My colleagues Ross and Matt are meditating on the mounting pile of discredited faux-memoirs. Ross thinks the publishers need t take more responsibility; Matt asks, why bother? Does it matter if these things are true?
I'm reading Ross talking about another first-person non-fiction narrative that turns out to be B.S. and it's making me think of how a lot of old-school novels involve this pretense to accuracy. Often they'll begin with a narrator telling the "true" story of how he heard the story that makes up the heart of the plot. Or else the manuscript will be discovered somewhere. For reasons that I'm sure are well known to people who were paying more attention in lecture, early audiences seem to have been incapable of digesting something like "this is a story I made up because I thought you would get something out of reading it -- enjoy!" Instead, prose had to be true.
Meanwhile, contemporary fiction is pretty sharply bifurcated between crappy "genre" fiction and literary fiction that often seems very artsy-fartsy. For a well-crafted but basically straightforward story of people doing things and interacting with each other in a moderately realistic way, you need to turn to narrative non-fiction. You can tell people you've just been reading Bill Buford's Heat and hold your head high in sophisticated circles, it's not like copping to owning Tom Clancy's Op-Center: State of Siege.
But if you sold the story as fiction, I think it would be deemed inadequately literary. And yet the facticity of the narrative has nothing to do with anything. Do I actually care if Buford really sliced his finger dicing carrots that one time? Or if Dario the butcher really yelled at some restaurant owner in some other Tuscan town? To me it seems basically irrelevant. The verisimilitude of a lot of the mise en scène really is integral to the book's appeal, but the same could be said about Moby Dick and any number of other straightforwardly fictional works. The literal accuracy of the whole thing, by contrast, contributes very little to the actual work. What it does instead is alter the marketing possibilities and likely critical approaches, opening up space for a certain kind of narrative to be taken seriously. Which isn't to say that people should lie in their memoirs, but maybe there's something to be learned from the fact that there's such an appetite for made-up stories of a certain kind.
Matt has stumbled upon one of the few subjects I can plausibly claim to know well; my long-ago thesis was on the emergence of the novel, and I spent most of my senior year immersed in its early history. Novels didn't have to be sold as true stories, and frequently weren't; it's just that the man many regard as the first true English novelist happens to have adopted that form. Around the turn of the 18th century, the romance, which had previously dominated the market for prose fiction, sort of collapsed as a literary form; people were tired of reading about princes rescuing fair maidens. This, and a growing literate middle class, created a space for people to experiment with new fictional prose forms, combining some of the story-telling devices of a romance with other pre-existing forms, like the travel narrative and the picaresque. Defoe's best known works (out of the hundreds he published) are the novels Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders, which adopt many of the travel and picaresque conventions, including proclamations that they are true history--but it's not clear how many people actually believed those proclamations, rather than recognizing that they were a literary device, like Umberto Eco's footnotes in The Name of the Rose. Certainly no one thought that Don Quixote was real.
18th century readers had a more . . . er . . . nuanced relationship to the truth than we do. We separate fiction and non-fiction quite cleanly. They often sort of expected tall tales to creep into history (or real people to creep into fiction--this was the beginning of the rise of the Roman a Clef). Whatever people thought of Robinson Crusoe in the beginning, we know that fairly early in its life people recognized it as a fiction, yet it sold (and continues to sell) rather well. Think of the "True Confession" magazines of the 1940s--or perhaps Penthouse Letters, possibly the last place where this art form survives. Later novelists, like Melville and Dickens, were building on those conventions, which is why so many novels into the twentieth century resort to the device of the newly discovered manuscript or the personal tale retold.
I do think, though, that Matt has hit on something about our own time, though I'm not quite as down on contemporary fiction as he is. Since the modernists, all contemporary literary fiction--including narrative fiction--has focused less on certain aspects of telling a story. I understand that some cognitive scientists theorize that the reason we enjoy stories so much is that they activate the parts of our brain that deal with social cognition and learning. The reason that genre fiction, even though it is usually not a masterpiece of prose styling, can be so absorbing is that it provides this function. The fantasy of a space opera or a bodice-ripper is compelling because we're imagining ourselves as the hero--imagining ourselves as a better, more interesting version of ourselves. We're also exploring how we should/would act in certain (unlikely) situations; the novels that do best in these genres are the ones where the hero ultimately acts rightly, which is to say, producing the best result in some sense. This is possibly silly, even counterproductive--one sees women actually acting like heroines of romance novels, and wondering (though not in so many words) why men do not respond to them in the same way as in the book. But it's a deep element of most peoples' fantasy lives.
This is an itch that contemporary novels try very hard not to scratch. "The moral of the story . . . " is an archaism.
So for people who wouldn't be caught dead reading a bodice ripper, memoir fills that space. Having neatly separated fact and fiction, we now read only "fact" as a way to learn about correct behavior, where a hundred years ago people were perfectly accustomed to taking moral or social lessons out of obvious fiction (from whence the term "morality play"). Memoir alone do we permit ourselves to read for the (now conscious) purpose of obtaining information about how human beings behave in other situations than ours.
