Fictitious Facts
“How do you differentiate between fact and fiction in an autobiography?” demanded an aspiring author over drinks earlier this evening. His father had published an autobiography, which was liberally peppered with inaccurate facts and a few of them referred to him.
“Perhaps that’s the way he remembers it,” I said, after he recounted a couple of examples.
“That’s the problem!” he cried. “’We both have different versions of a certain incident. So who has the real facts?”
Good question. And a worrying one too, because if you don’t know (or don’t care) then you’re inadvertently lying to your readers. On the other hand, if that’s the way you remember it then that is what’s factual for you. After all, isn’t an autobiography your account of what happened in your life as you remember and interpret it? It’s a debatable issue.
Then there are those who intentionally stretch the truth because the original story isn’t interesting enough. Or because they can’t remember exactly what happened and rely on imagination or assumption to fill in the blanks. This is unacceptable. It’s like saying you stay in a penthouse when in fact you live on the top floor of the Pekeliling Flats.
What’s interesting however is that mere mortals aren’t the only ones to resort to such measures. Hemingway’s autobiography True at First Light is apparently being called a fictional memoir (isn’t this an oxymoron?) by publishers because they aren’t sure exactly how much of it is true. In fact, an article in the New York Times says even Hemingway’s son doesn’t believe his father really had the explicit experiences the book describes like taking a few African woman as his wives and bedding all of them on a 14-foot goatskin bed.
According to another article, this one on Poynter Online, an author named Cassandra Pybus wrote about the history of Sarawak’s White Rajahs but publishers rejected her book because it had too many gaps. Pybus argued that the gaps were inevitable because no one knew exactly what happened. Well, apparently someone did know. This person wrote a book called Kalimantaan, cleverly disguised it as a novel, filled in the gaps via imagination and turned the three Rajahs of Sarawak into one person.
If you ask me, no one should even attempt to write a factual piece if they don't give a damn about the facts.
“Perhaps that’s the way he remembers it,” I said, after he recounted a couple of examples.
“That’s the problem!” he cried. “’We both have different versions of a certain incident. So who has the real facts?”
Good question. And a worrying one too, because if you don’t know (or don’t care) then you’re inadvertently lying to your readers. On the other hand, if that’s the way you remember it then that is what’s factual for you. After all, isn’t an autobiography your account of what happened in your life as you remember and interpret it? It’s a debatable issue.
Then there are those who intentionally stretch the truth because the original story isn’t interesting enough. Or because they can’t remember exactly what happened and rely on imagination or assumption to fill in the blanks. This is unacceptable. It’s like saying you stay in a penthouse when in fact you live on the top floor of the Pekeliling Flats.
What’s interesting however is that mere mortals aren’t the only ones to resort to such measures. Hemingway’s autobiography True at First Light is apparently being called a fictional memoir (isn’t this an oxymoron?) by publishers because they aren’t sure exactly how much of it is true. In fact, an article in the New York Times says even Hemingway’s son doesn’t believe his father really had the explicit experiences the book describes like taking a few African woman as his wives and bedding all of them on a 14-foot goatskin bed.
According to another article, this one on Poynter Online, an author named Cassandra Pybus wrote about the history of Sarawak’s White Rajahs but publishers rejected her book because it had too many gaps. Pybus argued that the gaps were inevitable because no one knew exactly what happened. Well, apparently someone did know. This person wrote a book called Kalimantaan, cleverly disguised it as a novel, filled in the gaps via imagination and turned the three Rajahs of Sarawak into one person.
If you ask me, no one should even attempt to write a factual piece if they don't give a damn about the facts.
posted by starlight at 1:05 AM
1 Comments:
Interesting point. Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes differered in detail from his brother's account, yet both cklaimed to be writing honestly. Can we really accurately remember the details of our own past? Don't we continually reinvent ourselves even to ourselves?
And it takes a huge feat of imagination to step into someone else's skin. If biographers stuck to just facts
Peter Ackroyd, probably Britain's most famous biographer recently said in a guardian interview "...'The trick of any half-decent biography,' he continues, 'is to create the force, the narrative energy. In Shakespeare's life there are so many lacunae, so many things that are misinterpreted, that you've really got to make an effort to make the dots join up. I had to assert what I couldn't prove; if you don't, your book is littered with caveats. If a biographer doesn't have any faith in his own insight, in his own intuitions, then a reader isn't going to either.' He pauses. 'You've got to give a false impression of confidence. In biography " I've said this before " you can make things up, but in fiction you have to tell the truth."
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