to read the fourth book about the father who’s a drunk and the mother who can’t get off the couch, so the ante has to be upped. Before you know it, mom and dad are not just alcoholics, they’re molesting the children, then worshipping Satan” (“It’s My Story”). There certainly is nothing new under the sun in our day. Authors are retelling the same stories and are tempted for the sake of narrative and excitement to embellish a little here and fabricate a little there. It may make for a great read but its not a memoir, its not truth. Gornick writes, “The ability to make us believe that we know who is speaking is the trustworthy narrator achieved” (17). She is dead on. We can only believe the memoirist by what they have written in their book. The minute it is discovered that facts have been embellished and events contorted the memoirist’s hopes of being believable are dashed. Gornick violates her own idea when she composes and invents aspects of her memoir.

Another author that has garnered much ridicule for falsifying events in his memoir is James Frey, who wrote A Million Little Pieces, a story about his recovery from a life of crime, drugs and alcohol. Where Gornick composed characters and dialogue, Frey completely lied. When being interviewed on the Larry King Live show, Frey defended himself, “The book is 432 pages long. The total page count of disputed events is 18, which is less than five percent of the total book” (“James Frey”). His defense has holes to say the least. If its so little of the book, why embellish any of it? Such a miniscule portion of the book can’t change too much of the narrative, so why be dishonest to the readers that are assuming that all 432 pages are fact, and not 414. Frey continues, “It’s an individual’s perception of what happened in their own life. This is my recollection of my life” (“James Frey”). The problem is that the life presented in the book is not his life; it’s the life he wanted readers to be captivated by but not his. Tom Beer concludes, “Why would someone write a novel and then extend the fiction even further by creating a fictional author for it and hiring an actor to play the role in public?” he continues, “This much is certain: For confused readers, the boundary between storytelling and sheer make-believe has never seemed more indistinct” (“No Place”).

Embellishing facts for a tighter narrative is lazy writing. The memoirist is trying to engage the reader by making something sound better than it really was. A good memoirist is bound by truth and must come up with a way to creatively express it in a way that is both truthful and engaging, this is no easy task. Larry King questioned Frey about changing the location of a cut on his face, Frey responds, “It’s a lot easier than saying over and over again that I cut the area between my lower lip and my chin. You know, I believe that the essential truth of the event remains, there’s a large cut on my face” (“James Frey”). The essential truth is just that, the truth and not a version of what someone thinks of the truth. Does changing the location of a cut on his face really make the narrative tighter? Frey just couldn’t come up with a creative way to say he cut his lip.

Any time a memoirist falsifies events in their memoir, trust is violated. The reader has come to the book expecting an honest portrayal of the written events that have change the author into who they are. Vivian Gornick, and James Frey in different ways violated their readers’ trust and ultimately weren’t honest with themselves. Frey reflects, “I thought of myself as being tougher than I was and badder than I was-and it helped me cope. When I was writing the book…instead of being as introspective as I should have been, I clung to that image” (“James Frey Controversy”). Expecting integrity and honesty from people has become taboo these days. People lie, cheat and steal to succeed and when they’re caught it is explained away and blame shifted. Truth is not subjective, there is no grey area. James Frey and Vivian Gornick were more concerned with the story than the truth and in the end their readers suffered because of their expectations for the truth.