But for that, we require versimilitude; we're only interested in reading about being in rehab or growing up in a gang if that is what it is actually like. Otherwise the "compare and contrast" to our own lives seems meaningless. This is also, I think, why David Sedaris is suddenly less funny once you know he just made stuff up. Studies of laughter show that most of what people laugh at isn't really funny; it's a social bonding mechanism. It's hard to socially bond with something that didn't happen.
Studies of laughter show that most of what people laugh at isn't really funny
I would just love to know how to separate what's "really" funny from what is merely a social bonding mechanism. It reminds me of the guy who argued that most people "overestimate" their own happiness, however that works.
I think the best bet is to create a story that you hint at being thinly veiled truth, while still claiming it to be a work of fiction (to avoid the legal liabilities, of course). Lots more wiggle room that way.
Could the novel be falling victim to the weight of the past? Have there been so many good narrative novels have been written (most of which are a click away at Amazon) that there is little new ground in that area to plow, in the view of "serious" authors? It reminds me of when Kubrick was criticized for using classical music in his films, he replied along the lines of "why pay for new music when I can use the greatest works of the past?".
BTW, Matt shouldn't dismiss all genre fiction as "crappy". As Sturgeon's Law puts it "90% of anything is crap", and in that 10%, there is some really good writing - see Iain M. Banks for one example.
"Memoir alone do we permit ourselves to read for the (now conscious) purpose of obtaining information about how human beings behave in other situations than ours."
I don't follow novels as closely as I used to, but this statement is idiotic. Why do you think people read Toni Morrison or Alice Walker?--two of America's most beloved novelists. What about "The Kite Runner"? Or "Life of PI" or "Middlesex"? People read and love these books because they want to see how people "behave in other situations than ours." It's as simple as that.
Yeah, good point, Rob_Lyman -- things seems funnier given the context (that is, on top of whatever context makes the joke funny). I remember in high school speech/debate contests, in the original oratory competition, you would have to watch each others' speeches while some designated person judged. Whenever a speaker made a joke, I would make a point not to laugh, just to kill the rhythm that fools people into wanting to laugh.
Of course, it only succeeded in making me look like an outsider and a jerk (moreso than normal).
Oh, and:
Er, wouldn't that make it *fiction* narrative? Don't negate it in the one rare event where the negation doesn't apply.
>People read and love [Life of Pi, Middlesex] because they want to see how people "behave in other situations than ours." It's as simple as that.
But they DON'T describe how people behave. They describe how the authors think they MIGHT behave.
Rob,
Reminds me of an aside in one of Dan Dennett's or Hofstadter's books about artificial intelligence and humor: "It's not *real* humor, it's just an amazing *simulation* of humor!"
I'm making a serious attempt to parse this, but it seems like the desire to read non-fiction boils down to:
1. I don't want people to think I read crappy non-fiction, so I'll read fiction that pretends to be non-fiction.
2. I want to read something deep and meaningful but not something "made up"... so I'll read fiction that pretends to be non-fiction.
On the other hand, the author who lies about his/her memoir is basically lying to give their story credibility. In other words, he/she wants the reader to either falsely take away from the story a lesson about how people really are or excuse story weaknesses because "it's what really happened."
Any way I look at it, fake memoirs are a fraud and a bad thing. They may be a pretty trivial bad thing, but they are a bad thing. They will add false information to the common knowledge about certain people or situations. It would be like a scientist making up some good data and adding it to some big database. If it's .1% of the data and it's data on average beauty mark sizes, then it's probably not a big deal. But it's still not right.
George MacDonald Fraser's first novel, Flashman, was presented as the main character's actual memoirs "discovered in a trunk" and a lot of people believed it---even though it began with an excerpt from the original novel featuring Flashman, Tom Brown's School Days! Of course, not many people these days have read Tom Brown, so they might have thought that was another memoir.
I just responded here, chiefly because your explanation is as good as any I've seen, but I'm not sure the literary fiction cabal that seems implied in many of these debates actually exists. If I could see more evidence for them, I'd be highly interested in it!
Possible Onion story inspired by Megan's post: "Literary scandal rocks Penthouse -- Bill in Boise's orgy memoir discovered to be fictionalized" ... "Readers, many of whom claimed the story inspired their own romantic imaginations reported feeling cheated. 'When a guy describes the enlightening series of events that ensue after a simple attempt to deliver a pizza, you expect that he'll actually be, you know, a pizza delivery guy..."
Thanks for the discussion, Ms McArdle.
I wonder if there might be a recent event that pulls people toward creating not-real "real live experiences": the Nobel Prize.
Did this trend begin or grow after Rigoberta Menchú won the literature prize in 1992?
Maybe Matt picks up every book he finds with the expectation that it will be a mildly entertaining load of crap. If so, I suspect he doesn't enjoy reading all that much.
Literary story-telling, whether fact or fiction, is a basic form of establishing a relationship. It invites the reader to commit a not-inconsequential amount of time toward listening to the author's account, and the reader's decision to commit forms a basic trust relationship. To learn later that you were openly deceived in a relationship, i.e. something you have invested a certain amount of time, trust, and emotional involvement in, can be very hurtful.
