Truth

So apparently James Frey glossed over, or outright lied, depending on whom you read, about the veracity of his book A Million Little Pieces.

I heard a book critic speak about several other authors whose stories may or may not have been perfectly honest, notably Augusten Burroughs' Running With Scissors. Today I see that Elie Weisel's Night, which has just been retranslated into English, has a few mistakes. Night is Weisel's memoir of living through a concentration camp during the Holocaust.

So here's today's point. Why does it matter, or does it actually matter, if what an author purports to be true isn't exactly as it happened? And frankly, why do we accord more validity to the one saying it's untrue than to the original storyteller? Late sociologist Robert Merton said that if you define your reality as true, then it's true. So if Burroughs saw a situation one way and that became for him the truth and he wrote about it as such, is it valid/does it matter for another person who was part of his story to debate the veracity of what he's written? Is Weisel's story any less horrifying b/c he can't remember exactly how old he was when he entered the camp?

Or is it the fact that the author has actually said, "This is the truth" that is so upsetting to us? It's more the sense that we've been lied to, that we've misplaced our sympathies, that we were taken for a ride.

But if that's the case, that we don't like being lied to, how come The Smoking Gun, which came up with the dirt on Frey in the first place, isn't positively ripping on White House spokesman Scott McClellan every waking day?

Hunter S. Thompson wrote for years about drug-addled activities in the first person, and developed a cult following of um, recreational-drug supporters, but said repeatedly that none of it was true b/c if it had been, he'd be dead by now. (Actually, Hunter is dead now. But by his own gun, not from massive amounts of mescaline consumed in the Nevada desert.)

If I read a story that seems like an account of the author's life, is it any less meaningful if I find out the author tweaked it a bit? Don't movies do that all the time? I think we can all agree on the value of editing, prior post re: the quality of that editing notwithstanding. We happily endure the idea that someone else will determine the end-product that gets to us. It occurs in all media all the time. (I mean, I think my ass would give out if I were forced to sit through the entire contents of War and Peace on film, no?)

I just don't see the big deal. Whether it's 100% true or even not true, who cares? If it's a compelling tale and you're somehow changed for interacting with it, I think it's done its job.

Seems like we're holding Frey up to some standard the rest of us don't strictly adhere to and I don't understand why.

And frankly, when you become a grownup, believing 100% of what someone tells you gets you branded a naif.