My writing desk overlooks our fenced-in backyard where red squirrels chase each other in death-defying scamps along the edge of our privacy fence and up the bark of a giant poplar. Behind and around me, wooden bookshelves stand sentry over my work. The sun warms me as I sit in front of my laptop sipping apple cinnamon tea, and my four-year-old black Lab, Tilly, lays her head in my lap hoping for a nibble of the peanuts I’ve been snacking on. She stares with those big brown eyes, tail wagging expectantly.
“Okay, ” I tell her, and she uses her tiny front teeth to wriggle the peanuts from between my fingers. I give her two. She wants more. I eventually ignore her long enough that she lies down behind me. I know without looking because I hear the thud of her body and the clank of her collar on the floor. She doesn’t even bother walking to her bed in front of the fireplace today. I have about five minutes before she’ll be back for more.
How much should the writer tell?
Though descriptive and amusing, the paragraphs above provide a limited picture about the office where I write. Yes, I have a wonderful desk in front of a large bank of windows, but the backyard I gaze upon is covered in dog poo because it’s been too cold to pick it up. (And that’ll be our little secret, okay?) I love the coziness of having a fireplace and built-in bookshelves in my office, though I rarely mention how drafty and dark it can be, and the sunlight that floats in and settles on my desk usually does lift my spirit, if it’s not blinding me from beneath the shades.
Most of the time, stopping midsentence to pet Tilly’s belly or open the back door for her so she can chase the squirrels does provide a much-needed break. Other times, I huff loudly at her and tell her to stop bugging me. And I often just forget to mention that my husband is sitting at my back, working from home at his own desk one day a week.
But investing in a high-end pooper scooper or taking roll call here in the office or going to great lengths to inventory the furniture and catalog the weather still won’t resolve the issue that every time a writer sits down to write, there are parts of the setting and the story that she will include and there are parts she will not—whether fiction or nonfiction. The things emphasized and the things disguised contribute to the greater good of what’s written. The author, who judges and evaluates and makes those decisions, must hope that in the end that readers will understand the difference.
Just ask Annie Dillard.
Conveying a resonant truth
In her Atlantic essay The Thoreau of the Suburbs, Diana Saverin discusses Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Though the book sits firmly in the male-dominated wilderness literature genre, Dillard’s experiences in the woods were not of the woman vs. nature, lone wolf living off the land variety.
“She wasn’t a man living alone in the wild, ” Saverin writes. “In fact, she wasn’t even living alone. She was residing in an ordinary house with a husband–her former college poetry professor, Richard Dillard.”
The events of the book did take place in Dillard’s life, they just happened to be lived out in her suburban Virginia neighborhood. She did spend time alone walking through the woods that include Tinker Creek, journaling and chronicling the animals and natural phenomena she witnessed and pondered. She just happened to go home in the evening to her husband and their red brick house, and she just happened to play softball and attend faculty parties on the weekends. As it happened, she decided not to include those facts.
“One thing Dillard knew—but many of her potential readers didn’t—was that there had always been a certain amount of delusion involved in the lone-man-in-the-wilderness narrative, ” Saverin writes. For instance, researchers widely acknowledge that Henry David Thoreau, one of America’s early wilderness writers, regularly walked to nearby Concord and may have even had dinner at his mother’s house while living at Walden.
But that didn’t deter Dillard from wanting to tell the truth. “Later, Dillard emphasized that a nonfiction writer has an unwritten pact with the reader: that the writer is telling the truth. ‘Walden, shaped as it was, ’ she added, ‘nevertheless told the truth.’”
Which leaves Saverin wondering: “If the author conveys a resonant truth, does it matter what experiences led to the realizations?”
Memory can be so slippery
Of course, the path of fact versus truth contains all kinds of stopping off points, primarily for the nonfiction writer, but really for all writers.
For instance, I got rid of my copy of A Million Little Pieces without even reading it when I saw James Frey admit to Oprah that he, at best, exaggerated and, at worst, fabricated the story. But maybe I also should mention that I didn’t actually own a copy of the book; it was a loaner that I never returned. Also, I can’t remember for sure if I saw Frey’s admission on Oprah or somewhere else. A quick Google search confirms that Oprah did indeed host such an episode with the confession. But whether I saw the show live or in clips later I’m not sure.
Does knowing these extra details make the truth of my aversion clearer or not? Should I avoid writing about things I don’t remember fully? And even the things I do remember fully: should I still fact check myself? Memory can be so slippery.
The questions keep coming: Is making something up worse than omitting something that did happen? Does consolidating days or combining characters amount to fabrication? Does it matter if the fraud was intentional? Is negligence better or worse?