To the extent that 18th century readers had a "more nuanced relationship with the truth", I posit that it was because they had corresponding expectation for the medium, not because there is license available to misuse any medium on a whim. Mediums that are misused subsequently become less useful for their original intent because people will refuse to form the same kind of trust commitment with the author. Charlatans like Aaron Russo and Michael Moore have all but destroyed the documentary as being a way of seriously presenting facts; so also the memoir may be about to go the route of Paul Bunyan.
Yes, the scary thing is that voice and content matter less than the conviction that David Sedaris is telling you about his real family! I think in a weird way a lot of people like the horrible idea that his family (and by extension, their families) could really get cranky at Christmas over the latest road show....
Of course, when my aunt writes the occasional short story her sisters do get cranky and all veristic about their fiction reading.
A memoir is nothing more than the author's fiction about him/herself.
Discuss amongst yourselves.
A memoir is nothing more than the author's fiction about him/herself.
Depends on what you mean by 'fiction'. If you mean that the author is going to have hindsight bias and positive coloration in the account, then sure. OTOH, if you mean that a memoir in general is a work of creative fiction whereby the author tells his life as he would prefer it to have occurred...then no, that's not what a memoir is supposed to be.
Enough people to form a lucrative market, suffer from inadequate ability to suspend disbelief. They need a claim of reality as a crutch before they can enjoy the lurid tales they desire. These people also read tabloid and other papers.
I think the example of Penthouse letters is instructive. Would anyone read them if they're along the lines of, "I slept with this chick I met at the bar who I didn't really find that attractive (and the sex wasn't that good), because I was drunk enough and she wanted to get back at her ex, who she wouldn't stop talking about for two hours"? In fiction, since the writer gets to make things up, we expect him to think up something imaginative and fantastic and yet seemingly plausible. In non-fiction, however, we recognize that life is mundane and boring. What's interesting in real life is interesting only in comparison with the rest of real life; when compared to fiction, it's really quite boring. Some examples:
-Al Capone going to prison on tax evasion is interesting. A movie where the mobster loses because the good guys got him on tax evasion would be really lame.
-If a plane crashes onto a desert island and the survivors get rescued months later, the tales of the survivors would be really interesting even if the most exciting thing that happens is some guy figuring out how to catch fish with tree branches. But a TV show about that needs crazy natives, murder, time travel, and polar bears.
-People watch sports even though half the time the matches are lobsided and boring. But in a fake sport like pro wrestling, every match needs to be a close finish that goes back and forth with a big finish. And is there ever a basketball movie that ends with a team winning by making free throws to keep a two possession lead?
This was why Stephen Glass isn't a good fiction writer. Republican hypocrites in real life is interesting. Republican hypocrites in fiction is lame.
Lastly, maybe that's why I never found David Sedaris funny. It was always obvious to me that he was making stuff up.
What's interesting in real life is interesting only in comparison with the rest of real life; when compared to fiction, it's really quite boring.
It's also interesting because it's easier to get emotionally invested in the travails of real people than people you know are fake. So it's more engaging even though it's less interesting.
-Al Capone going to prison on tax evasion is interesting. A movie where the mobster loses because the good guys got him on tax evasion would be really lame. So you didn't like that John Grisham novel (and Tom Cruise movie) where the mobster lawyers were eventually done in by overpadding their time sheets? I thought that was the best part.
As for memoirs: I'm reminded of the editor's note in the Memoirs of the Hon. Jim Hackett. (paraphrased) Being a polititian, we can never tell if what the Hon. J. Hackett wrote was what happened, what he think happened, what he would like to have happened, what he would like you to think happened, or what he would like you to think he thought happened.
You can tell people you've just been reading Bill Buford's Heat and hold your head high in sophisticated circles, it's not like copping to owning Tom Clancy's Op-Center: State of Siege.
The thing is, I am but a simple Chinaman, a red-state suburban rube.
The only time my head will be held high in sophisticated circles is when it is supported by a tree and rope after they lynch me for being a conservative.
We've had problems with these fake memoirs for some time now. Don't forget the infamous case of "Blood and Swash", allegedly written by Captain X.
"...and I think I dreamed most of my book
Blood and Swash. I must have. I never could have
thought of it."
"Charlatans like Aaron Russo...have all but destroyed the documentary as being a way of seriously presenting facts."
anony-mous,
what makes A. Russo a 'Charlatan'?
char·la·tan (shärl-tn)
n.
A person who makes elaborate, fraudulent, and often voluble claims to skill or knowledge; a quack or fraud.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/charlatan
This same thing is happening with "Reality" TV shows. People are willing to watch plots (like "five annoying people live in a house together") that they would consider dull and cliche in a sitcom or fictional drama, but they get an extra charge out of it because it's "reality" or "true".
Then of course you find out how unreal it all is, how staged and provoked and edited and so on, but only some of the audience is actually bothered by that. They like being told it's reality, somehow that lends it interest and legitimacy, but the actual truthfulness isn't particularly important.