"Creative" Non-Fiction
From “Fourth and Olive -- A Reader’s Journal”
Los Angeles Times Book Editor David L. Ulin still thinks memoirists should be able to invent incident and dialogue and pass their work off as non-fiction.
Ulin wrote about the topic last January, when the scandal involving James Frey and his largely invented addiction memoir, A Million Little Pieces, was a hot topic. He returned to the topic in an op-ed in the Times last Sunday, in the wake of an announcement from Random House, Frey’s former publisher, that it will pay as much as $2.5 million to readers who claim they were defrauded.
Ulin dislikes Frey and his book, but doesn’t think he should have settled. Why? Because he thinks Frey was on to something, especially in his early defenses of his book. Ulin argues that Frey originally claimed his purpose was “to evoke not the factual, but the emotional truth.”
For Ulin, this is the heart of the matter. If getting creative (i.e,, making things up) allows writers of non-fiction to be more effective in eliciting an emotional response, then they should be encouraged to do so, because that is what really matters. And besides, “factual truth” is too elusive. In the end, all is shadow play:
And Ulin seems little concerned that views like his and Frey’s make it impossible to distinguish between fiction and non-fiction. “[T]he give and take between author and material often renders genre boundaries moot,” he writes.
Ulin’s views strike me as sophistry of the worst sort. Words on a page may be abstractions, but they have real meanings and real referents. We constantly use words to describe that which exists. Our descriptions are true to the extent they correspond to the way things really are. Establishing that correspondence is a matter of probability, not certainty, but so what? Memory may be fallible, but memories can also be bolstered by independent evidence. As a society, we hold memory in high enough regard that we make the basis of testimony in courts of law, a function that can have life-or-death consequences. From this perspective, extreme skepticism about the use of memory in literature seems silly.
All kinds of interesting things can happen in “the give and take between author and material,” but that doesn’t mean we can toss the fiction/non-fiction distinction overboard. In the world of common sense, we know that “remembering” and “making things up” are two different things. When we label a piece of writing “non-fiction,” we are making a claim to the reader. We are saying that all the events we described really happened, as best we were able to perceive and remember them.
But if we make things up, large or small, and still call it non-fiction, we are practicing deception. In the end, it’s a matter of ethics, not epistemology.
•
What about Ulin’s concern with “emotional truth” and “eliciting an emotional response?” These things clearly matter to both fiction and non-fiction writers. As a writer of non-fiction (although strictly an amateur), my view is that the emotional truth is determined by the facts, not something else. In non-fiction, fidelity to fact is more important than technique. Remaining faithful to the facts should help ensure that the emotions elicited are genuine and will bolster the writer against the urge to manipulate the reader’s feelings.
This was brought home to me when, after seeing the film “Capote” last year, I re-read In Cold Blood. The book was assigned reading when I was a junior in high school in 1968. I remembered it as haunting and powerful, but hadn’t read it since. I wanted to see if it really had the greatness that drove Truman Capote (in the movie, at any rate) so hard to write it.
It did. Re-reading it after an interval of nearly 40 years left me with feelings of awe. Capote wrote beautifully and the effect is profoundly moving. The passage of time notwithstanding, In Cold Blood moved me far more than most books I’ve read in recent years.
As great as the book is, however, its reputation has suffered from the disclosure that Capote made up the ending, in which two key characters find closure when they encounter each other at a gravesite. It never happened, according to the testimony of Alvin Dewey, a Kansas state police investigator and the key character in the scene Capote depicts.
Capote famously described his book as a “non-fiction novel” and subtitled it, “A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences.” His project was to deploy the power of the narrative techniques of fiction – including reconstructed dialogue and access to the inner thoughts, perceptions and feelings of the characters – on the basis of extremely intensive research and exhaustive subject interviews.
The emotional impact was powerful and profound and Capote claimed to have achieved it within the bounds of factual truth. We know now, however, that he deceived us with respect to at least one important scene, the final scene in the book. It was written from whole cloth, evidently because Capote judged that he could create a greater emotional impact that way. Eliciting emotion became more important than presenting factual truth. Capote deceived us in this instance. We are left to wonder where else he may have practiced deception.
In Cold Blood is still a great book, but its credibility – and that of its author – will be forever under a cloud.
Ulin, David L. "Frey Shouldn't Have Settled." Los Angeles Times. September 10, 2006.
Los Angeles Times Book Editor David L. Ulin still thinks memoirists should be able to invent incident and dialogue and pass their work off as non-fiction.