And just to clarify, could this whole issue be resolved by just admitting that we all do it sometimes?
Writing the world into existence
Then again, every literary artifact is imbued with a little deceit, limited by the singular perspective of the writer. We write into existence the world that we need to explain the truth that we believe. Like Emily Dickinson’s “Tell all the truth but tell it slant, ” we know that writing all that’s real might blind our readers or bore them to tears or gross them out beyond expectation (like did I really need to mention the built-in bookshelves or the overlooked dog poo?).
We also have come to expect that much of what we see and hear in the media and entertainment world is not the whole story. From Brian Williams’ six-month suspension to the spurious facts of the recent blockbuster American Sniper to the cleanshaven members of the Duck Dynasty gang who began growing their beards only when they received a contract with A&E, we have learned to question what we see and hear.
But when it comes to what we read and what we write, especially what we call nonfiction, there seems to be a higher standard—to tell the truth, whatever that happens to mean.
Photo by the glasseyes view, Creative Commons license via Flickr. Post by Charity Singleton Craig, co-author of On Being a Writer: 12 Simple Habits for a Writing Life that Lasts.
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Simply Darlene says
This is such an interesting topic, Charity. That quote of Emily’s is one of my favorites, but not because I outright lie, but because sometimes I have to soften the edges or gather a multitude of nuances into one sentence.
As the saying goes, “truth is stranger than fiction,” yet that doesn’t mean it’s all re-tell worthy.
Then again, doesn’t the focus, the theme, and/or the universal need that the writer is writing to, dictate the degree of truth being told?
And about memories, I recently read “What Your Childhood Memories Say About You” by Kevin Leman. I read a bit of the book before bedtime for a few weeks and then in the morning took to my freeWrite pages… interesting things happened in the pre-dawn. Stories flowed of things and people and feelings and events that I’d all but forgotten. I shared a couple stories with my sister and she had no recollection of two of them. None! Amazing. We lived in the same house, but for whatever reason, she didn’t commit those event to her memory bank. Later she told me that she locked certain things out so that she could live in the day and in her future with more ease. More freedom.
One more thing – I think that the outright fabrication of stories and events, and then the passing them off as non-fiction, is wrong. It’s untrustworthy. Folks can go ahead and do it, but call it fiction.
Charity Singleton Craig says
Darlene – Thanks for your thoughtful replies. I think you are right that some writing – regardless of whether it is fiction or nonfiction – will need to have more or less attention to detail. As I wrote this essay, I thought back to much of my writing, trying to decide where I might have included more details, where I might have glossed over something that would have changed the meaning. I could always be more or less precise, but I guess there is a goal in each piece and I need to meet that.
I think there’s something important about the writer owning what she is doing that makes this issue better for me. When an author tells me they combined two characters into one, I’m okay with it. If I find out they did it and didn’t tell me, I might feel like they misrepresented the story. It depends on the point.
Memory is so very, very slippery. I think acknowledging this, too, helps us be okay when we experience and tell something a little different than others.
Thanks again, Darlene. You’ve raised so many good issues here.
Simply Darlene says
“It’s going to be a memory that makes some sense of your place in the world, prompted, in other words, by your private logic and unique lifestyle.” Although that quote is from the book I mentioned above, and Dr. Leman’s discussion on the significance of early childhood memories (birth to 6 years old), it’s also what we, both as writers and readers, bring (or take) from the page… our place in the world, our private/personal logic, and our unique lifestyle… all the little bits that make up the whole. Sometimes told slant to make the most sense.
And here I am, talking to my own self once again in the comment box. Charity, you bring this out in me. 😉
Donna Z Falcone says
I just had this conversation with my writing buddy about a piece I wrote describing a scene that happened 15 years ago or more, two houses, 3 apartments, and two states ago. She asked if my memory was really that good and suddenly I felt a flush of panic and need to change it somehow so that people would know I was doing my best to get it right, but hey- I’m only human, right? Her question threw me because I had wondered myself about my accuracy. My thinking was “do I want other people distracted from my real experience because they are wondering how precise the details really were?” So, I changed it. My friend liked the original better. As a story, so did I, but my beating heart preferred the edited one that acknowledged my grasping and trying. As in real life, however, I think that added some cumbersome element to the piece.
Darlene, I really understand what you say about your sister not remember what you have so clearly remembered. I was just having this conversation yesterday about memory. It’s never the same for two people who lived the “same” experience. So, I suppose that truth should provide some ease to us writer types… shouldn’t it? But it doesn’t for me. I still feel like the truth police will come along, whack me in side of the head, write a citation, and charge me with misrepresentation of the facts.
