Professor Yeti

“A memoir, at its heart, is written in order to figure out who you are.”
—Sean Wilsey from Oh, the Glory of It All

When I was in high school, I had a fabulous poetry teacher. One day in class we were discussing a poem that described an event from the poet’s childhood. My teacher asked us to think about which was more important: telling the truth about the event, or ensuring that the poem was well written and effective even at the expense of accuracy. One of my classmates raised his hand and said that it was most important for the poet to tell the truth. This made no sense to me, and still doesn’t. Sometimes the facts have to be altered for the sake of the art: it seems far more important that the poet write something beautiful and true, even if making it true means altering the facts.

Admittedly, the expectation of truth is much higher when one writes an autobiography instead of a poem. By definition, a memoir is the recounting of the events of a person’s life. There is an implied contract between the writer and the reader: the writer will tell a meaningful truth, and the reader will listen and accept that truth. It is acceptable to re-create dialogue, change names, and offer opinions, but the underlying assumption is that the author is making an effort to be as truthful as possible. But what if an autobiographer willfully changes verifiable facts? What if he changes unverifiable facts? And does it make a difference if fudging facts of either kind makes for a better book?

Thanks to Oprah, the boundary between memoir and fiction has become a matter of national import. James Frey, author of one-time Oprah book A Million Little Pieces, has become a memoir martyr. He was shamed on Larry King Live, Oprah’s talk show, and all over the national media after the website The Smoking Gun discovered that he had fabricated or significantly exaggerated a number of events in the book, including an assault on a police officer. There is no denying that Frey made up an awful lot of stuff, and to make it worse, he agreed to appear on one of the most popular talk shows on television and say that it was all true. Frey crossed the line, but where was it that his indiscretion occurred? Was it in the writing of falsities or was in his naive (or perhaps greedy) decision to draw so much attention to himself?

In a recent Publishers Weekly article, memoirist Jeannette Walls wrote:

Anyone who writes a memoir is asking to be called a liar. Folks in Limerick, Ireland, claimed that Frank McCourt made up whole sections of Angela’s Ashes. Sean Wilsey’s stepmother sent a letter to the publisher of Oh, the Glory of It All claiming that the book contained more than 30 “actionably defamatory statements of fact.” And last month, Augusten Burroughs was sued by members of his adoptive family, who charged that in his bestselling memoir Running with Scissors, he had “fabricated events that never happened and manufactured conversations that never occurred.

If there were a 24-hour fact checker for every memoir published, I think the same allegations would be made of almost all of them. Here’s the rub: I’m willing to bet that most of the time, readers neither want to know, nor care a great deal, about whether or not what they are reading is entirely true. Even a memoir has to deliver as a good read.

The problem is that people are often emotionally affected by memoir, especially one about as troubled a life as that of James Frey or memoir sensation Dave Pelzer. People want to identify and sympathize with the author, and when readers find out they’ve been lied to, they feel personally affronted. Oprah felt “duped.” But that meant she was affected, which also means that the book was ultimately successful in its purpose.

There do have to be standards. There has to be a line between memoir and fiction; unfortunately defining that line is incredibly difficult. Perhaps it’s impossible. Clearly, though, in the court of public opinion, James Frey’s inaccuracies were one too many. The Smoking Gun says that Frey exaggerated or made up eight pages of material. The book is 448 pages long, so that’s about two percent of the total. That seems like an awfully small percentage. Perhaps the sense of outrage is so universal because Frey’s alterations seem so self- serving: less an aid to his story and more an aid to his ego. Or maybe it’s because Oprah told us to feel that way.

I am beginning to think the difference between memoir and fiction is a bit like the difference between art and pornography: you know it when you see it. The real question about memoir appears to be a matter of how much untruth people are willing to accept before they feel their contract with the writer has been broken. People have to admit that A Million Little Pieces was successful in its purpose, as were Angela’s Ashes and Running with Scissors. And for all 482 pages of Oh, the Glory of it All, Sean Wilsey had my rapt attention. I’m sure that there are some falsities in its pages, but I accept them as necessary for the story. I think he was trying to tell the truth, but every writer has a conscious or unconscious agenda. To steal a line from the character Miracle Max in The Princess Bride: “There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive.” And mostly true is only slightly false. I’ll take that.

Rachel Rubin isn’t really sure what she thinks about the Frey fiasco, but she sure likes thinking about it.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 6th, 2006 at 9:33 pm and is filed under Columns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.