Ulin wrote about the topic last January, when the scandal involving James Frey and his largely invented addiction memoir, A Million Little Pieces, was a hot topic. He returned to the topic in an op-ed in the Times last Sunday, in the wake of an announcement from Random House, Frey’s former publisher, that it will pay as much as $2.5 million to readers who claim they were defrauded.
Ulin dislikes Frey and his book, but doesn’t think he should have settled. Why? Because he thinks Frey was on to something, especially in his early defenses of his book. Ulin argues that Frey originally claimed his purpose was “to evoke not the factual, but the emotional truth.”
For Ulin, this is the heart of the matter. If getting creative (i.e,, making things up) allows writers of non-fiction to be more effective in eliciting an emotional response, then they should be encouraged to do so, because that is what really matters. And besides, “factual truth” is too elusive. In the end, all is shadow play:
Creativity, after all, is a matter of illusion. We take raw materials (ink, paper, memory, point of view) and fashion something that, no matter how faithful to our experience, is a contrivance, an invention, an elaborate shadow play. That's the miracle — that we can believe it at all, that these tools, imperfect as they are, can stir us into trusting something that is, on the most basic level, not actually there. We accept this when it comes to fiction but have other expectations of the memoir, which we seem to believe ought to be held to higher standards, as if memory had any objectivity.
And Ulin seems little concerned that views like his and Frey’s make it impossible to distinguish between fiction and non-fiction. “[T]he give and take between author and material often renders genre boundaries moot,” he writes.
Ulin’s views strike me as sophistry of the worst sort. Words on a page may be abstractions, but they have real meanings and real referents. We constantly use words to describe that which exists. Our descriptions are true to the extent they correspond to the way things really are. Establishing that correspondence is a matter of probability, not certainty, but so what? Memory may be fallible, but memories can also be bolstered by independent evidence. As a society, we hold memory in high enough regard that we make the basis of testimony in courts of law, a function that can have life-or-death consequences. From this perspective, extreme skepticism about the use of memory in literature seems silly.
All kinds of interesting things can happen in “the give and take between author and material,” but that doesn’t mean we can toss the fiction/non-fiction distinction overboard. In the world of common sense, we know that “remembering” and “making things up” are two different things. When we label a piece of writing “non-fiction,” we are making a claim to the reader. We are saying that all the events we described really happened, as best we were able to perceive and remember them.
But if we make things up, large or small, and still call it non-fiction, we are practicing deception. In the end, it’s a matter of ethics, not epistemology.
What about Ulin’s concern with “emotional truth” and “eliciting an emotional response?” These things clearly matter to both fiction and non-fiction writers. As a writer of non-fiction (although strictly an amateur), my view is that the emotional truth is determined by the facts, not something else. In non-fiction, fidelity to fact is more important than technique. Remaining faithful to the facts should help ensure that the emotions elicited are genuine and will bolster the writer against the urge to manipulate the reader’s feelings.
This was brought home to me when, after seeing the film “Capote” last year, I re-read In Cold Blood. The book was assigned reading when I was a junior in high school in 1968. I remembered it as haunting and powerful, but hadn’t read it since. I wanted to see if it really had the greatness that drove Truman Capote (in the movie, at any rate) so hard to write it.
It did. Re-reading it after an interval of nearly 40 years left me with feelings of awe. Capote wrote beautifully and the effect is profoundly moving. The passage of time notwithstanding, In Cold Blood moved me far more than most books I’ve read in recent years.
As great as the book is, however, its reputation has suffered from the disclosure that Capote made up the ending, in which two key characters find closure when they encounter each other at a gravesite. It never happened, according to the testimony of Alvin Dewey, a Kansas state police investigator and the key character in the scene Capote depicts.
Capote famously described his book as a “non-fiction novel” and subtitled it, “A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences.” His project was to deploy the power of the narrative techniques of fiction – including reconstructed dialogue and access to the inner thoughts, perceptions and feelings of the characters – on the basis of extremely intensive research and exhaustive subject interviews.
The emotional impact was powerful and profound and Capote claimed to have achieved it within the bounds of factual truth. We know now, however, that he deceived us with respect to at least one important scene, the final scene in the book. It was written from whole cloth, evidently because Capote judged that he could create a greater emotional impact that way. Eliciting emotion became more important than presenting factual truth. Capote deceived us in this instance. We are left to wonder where else he may have practiced deception.
In Cold Blood is still a great book, but its credibility – and that of its author – will be forever under a cloud.
Ulin, David L. "Frey Shouldn't Have Settled." Los Angeles Times. September 10, 2006.
posted by Tim McGarry at 8:04 PM
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