Truth, Fiction and Reality: Can We Fight Our Way Out of the Confusion?

Let’s be honest: we see through our own lens, memory isn’t complete, and to spin is to be human. Are memoirs “true”, and what about history books and Critical Race Theory? Truth, as it turns out, is a fickle mistress.

MEMOIRS AND OTHER REALITY STORIES

When the author of the memoir “A Million Little Pieces,” James Frey, was bombarded with the righteous indignation of anyone who cared to comment for having been found to embellish and fictionalize parts of his story, I simply shrugged and continued to admire the raw power of the narrative. When zealous fact-checkers discovered discrepancies in dates and jurisdictions and details of his arrests, the avalanche began: Frey was subject to lawsuits and canceled contracts.

The “fraud,” as it were, was calling the work a “memoir,” which comes with a certain expectation that the story being told is “true,” although no one fully believes that every detail and bit of dialogue in a memoir actually took place as written. We don’t record every conversation or snap a thousand photos a day, so some “filling in” of the truth is acceptable, apparently, but Frey’s report of an 87-day incarceration which turned out to be a 5-day hold and release was deemed out-of-bounds.

Memoir writers should simply preface each book with a statement like ‘75% of the following narrative actually took place to the best of my recollection; 25% may be subject to some form of poetic license. I make no claim to any specific passage or reference to actually be “true,” in the common definition of that word.’

But given that, will the fact-checkers come back with a determination that 32% of a book was fabricated, and then imprint the “fraud” claim upon the author? If the percentages were left out of the statement, would it be too vague for readers looking for “true stories,” and would sales be impacted? Did Frey call his work a memoir because it would be more marketable?

The film of A Million Little Pieces was released in 2019 and that reignited the controversy. The screenwriter, Aaron Taylor-Johnson (who also played the lead) said the need to pare the length of the film down to about 90 minutes eliminated some of the more fanciful passages, and that he checked with Frey when he needed to. At other times he was quoted as saying that it didn’t matter — he was story-telling either way, and the message remained the same. Which was is it? Or are we looking at it in the wrong way? The clichés in the dialogue suggest that at least part of the dialogue is fabricated (‘one moment of freedom is worth a lifetime of bondage’ — did the beautiful girl really say that as she and Mr. Frey were about to make love?) — and I guess according to this convention we expect dialogue to be stylized, but insist that arrests and rehab stints are accurately reported.

Later, there were many defenders of Frey, but the initial outcry was from the virtuous champions of fact, and it almost derailed the writer’s career, and forced anyone involved to react. When the publisher offered refunds to any reader who purchased the book early on and felt defrauded, they paid out a bit over $27,000, about 125 customers. For a book that sold in the millions, that’s not much.

‘75% of the following narrative actually took place to the best of my recollection; 25% may be subject to some form of poetic license. I make no claim to any specific passage or reference to actually be “true,” in the common definition of that word.’

There’s a genre that is now being called Creative Non-Fiction, which unmasks the idea that any written expression can be fully objective. The writer and the culture bearers of the era and the people interpreting the public’s taste all have perceptions, tendencies and a bottom line to consider, so the implication that Non-Fiction bears none of these subjective influences is questionable. With the use of the word Creative in the category, the writing that is transparent about this separates itself from the traditional Non-Fiction, a research-oriented genre building “provable” assertions that were part of the chorus that changed “Social Studies” into “Social Science” before the millennium — and of course with science comes the veneer of objectivity, and the alleged insignificance of the individual. But scientists know that the observer makes a difference, an observation they couldn’t ignore at the sub-atomic level, but in the social sciences the myth of objectivity is tantalizing to those looking to add gravitas to their field.

But the Creative Non-Fiction writer angles in another direction. They are not telling a story born in their imagination: they are reporting on aspects of the world that spark certain ideas and shape events into narratives that may or may not be supported by research. It is not fiction, but the imagination of this writer matters. I recently read a political science piece that grouped the history of American politics into umbrella eras: Jefferson, Jackson, and Lincoln for America’s early years; FDR, Kennedy and Reagan anchor their part of the modern era, the idea being that the influence of these presidents lasted far beyond the years they were in office. It was a smart piece of writing, an accessible personal view of America’s thematic developments. It didn’t have excessive citations or lean on a massive amount of research. It was a thought exercise, grouping popular ideas together, a good example of creative non-fiction. Was it truth, or did it prove something? Where did the ideas come from, or is the author’s thinking and logic an acceptable point of origin? Is it acceptable for a piece to simply pose questions for ongoing consideration, with the author admitting they have no answers and aren’t even sure the questions are of value?

Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Tests are popular works that blurred the lines between fiction and non-fiction; Thompson’s Gonzo Journalism was a new genre that employed journalism as the base from which he took off into flights of fancy. The dreamlike Marilyn by Norman Mailer was often slotted as a Biography, but as in the other two books, Mailer took the subject and endowed it with his own emotional content. Thompson and Wolfe are embedded in their stories; Mailer is embedded in his fantasy, his reaction to the subject is as much the theme of the book as are the incidents in Marilyn’s life. All three are meaningful, ground-breaking works in their way. Did the obvious departure from objective standards save them from the scrutiny of works claiming to be “true”? Were they given special license to forego objectivity and celebrate their personal involvement in the action? Or did they force an unwilling public to deal with their irreverence and outrageousness? Could those books have been written any other way? Was our consciousness expanded by having to deal with ambiguity, the breaking apart of old paradigms, the understanding that we were in a new world of ideas and behavior?

TODAY’S CONTROVERSIAL TOPIC

The recent emergence of Critical Race Theory (CRT), a university-level history curriculum, into the national consciousness is an extension of the polarized politics of our era: people are either for it or against it, and they are divided along predictable political lines. Its purported appearance in high school teaching has sparked a major controversy. The left believes the truth must be told (and taught) about America’s sins and refusal to examine them regarding the issue of race in the country; the right sees an undermining of traditional American values, and has alerted us that CRT is beginning to infiltrate other subject areas in casual references and the types of examples given in everything from math problems to the prompts in essay contests. CRT’s supporters have been called unpatriotic and worse; its opponents are often labeled as racists and reactionaries. Intelligent discourse has been rendered impossible by the inflamed passions and inflexible “ideo-centrism” (the inability of individuals, as part of their “team,” to concede any points to their opponents or entertain any nuance that is not 100% backing their main idea) that characterizes today’s exchanges, if the current use of language can be called an “exchange.”

Part of this controversy comes down to the problem we faced with memoirs and “true stories” and the lack of nuance we entertain in that arena as well. I was recently studying a situation where decisions were being made based on actions historical figures had reportedly taken hundreds of years ago. One side in that debate insisted the other side had their facts all wrong. They found discrepancies in the reported events and affiliations that were the underpinning for a set of recommendations. The spokesperson, citing “historical integrity,” kept hammering away at “things that did and didn’t happen.” The certainty of the high-level scholars was astounding: I believed we now viewed the narratives of the past as products of a particular viewpoint, controlled by those in power, often “edited” by censors whose “spin” may have been much more intrusive than that term would imply.

In this instance, the protection of the professionals who might be displaced by a view of history that didn’t include traditional historians seemed to be part of the resistance, so they fell back on “facts” that may not have been reliable. The whole thing lived in the murky world of “true stories,” inherited history, socio-political spin-doctors, zealots and believers and partisans who have contributed to a climate in which siding with your “team” becomes a test of loyalty and allegiance that cuts off the deep thinker and stunts critical intelligence.

I don’t have the answer to the Critical Race Theory controversy. Its themes, in tandem with other views, in combination crafting an approach to history that can maintain love of country with an honest appraisal of fault and systemic imbalance, with the understanding that all narratives need to be examined, would seem to be a direction that could bring about the beginnings of a fragile unity. Instead we search for the elusive Truth, mine vs. yours, and I’m beginning to see, paraphrasing Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” ……. the best minds of my generation ……… destroyed not by madness, but by forced rigidity, a narrow sanity.

IMAGINATION AND AMBIGUITY

If we have Creative Non-Fiction, I’d like to make a pitch for Speculative Sociology, where research and imagination can forge the kind of higher-level authenticity we see in painting, where Impressionism is not a refutation of Realism but an enhancement of it, a new lens, and we even got so far as to embrace Cubism, which really scrambled the senses and gave us visual time as a simultaneous viewing experience, all angles there at once, as we should be considering all angles in our telling of history.

Has America produced a higher quotient of freedom, prosperity, opportunity and hope than the world has ever seen? There’s a very strong case to be made for that. Has it been brutal to some groups, committed some horrific sins that still linger today and require real attention and resources to make right? I’m in that camp too. Can these ideas sit together in some semblance of Truth that we can agree on? That’s the question as we enter this stage of our history. Like the presidential eras mentioned earlier, we are in a time that is still influenced by the 2016–2020 period. There’s a chasm that’s getting wider, and little in the public arena that speaks to building bridges. It’s time to reverse that tendency and embrace a new type of Truth — a complex set of circumstances and shadings that hold together to make a diverse people unified, that give us something to believe in beyond the fact-checking and the positions on specific issues.