The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth
by SLM Young
The first thing I remember learning in my introductory creative nonfiction course is that memory is fallible. I’d like for my reader to look very closely at that sentence—“the first thing I remember” does not mean that it was the first thing taught in the course, nor does it mean that this was actually the first thing I learned in the course. What it means is simple. This is my memory, being fallible, just as the lesson indicates. I cannot tell you what happened on the first day of class, nor can I tell you on what day of the semester I learned the above lesson. I suppose I could contact the professor, ask him if he keeps his lesson plans, ask him to check and see if this particular lesson was meant to be taught on a particular day, and then report to you, Reader, on what day this lesson was taught. This still wouldn’t provide you necessarily with the day I learned the lesson because—the truth is—I might not have learned it the first time I heard it. And once all of that work had been done to try to verify a date, what would be the point? Does it matter to anything when I learned this lesson? Or does it matter, simply, that I learned it?
The above example illustrates what I believe to be one of the problems in creative nonfiction, particularly memoir. Readers of memoir do so because they want a story that illuminates something important. We’ll call this “Truth.” Readers who want to know that facts of a story can read journalism, but in reading journalism, you don’t come to any grand realizations; you find out what happened. Memoir isn’t about what happened; it is about how what happened has shaped the person it happened to.
In 2003, Vivian Gornick, highly respected writer of creative nonfiction, gave a speech at Goucher College, which ended in extraordinary controversy. According to a report in Salon written by Terry Greene Sterling, Gornick “confessed” that she had invented scenes, used composite characters, and perhaps the most shocking thing of all, admitted that she believed memoir to fall under the heading of personal narrative rather than that of journalism. And I suppose if I had not studied creative nonfiction, this may all be very shocking. I should probably admit before I write any further that I studied under Vivian Gornick during graduate school, and so am likely biased to her view of memoir. In her response to the Salon article, she writes:
A memoir is a tale taken from life — that is, from actual, not imagined, occurrences — related by a first-person narrator who is undeniably the writer. Beyond these bare requirements, it has the same responsibility as the novel or the short story — to shape a piece of experience so that it moves from a tale of private interest to one with meaning for the disinterested reader. What actually happened is only raw material; what the writer makes of what happened is all that matters.
That is, the interpretation of the events is what is important, not the events themselves. Does this mean that creative nonfiction writers can, should, or are allowed to lie, to make things up? Well, simply, no, but Truth isn’t simply about the difference between a truth and a lie. We are, don’t forget, trying to create art. We are not reporters, detailing events. We don’t walk around with a video camera over our shoulder, recording every event as it happens, and even if we did, that still wouldn’t be Truth. It would be a record of events that happened and the truth of those events would rely on the interpretation of the viewer watching them.
Maureen Corrigan responded to Gornick’s comments both on “Fresh Air” on NPR and in Salon, where she stated that there “is the sense of betrayal felt by a reader who’s been encouraged to believe that a particular book is trying to be faithful to what actually happened and who then subsequently learns otherwise.” But it seems to me that this focus on “what actually happened” is exactly the problem. Does it matter that writers of creative nonfiction be true to the story and not make things up? Of course. I don’t think anyone—and by anyone I mean, anyone who is ethical—would disagree, but “what happened” seems to me the least of concerns in terms of coming to and realizing the truth of reality.
We interpret others’ actions and words, and in doing so, we assume a position. My guess is that as humans, we are often wrong in our assumptions of what others are thinking when they say or do something, but often in the course of autobiographical writing, we assume to know these things. We record them in our writing. Does this make us untrustworthy? Yes and no. If, for example, my mother called me her perfect baby, and I assumed that she would only love me so long as she believed I was perfect, then that assumption would make me react, behave, think, and feel in a particular way. This would be true despite the actual meaning behind my mother’s words. So, in a way, no, these assumptions do not make us dishonest. On the other hand, I would suggest that when writers seem to come to easy answers about why and how, and have perfectly-formed assessments of exactly why and how, this is dishonest. Nothing in life is so simple. We often don’t know the reasons, even if we believe we know the reasons. I think the problem of Truth in memoir is less about compressing time or events or characters, and more about people writing as if they have everything figured out. Isn’t this the greater lie? Isn’t this far more dishonest, in terms of Truth, than reordering a few events for reader ease?
I am not a journalist. I do not write reports of things that happened. Do I have to include everything that happened to explain to an audience the point I am trying to illustrate? I think it would be very dull reading indeed if that were the standard by which we had to write memoir. Memoirists compose a text, a journey for their readers to follow. They make artistic choices as to what details to include and what to leave out, based on the Truth they want to explore. Some critics would claim these choices are dishonest; I would claim they are necessary to art. When a reader picks up a newspaper, he expects the events to be recorded and presented in a particular way. It would seem naive for readers of memoir to believe the purpose of the piece they are reading is to present fact. It’s not. And I don’t think it should be. In his essay, “Occasional Desire: On the Essay and the Memoir,” David Lazar writes, “no matter what kind of literary nonfiction, the facts are never the primary importance of the work. Facts are self-sufficient. They don’t need literature. It is the interpretation of fact that all literary nonfiction is based on.”
I am of the school that believes when I write nonfiction, I make a contract with my reader that I am—to the best of my ability—writing the truth. I agree with Kathryn Harrison when she writes, “I try honorably to remember things as they really were, but . . .” The fact that this “but” exists seems to be the difficulty; the “but” is the context, which makes us remember how we remember. Some critics believe that if you cannot verify, then you shouldn’t write it, which means that Kathryn Harrison, for one, wouldn’t be “allowed” to write memoir since there is no one left living from her childhood. No one can verify the accuracy of her memories. And what of memories that are contested among family members, can we never write about things that are remembered differently? Consider, too, that we often remember things the way we want to remember them. Harrison goes on to write that “If biology, chemistry, and psychiatry can agree on anything, it is that memories are not received but created. What’s more, they’re subject to automatic, unavoidable revision.” Isn’t this the unavoidable Truth, that memory is malleable?
We remember something, and are compelled to write about it, and the action of writing it down has made that version of the memory indelible, and inevitably, the writing of the memory has changed something about how you feel about the event, and that feeling will remain until some experience makes you understand the event in a different context, and then suddenly the memory will be different, and so your first recounting of it will seem somehow wrong, or unfinished, or too sweet, or too cruel.
Has the event changed? Has the memory changed? Or is it simply that our interpretation of one or the other or both has changed? The Truth is that we have changed, and isn’t this the point? I won’t pretend to know why every writer writes, but I will go out on a limb to assume that a good many writers put pen to paper in order to enact change, to learn and discover something in the process, and take their readers along in that process of discovery. This is the Truth we all want to find. Is it possible, or necessary, or even desirable to “swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” in creative nonfiction? I suppose it depends on what you mean by Truth.