Charity. This is a great topic and thought provoking post. Thank you. And, just for the record, I am a little bit afraid to venture to the back yard now that the snow is nearly gone. 😉
Charity Singleton Craig says
Donna – I’ve had that same flush of panic when I imagine other people reading some of my accounts of conversations and events. I can “hear” them in my mind, the details seem so clear. And so far, I’ve never had anyone come back and say, “That’s not the way it was.” But I know as well as the next person that I don’t always remember just right. Sometimes, I’ve asked people to confirm what I’ve said. So as long as our memories are close, I feel more comfortable.
My yard is better now than the day I wrote this piece, though it has been rainy and cold again, so it’s like a mine field out there!
Megan Willome says
I can’t tell you how upset I was when I read Saverin’s piece. It’s OK for Dillard to do it because Thoreau did it? The journalist in me rebels. And Brian Williams’ thing hit me big time.
This month I realized I had a sentence in a column that said I was wearing boots at three parties when I actually only wore them at one. I took it out. Why? Because I would know.
I got rebuked–rightfully so–for attributing an outburst to a woman’s first sentence in a TV episode when it was actually her second. She was offended.
But you’re talking about something else–your office and how to describe it, what’s the line between truth and Truth. All I know is that if you are describing your office in only idillic terms when there is dog poo outside and bad light at times and an occasional co-worker, and I don’t find out till later, I will be annoyed. If you tell me right off that your office has good points and bad points, then listing every detail doesn’t matter to me.
Signed, Obsessed with Truth
Will Willingham says
I wonder, too, where there’s maybe a difference between journalistic writing and memoir, where one really does require factual reporting (the Brian Williams thing is sort of appalling) and the other relies on our memory of things, which of course is colored and sometimes altered through how we experienced it.
For instance, in terms of Charity’s workspace, I think if the dog poo is not really a part of how she experiences her workspace, it’s not important to me as a reader to know it and in fact, mentioning it may serve to distract me from what’s more important in the story because before long I’m thinking not about Charity’s workspace, but how long it might have been since the poo in the kennel behind my house was cleared.
It’s akin to the way Instagram works, for me. How important is it that the person crops things out of the image (or uses the blur or other filters to mask things that can’t be cropped out)? Sometimes this creates a completely different reality, which I think is problematic. Sometimes I think it just allows the viewer (ie, reader) to focus on what is more important.
Charity Singleton Craig says
I don’t know why, but this is the second TS Poetry piece I’ve written that included a reference to dog poo. I’m afraid I might get a reputation!
Megan and LW – I think I agree that not every detail is necessary or even possible in every description, especially in memoir over journalism. Yet I would offer that even in journalism what we include or omit would change the story for some people. Saying you wore boots three times when you only wore them once might not have altered the story, yet it was easy to make that right, so you did. However, the fact that you didn’t mention what kind of boots you were wearing may actually change the tone of the story more than what type they were. Were they cowboy boots? Does that say something about who you are and where you grow up and how you connect to your past? Were they rain boots? Does that say something about the climate?
I think it’s a tricky issue. Sometimes, I wonder if I should mention in every single essay I write that I am a cancer survivor, because it does change the way I think and act. And yet so does the fact that I’m married, that I live in the Midwest, that I have sisters — well, to be precise, half-sisters — I just can’t tell it all every time. It’s frustrating, but important to distinguish based on what story I WANT to tell.
I wasn’t upset about Severin’s piece, but I was surprised to learn so much about Annie Dillard’s Tinker Creek experiences. i changes how I read the book, but it doesn’t make me mad. In fact, I’m a little relieved. Sometimes, I take memoir so literally that I it’s hard to imagine how a person could live and survive with such intensity. I forget that these intense moments were often separated by days and days and boring nothingness.
Thanks for thinking this through with me friends!
Will Willingham says
Speaking of memory, do you happen to remember the chapter in Rumors of Water where the author discovered she had misremembered details of the story that led to the book’s title? Here’s a little bit of what L.L. says in that chapter:
“Others in my life remember things differently. They may be correct in saying that the apron was not blue-striped at all, but red and green plaid. Though both aprons are in my life, I misapplied the scene where the blue one shows up. If someone tells me before I publish, I might change the detail. I want to share the truth, after all.”
And then a little later, as she talks about editing when there are questions as to the writer’s recollection of the details:
“I ask the editors to think abut it this way: Has the writer been as true as she could be? Has she captured the main gist of the experience, even if a peripheral apron might have been red-plaid instead of blue-striped? If an actual protest has been made about some aspect of a story, I ask, ‘Is the rest of the story true, to the best of our knowledge? Whose truth are we relying on? Does the center of the story seem to be supported by several reliable parties? Can we consider removing the questionable part and run the rest of the article?”
