I just ran across this article on EW’s Popwatch blog. This is twice in a week that an autobiography has been exposed as a fake. And, to me, this is very troubling.
Mainly because as a non-fiction writer myself who writes memoir, I fear the backlash before I get a book together.
This is something that the Rockstars go back and forth on and have had a couple discussions about. What is our perogrative when telling stories about ourselves? Can we use the word I or write in the first person and make things up?
Personally, I’m a purist. I believe my own life is too weird and crazy and fucked-up to write fiction. But it’s more than that. I feel that the audience deserves to know that what they’re hearing is real, is my own, if I’m writing about myself. But I recognize the need to craft in order to make a narrative. Case in point: the story I did at the Story Slam a couple weeks ago. Yes, I had a book as a kid that was about Columbus and in the book he talked about the world being round like an orange. Yes, I went to Greece as a result of a drunken night and landed in the middle of Mardi Gras, and I went to Nafplion and smoked Cubans with Dimitri on the top of his roof and went to an Italian restaurant and wrote and the waiter brought me an orange instead of the check.
But was I thinking about the story of Columbus and the orange as I rode on the train that morning? No. I was hungover and it was a 6.30 am train and something happened on that train that I’ve never talked about, and won’t ever put in a story. And besides, it was eight years ago and I have no idea what was going through my head at that moment.
I put in the Columbus story to use as a framing device to bring it full circle.
And at the same time, I feel guilty if I make up even a single line of dialogue. Towards the end of I Hate Kenny G, I have a line that I’ve attributed to my friend Becky that ended up kind of being the entire crux of the play. I know that she ended up writing about lemons in her journal that night, but I don’t really remember if she said that. But before I put it in, I called her up and asked her if I minded that I said it. That’s how committed I am to telling the truth.
Others think that the audience understands that when someone is on stage, they are a character. There is an implicit understanding that not everything is real, embellishments have been made.
Does my committment to telling things as they happen impede my success? Can I compete with the other writers out there on the market in my genre, if I insist on telling the truth?
I guess we’ll see. I do know that I want the title of my first book to be How To Lead A Dull Life. And, hopefully, my hypothetical readers will find that ironic once they read what I have to say.
1 Comment
March 5, 2008 at 5:16 pm
Yeah, I’m upset (actually, steaming mad) at “Misha.”
For chrissakes, there are still SURVIVORS out there. How do you think THEY feel about this sh*t being published…and being in print for years?
Quite frankly, she lost me at the wolves. Wolves?
You want a believable narrative; lose the wolves ;’}
She placed the importance of getting her *creation* published – and making money off of it – above *their* horrific experience.
And I have to stay away from it all.
My collection of internalized impressions will remain untelevised.
At the time I had those night terrors (early 70s) – all I knew is *something* happened to the Jews. The average gentile kid knew nothing. For context – if you wanted to find out about it, you had to be an adult, and you had to look deep; survivors found the story too painful to relate, and mass media did not want to touch it. For decades.
Then came a prime-time mini-series in 1976, and “The Holocaust” officially entered the entertainment industry…and started making millions.
For better? Or for worse?
How much “stretch” was added each time, to make for good story?
Vision = 1) Is profound. Transforms…and you puzzle for decades how to communicate it – or – whether you should communicate it, *at all*.
If you weren’t looking for meaning, and I weren’t challenged to see if I could *relate* – I’d remain silent.
Meanwhile, Shirley Maclaine dashes out another “past-life memoir” – taking yet another turn at life…revealing she hasn’t learned a damned thing.
2) Details do not change – they’re burned in.
3) You are given a very clear insight, some of which history has yet to uncover – and might take decades to reveal. Even then, what you “saw” *must* remain filed under “DREAM.”
I like what you do with story, and how you do it.
Your basic experience remains way better than any fiction.
Storytellers routinely add “stretch,” and I’d been advised to do it too. Nope. Might add something to convey the SAME IDEA in fewer words – or get a laugh. Tellers who torque my heart with stuff that never, or marginally, happened…lose me.
(I hope you know you never have to post this stuff)