S West Seattle

[JoB]

Charlabob…

there’s the rub.. we all love a good tale but don’t so much like feeling deceived when what we thought was memoir turns out to be more fictional than actual…

i knew the history when i read it the first time… but the tale it tells still gives me hope that even in the most trying circumstances.. the human will for expression can be stronger than any opposition.

i have been thinking a lot about memoirs lately. i don’t know that it is possible to write one that is factual since so much of a memoir is the internal process through which we see our world… and that is colored by both our assumptions going in and what we would like to believe about ourselves in the retelling…

New Resident…

i really had a problem with James Frey’s book as well as with the Jewish woman in portland whose name i thankfully can’t remember… and all others of their ilk.

there is this style of writing that is called fiction.. and it is where you get to make up stories and tell them in first person as though they were true…

agreed.. it is more difficult to find a publisher for fiction than for a sensationalized memoir… but i won’t be rewarding his lack of honesty by reading any of his books.. no matter how great a writer he is.

i just can’t honor the kind of dishonest shortcut that justifies itself with success.. that kind of shortcut is far too prevalent in our society and has led to a lack of respect for doing things the honest way.

the idea that the ends justify the means has permeated our culture and trickled down to our kids.. whose short attention span makes a dishonest short cut look even more palatable.

Now.. don’t i sound just like an old curmudgeon?

I would prefer to think of myself as a wise woman, but my respect for curmudgeons has grown with my years:)

[charlabob]

Truman Capote invented something called “The NonFiction Novel” when he wrote In Cold Blood — so he successfully hinted that he’d had sex with Perry (one of the cold-blooded killers). And that he knew what was going on in their minds. But no one ever knew if it was true (until Philip Seymour Hoffman played TC and, did, indeed, have sex with Perry. It was in a movie so it must be true, right?)

Norman Mailer (yet another Charla lapse from true feminism) did a lot of “fictional nonfiction” and Hunter S. Thompson? Who knows?

The current generation of faux memoirs simply invented doing it for money and blatant lying. Our generation, JoB, just never understood the profit motive. Some of us still don’t. :-)

[JoB]

Charla…

truman was a real piece of work wasn’t he. that man understood promotion… as did Norman Mailer.. and Hunter.. well who knows what lurked in the recesses of his deranged mind. I met him once and from that have always questioned his grasp on reality. He peopled his world with the bizarre…

but most writers i have known suffer from this altered view of reality.. their own unique perspective.. and as long as that perspective is understood to exist… their art often illuminates truth more than reality would.

the difference is that they wrote fiction based on reality… not reality based on fiction…

i think Truman Capote understood the profit motive quite well.. as did Norman Mailer. They just lived in a time that thought the difference between reality and fiction was important.

do you remember when the biggest insult you could give was liar! liar!. Now that same term is often used in respect and admiration.. you liar you…

it’s a shift i understand and still can’t condone.

my guilty secret is that i read historical fiction and love historical movies and series… all fiction based on reality.

of course, i am the kind of geek who truth checks afterward to make sure that i understand the difference between truth and fiction..

but that doesn’t stop me swooning momentarily when i think of some of the reality bending historical interpretations i have loved to love.

The difference between our generation and what i see happening so frequently now is that we still think reality more compelling than fiction… while the popular subculture that emerged less than a decade after my youth found fiction more compelling than reality… and now we have reality tv staging fictionalized reality…

AARGH!!! it gives me a headache just to contemplate it…

in spite of having a really great time this morning with so much interesting conversation… which i think is the msot compelling part of reality for me…. i think i have to vote once again with my feet for physical reality and head out onto terra firma to find plants and soil to put them in:)

it’s been real;-)

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