And I think I just decided it’s time to re-read Rumors. 😉
Charity Singleton Craig says
Thanks for sharing this. I think I need to re-read Rumors, too!
Gillian Marchenko says
Fascinating essay and conversation. I like LW’s point about the difference between journalism and memoir. In the way I understand memoir, one works towards a universal truth from personal experience, and thus takes a slice from his or her life as the means to get there. Vivian Gornick talks extensively about this in her book, Situation and the Story. You take a situation from your life and the real story emerges. If the story arch is clear, than the blurry picture comes into focus and shows the narrator what parts of one’s life needs to be included in the narrative. I try to ask myself if what I write about brings my story into focus. I agree that what is written in memoir has to be true, but I also think creative license is allowed in recreating dialogue, etc.
Will Willingham says
Dani Shapiro’s (brilliant) Open Letter to a disillusioned Facebook fan gets around to this view also, Gillian. She says,
“The memoirist looks through a single window in a house full of windows. After all, we can’t look out of all the windows at once, can we? We choose a view. We pick a story to tell. We shift through the ever-changing sands of memory, and in so doing create something hopefully beautiful, by which I mean universal. We try to tell the truth – by which I do not mean the facts.”
http://www.salon.com/2014/01/10/open_letter_from_dani_shapiro_dear_disillusioned_reader_who_contacted_me_on_facebook/
Charity Singleton Craig says
Gillian and LW – I feel the same way. Creative nonfiction as an entire genre takes these kinds of liberties, and in doing so, makes the story even more true, in my mind. I think one of the main points in Severin’s essay, or at least the point I was hoping to make by referencing Severin’s essay, is that picking and choosing to tell the story happens every time we tell stories. And what we choose and what we omit contributes to the truth we are trying to communicate by revealing our biases, priorities, and intent.
Actually, I would argue that this happens in journalism as much as anywhere else–maybe more–because of the limitations of time and space. There’s always another perspective that could have been added, another witness, another detail. At some point, the writer decides that what is written generally represents what happened. But because we live in a country where we can easily disagree with each other, we see that most news stories have another side to them, another “truth” that someone wants to tell. I think the events in Ferguson are a great example. Generally, the more controversial a subject, the more truths there will be. And the same is true in memoir.
The other point I wanted to make was how important it is that we writers own this. In fact, this issue is one of the chief reasons why I left journalism, actually. Because journalism operates under a veil of objectivity–or absolute truth-telling–that I don’t think exists. I tried so hard to tell every truth in every article and couldn’t. People disagreed with what I wrote sometimes. “But this is the truth,” I’d argue. And it was. And it wasn’t.
Like Megan said above, whether we wore a pair of boots to three parties or just one might have a right and wrong. IF, and that’s a big if, we can remember. But whether people are protesting because they are angry or whether people are protesting because they care, that’s not so easy to report on. Because it might be both or it might be neither, depending on whom you speak to.
One thing I love about much of the news coverage on National Public Radio is that they often interview just one person or just one family at a time, and let the experience of that one perspective tell a story. Because they choose just one, we all know that it’s not the whole story, but when they honor the one story, we begin to get a sense of the whole, especially the next time when they tell one different story.
Thanks for engaging in this dialogue with me everyone!
Richard Maxson says
One of my favorite movies of all time is “Cloud Atlas.” In it there is a saying called the “true truth,” which means what actually was said or what actually happened as close as possible to the telling of it. For me, the gates between which we as writers live are fiction and the true truth. In between these two boundaries there is the truth and the spirit of the truth. Sometimes in order to “tell (show) the truth, a writer must write like a painter paints. The color of a sky, a dress, an umbrella, what music was heard, none of these, nor all of these (if remembered) may not convey what needs to be said or described to portray the day your Mother and Father met, or who these two people were at that moment in time. One need only look at the liberties of cinema, in such a film as The Imitation Game to see how a fiction of sorts must be created to tell the spirit of the truth about Alan Turing.
And what is more important for a writer to do, tell a sketchy but factually recounting of a truth or portray that sketch in such a way that all the emotional and intellectual weight of a life or event is fully brought to bear on the experience of a reader?
Charity Singleton Craig says
Rick – I really love your explanation of “true truth.” And I love your last question which seems to keep in mind the relationship between writer and reader. I think this whole discussion must be kept within that context, as I believe what happens when we tell the truth is rooted deeply in our unstated agreement with those who read that we care deeply about their experience with our words.
LLB says
Fascinating, important, perennial subject. Great essay, Charity. Rich conversation, everyone. I might add some thoughts when I’ve had some more time to think them through.