The Truth about Memoirs

I like most memoirs I read. I’ve read David Sedaris, Dave Eggers and right now I’m pouring into a book called A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson, which is an engaging travel journal about the Appalachian Trail. In each of the books, you think to yourself that what they are going through is true, but you take it with a grain of salt, you understand that this truth is viewed from the lens of the author. Names can be changed, certain details left out and the story and the essence of the experience is still there. The stories aren’t completely factual. They are, after all, stories. These guys are authors, not journalists. But there’s a fine line that is here. They write engaging stories, but those are based on facts, on things that really happened, on experiences they went through.

Not so much for James Frey and his “memoir”, A Million Little Pieces, which I won’t link to. If you want to find it, you can go ahead and look it up. This was passed off as a book of truth, of something so real that it couldn’t be embellished. It was too real. Oprah’s book club gobbled this book up and apparently was so taken by it’s content, she gushed about it on her show and had this guy as the only guest when they talked about it.

But it’s not real. Not the parts that mattered anyway. Much of the turning points of the book have been challenged on the website The Smoking Gun. They have looked up the periods of time and deconstructed what might have happened on those fateful nights that make up a good part of the book. His claims of being so drunk he blew a .36 which was a county record and his fighting with policemen as they send him to jail seem to be nothing more than an ordinary DUI arrest, no fighting and no jail time–in fact with the reporting officers saying that he was polite and cooperative.

So what’s the big deal then? A guy embellishes his memoir about his struggle with drugs, alcohol and the law–what’s new about that? But to me, it’s how it’s done, it’s what was represented. Tom Scocca breaks down a lot of his book in The New York Observer and although I can do without much of the comparissons about how lying has become more pervasive and acceptable in our society, he does make a good point about what is wrong with Frey’s book. Take for instance this portion of his article:

Thus, the copyright page of My Friend Leonard informs readers: “Some names and identifying characteristics have been changed. Some sequences and details of events have been changed.”

Fine. Then comes the opening sentence: “On my first day in jail, a three hundred pound man named Porterhouse hit me in the back of the head with a metal tray.”

In other words: “On my first day in jail*, a three hundred pound man** named Porterhouse*** hit me in the back of the head**** with a metal tray*****.”

*The author never went to jail.

**Weight is an estimate; also the author, not being in jail, never met such a person.

***Not his real name; also the author never met such a person.

****Because the author’s head was not present in jail, such a blow did not actually land.

***** The composition of the tray is a guess, because the author did not actually get hit by it, because the author was never in jail.

That’s why there is a problem with the book. So much of it depends on actual truth to be an effective memoir.  If those things didn’t actually happen, this is nothing but a crappy novel. After the Smoking Gun came out with the initial accusations, we heard much clammoring about how this was true and that there would be a big libel suit against the website for printing such falsehoods. Shortly after that, you could almost hear the sound of footsteps as everyone involved with the book started backpeddling, started to say this was a memoir that may not be completely true. We heard a great deal of their new phrase–the book was embellished in areas, but there was an “essential truth” to the story behind it. Put in these terms, I was reminded of the word “truthiness”, the definition from Stephen Colbert, not the Oxford English Dictionary. (By the way, if you want a good laugh, click the truthiness link.  It’s more or less unrelated to what I’m writing about, but still a funny read.)

What does the whole thing boil down to? It’s a good question, one that I think calls the definition of a memoir, what qualifies as one, what wouldn’t, where is that line drawn between truth and fiction. Is the author, James Frey guilty of misrepresenting his book, or did the publisher take liberty with his book, sold it for something it’s not? I don’t know the answers to these questions, although I’ve had them rattle around in my head for awhile. Being an author, I believe that memoirs are really about truth to the author, although the events that happened may not have happened in that exact way. But, and this is the point I cannot let slide, those events had to have happened. Oprah has picked the next book in her series as Elie Wiesel’s Night, a memoir who was also questioned about what had actually happened. But there is a difference here: no one questions that Mr. Wiesel had survived the holocaust and spent time in concentration camps. The question of Mr. Frey ever spending a night in jail is real.  If his book is based on those simple facts and they weren’t true, then Mr. Frey, the publishers, Oprah and every other apologist can talk all they want about “essential truth”, but the book is a lie. A lie repeated does not make a truth.

As I was trying to talk this out to myself and Laura was gracious enough to listen to me, I came to certain theories.  Writers of all stripes, even novelists, have a contract with the reader. That unspoken agreement is about truth, that the events that happen in the book have a certain truth to them, that the author is true to his characters.  Writing is ultimately the exploration of truth, even when the entire story is made up.  It’s a truth about the human condition.  But it is still about truth.  Novelists have to be true to character, story and setting, otherwise it reads false.  Journalists need to be true to the facts (although that seems to be less of a trend lately).  Essayists need to be true to what they believe, otherwise their writing rings hollow.  We expect memoirists to be true to the events and their views or feelings towards them, especially those who trumpet so loud about what is real and what isn’t.  Without truth, it doesn’t matter what you write because you are cheating the reader and, eventually, yourself.