Personal Histories

Last week, one of our readers, Dominique, raised a very interesting question about “History,” so I've decided to dedicate this week’s blog entry to responding to that. (If you haven’t read it already, go check out her entry in the comments section of the last blog entry. It’s well worth the read!)

In particular, Dominique mentions a quote from Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism by Hayden White: “We do not live stories, even if we give our lives meaning by retrospectively casting them in the form of stories.” The question, as I understanding it (and feel free to correct me in the comments, if I’m wrong about this) has to do with history—personal and otherwise—what our obligation is to document history and whether or not “history” as a term is preferable to truth.

We can claim something to be historically accurate without commenting one way or the other on its “truthfulness” in the larger philosophical sense. (Much in the same way we can claim that a person possesses knowledge without commenting one way or the other on whether that person possesses “wisdom,” as well.) So, in that sense, the term History may have a leg up—it seems more objective. On the other hand, objectivity is really not the goal of creative nonfiction. I’d argue that subjectivity is the goal. Telling the story you have to tell, the way you have to tell it, filtered unapologetically through your understanding and perspective. When I hear the word History, I think of textbooks, or else biography rather than memoir—pieces that have more to do with documenting verifiable fact than focusing on personal perspective and its attendant intangibles (feelings, opinions, emotions).

I’m also reminded that “history” is often shaped by the scribes who record it and their personal positions as stakeholders in those stories, as well as their biases. We could talk about a book like Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States and how it was written in many ways as a response to “official” (and problematic) history that’s been recorded in our textbooks. If we wanted to claim Zinn’s account as a more accurate version of history, we’d also have to interrogate Zinn’s biases, as well, and so on. I think that’s healthy and valuable. I just don’t know if I’d call it Creative Nonfiction.

Currently, my preferred way of talking about ethics in creative nonfiction—which is what this all really amounts to, I think—is to approach it from the other direction. I like this word “Fraudulence.” I think we should avoid that—intentionally making stuff up wholesale because we think it will attract and audience and sell a lot of books. It’s one thing to try to tell the truth and fail or to be unable to tell the truth at all. It’s another to intentionally try to deceive for personal gain. So, to offer a real life example, if the student Dominique mentions wasn’t ever in the military, but decided to claim he was because it seems like a “juicier” story, I would have a problem with that on multiple levels, as follows:

It seems wrong to me, exploitative—that’s more an issue of my own beliefs about what is and isn’t moral than anything else, and I’ve been trying to avoid talking about that too much here because that’s not really my goal for this blog. But maybe I am somewhat misguided in trying to keep these parts of my belief system separate—if there is an argument to be made that all good writing requires empathy on the part of the writer (the ability to feel another human being’s intentions as though they are your own), then fabricating stories about yourself may fly in the face of that. I think of some of the nonfiction writers I went to grad school with; when something devastating would happen to someone else in the departments, it wasn’t uncommon to hear a few select people remark, “He/she’s so lucky.” In other words, lucky because now that person can presumably write about that painful experience, if he or she so desires. My feeling is that—even though we all know that what’s bad for life is often good for writing—there’s something fundamentally screwed up about reducing another person’s tragedy into writing fodder. When you envy someone else’s pain and wish it upon yourself, you are displaying a dangerous lack of perspective, I think. My response to those people is this: If it happened to you, you wouldn’t know what to do with the material—you’d just end up screwing it up, writing “Vic-Lit.” Why? Empathy—you just proved you’ve got none.

More to the writing point of it—I think it would be difficult to write (not only accurately but) convincingly about oneself, all the while knowing that what you have chosen to reveal never happened. If I don’t believe in what I am writing, I can’t write it. Now, fiction writers do it all the time, but they are not using themselves as a protagonist, and I do think that makes a difference. Sure, your student (in our make-believe example) could do the research, imagine himself in that situation, and so forth, but at that point, why not write the piece as fiction, since he would be approaching it that way anyway?

Lastly, to falsify your personal history is to admit a lack of skill on the part of the writer, I think. Like I mentioned in the post—if you can’t tell the story well enough to warrant it being read, then I’m not sure throwing in fraudulent scenes to “spice it up” will really solve any of the key problems in the writing.

That may be why A Million Little Pieces is so rare (and why it offended so many people)—it overcame the second and third points here. It was well written enough to convince an audience to believe in it.

That said, perhaps this isn’t the question Dominique was asking at all. Perhaps the question is really whether or not her student (who did actually serve in Afghanistan) should be writing about his experiences there instead of his more work-a-day experiences in Morgantown, whether he has an obligation to share that history with the rest of us who weren’t there—to help us understand that part of our world. I think you’re going to hear differing opinions on that. Some writers would say, “yes”—they’d liken it to civic duty. For me, that’s too polemical a philosophy. I’ve never been one who believes that art—writing in particular—exists to “teach us lessons” or to sell us on ideologies. (I’d refer you to Chekhov’s thoughts about “sermon.”) So that influences my answer: no, he’s not obligated to write about Afghanistan. We write about what we are obsessed about, and in this case, he’s got more to say about Morgantown. There’s nothing wrong with that. And it doesn’t have to be any less poignant.

Now, from a practical publishing perspective, Afghanistan will be easier to market. Does that mean he should write about it instead—Yes? No? He has to decide. I have a long-time writing friend who met with an agent not that long ago. This friend was told, “Your writing is among the most beautiful I have ever read—better on the line level than anyone I’ve read this year so far.” It was with great regret that the agent had to pass on representing the work. Why? Because, despite its literary merits, it was too quiet. Now, does my friend try to inject it with some drama? Shift focus onto something more tragic? It’s one option. Should my friend make some shit up—a car crash, a suicide attempt, an affair, a drawn-out battle with cancer or alcoholism? Absolutely not. Should my friend decide to send the work to Indie presses instead, one that might be less constrained by mainstream tastes and trends? Another good option—and, as it turns out, the option that my friend chose. Why? Because, at the end of the day, the book in its current form is the one my friend wanted to write—the story that had to be told.

I hear a lot of writers (nonfiction especially, for some reason) talking about their audience nowadays. I’m thinking about what is going to land with the audience, trying to tailor the book accordingly, trying to ride the wave. I think that mentality can be dangerous, too. I’m not saying everything we write should be esoteric. Nor am I saying that we shouldn’t want to write things that others will read or that we shouldn’t try to convey our stories as clearly, urgently, and pleasantly as possible to those readers. Writing is and will always be a desperate act of communication. So I’m not advocating for insularity. (For example, I imagine an audience when I am writing—not a mainstream audience, but my Ideal Reader, the person I share my work with whose critical opinions I’ve come to respect despite/because they often differ from my own.) But we can’t have it both ways—can’t be told to abandon our vision in the name of writing whatever will get the audience’s blood pumping, and then be told that we’ve committed a cardinal sin when the result is fraudulent. Since those demands are never going away, it’s up to us (the writer) to be self-disciplined enough to stay the course. To write what we have to write. It brings me back to what I said in my previous post: if it matters to me, I have faith that it will matter to someone else out there, too.

Dominique, I don’t know if it gets exactly at what you were asking, but I hope it helps some! And, as always, thanks for reading and for the thought-provoking comment!