To Tell The Truth

Honesty is overrated.  

Not in a doctor or a reporter.  We count on them telling us the truth, as best they can ascertain it.  And not in a lover.  We open ourselves up to them and trust that they will embrace our vulnerabilities without using them against us.  And certainly not in a politician.  We have no expectation of honesty from that crowd, so we don't bother rating it, over or under.

No, what I have in mind is the publishing business, specifically the genre of memoirs.  There have been some high profile memoirs drawing attention of late that appear to have taken some liberties with the Truth, from embroidery to complete fabrication.  

Most recently is "Love and Consequences," by Margaret B. Jones (or Margaret Seltzer if you want to know the truth).  It's your basic updated Ragged Dick story about a mixed-race girl growing up in South-Central L.A. among the Bloods and Crips.  All very uplifting apparently, and pretty much universally praised, until it was discovered that Seltzer is white and was raised in Sherman Oaks in the San Fernando Valley, a long way from the mean streets of the barrio.

Then there's the odd case of Misha Defonseca.  In 1997 she published a memoir entitled, "Misha:  A Memoire of the Holocaust Years," detailing her trek across war-torn Europe from the ages of 7-11, basically raised by wolves.  It sold poorly in America but was extremely popular in Europe, eventually serving as the basis for an Italian opera and a French film.  She recently revealed that her real name is Monique De Wael and that the wolves that raised her were actually her grandfather and, later, her uncle.  Her only trek was walking back and forth to elementary school in Brussels.

And, most infamously, there is "A Million Little Pieces," James Frey's account of his addiction to drugs and his road to recovery.  His biggest mistake wasn't embellishing his stories for added emotional punch -- although he did plenty of that.  His fatal error was making Oprah feel like a fool after she championed his work in her book club, leading to the sale of 2 million copies in its first three weeks.

These examples, along with others, are causing the publishing business to take a long, hard look at the way they research, promote and publish memoirs.  It's a big to-do and it's a big waste of time.

It shouldn't ultimately matter whether a memoir is strictly factual.  It's from memory.  Nobody's memory is accurate.  When you were a child and your grandmother told you stories about your mother or father when they were your age, did you really take them as gospel?  (Well, you probably did, but you were five at the time.)  Looking back on them as you got older you realized that they were stories spun to entertain you, fairy tales without the magic beans and glass slippers.  Just because your grandmother stretched a point here or there doesn't make her a liar or the stories any less valid.

Memoirs are no different.  They are a story from a specific point of view, filtered through the personal history and idiosyncrasies of the author, meant to evoke an emotional response from the reader.  I don't curl up with a memoir to learn history.  I read it to follow along on a journey through the eyes of the person who was there.  If I have to choose between an anecdote being factually accurate or emotionally resonant, it's no contest.  Give me something I can feel.

As far as I'm concerned, as soon as I read the words, "A Memoir," on a book, I have been duly warned:  this book is a work of memory and imagination, a mixture of fact and fiction.  It's not autobiography, which claims to report the details of the subject's life in an objective manner.  It's more nuanced;  a good memoir will elicit feelings in the reader by how it tells a story, not just through the details of the story.  I'd rather read Frey's harrowing account of undergoing root canal without anesthesia than learn that the oral surgeon put him under, completed the procedure, and that he woke up with a sore mouth.  Which works better as a metaphor for an addict rubbed raw by the process of trying to kick his habit cold turkey? 

It's rare that an author is able to breath life into a story so that it grabs the readers and transports them to a place that's truly unique.  The writer talented enough to perform that magic shouldn't be condemned because of where they decide to shelve his book at Barnes & Noble.

Embellishment, exaggeration, white lies; each has its place.  Seriously -- you don't really want to know how those pants make your ass look, do you?