Thoughts of LoWriter

Fic or Non-Fic: Who Really Cares?

If you're interested in literature, you are probably going to see this Strib article today. A Million Little Pieces (and The Summer of Ordinary Ways in another article late 2005) are fueling the age-old debate about how factual memoirs have to be. In the case of The Summer of Ordinary Ways, the author's family is trying to get a court order to make the publisher stop printing the book (as I understand it).

I find today's article about A Million Little Pieces particularly interesting, however, because a large percent of the facts that were purportedly "fabricated" are facts that, to me, sound like things someone might have experienced during a DRUG TRIP (i.e. the fact that he thought he got on a plane covered in blood and vomit or the fact that the police say they don't think he went through the crack houses he claims he went through or the fact that he thinks he had teeth removed and dental work done without anestesia). Since the book is about addiction, I find it interesting that they're surprised that maybe, perhaps, some of the details are less than 100% accurate.

Additionally, who cares? I can understand why the family of the woman who wrote The Summer of Ordinary Ways might be upset because they were portrayed in a way they felt was unjust, but I don't see why people are up in arms over this. Having never read either book, I hesitate to say too much regarding content, but it seems to me that if an individual wants to make his/her own life more horrible on paper than it really was, then why should anyone else care? Maybe it was that horrible to him while he was experiencing it. I mean, if he had labeled it fiction, no one would be having this conversation, and presumably, a person can learn as much from a work of fiction as one can from a work of non-fiction. In fact, I learn far more from my science fiction/fantasy reading than I do from most of my literary reading about human nature. Additionally, no one views events in the same way because we all have a different perspective on events. I don't think this makes our perspective any less real for us at the time. Sometimes our memories are faulty.

I've thought about this issue a lot because someday, I want to write down my story. Any writing I've done so far for it has been done either in the safety of a classroom where no one knows me or under the umbrella of a pen name. These two books and the public reaction to them have really made me desire to have a private pen name and remain somewhat annonymous. I keep an annonymous blog in addition to this one, and I can't tell you how freeing it is, especially for the exploration process. I've found out far more about how I feel about things in the last three months than ever before. I can't say that everything I remember happening in the past actually happened. I mean, who can recall a precise conversation? I've kept excellent notes, but I can't say that I know everything is factual. It also took me a long time to come to terms with the fact that I was never as bad ass as I imagined I was. Just because I broke the rules at Bethel doesn't mean that I was a miscreant in society, and it took me a long time to realize that.

Fiction is considered good if it "rings true," but does non-fiction have to stick to purely factual events in order to be meaningful? Isn't the purpose of journalistic writing to stick to purely factual events, and don't we read creative non-fiction because it does embellish the facts or fill in the spaces between what happened and how we felt about it? What do we do about the works of creative writing that fall somewhere between fiction and non-fiction?

Bottom line? Does a work of literature have to be "true" in order to be meaningful? If so, what does it take to make a work true?