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Echoing Maureen Dowd, Arianna Huffington is exercised over the fact that James Frey’s memoir A Million Little Pieces, now comprehensively exposed as fraudulent baloney, is still listed by the New York Times on their nonfiction paperback bestseller list.
I posted a comment on Huffington’s own site, but it doesn’t seem to be showing up so I’ll repeat myself here. This is a silly argument because calling a book “nonfiction” has never meant any kind of certification that its contents are true. Edgar Cayce books are “nonfiction.” Immanuel Velikovsky is “nonfiction.” Self-published tracts about how bees from Venus are attacking Your Child’s Brain are “nonfiction.” All of these are packs of lies. They’re also not fiction, which is to say, narratives put forth under the rubric of “I’m now going to tell you a story which I made up.” Yes, there are books which fall into a gray area. (Into which category would you put Avram Davidson’s Adventures in Unhistory? You have five minutes. Show your work.) A Million Little Pieces isn’t one of those books, any more than this particular pack of lies.
What’s more, as an editor devoted to the value of good fiction, I wouldn’t want the Times, or anyone else, to start using “fiction” as a dumping-ground for works of nonfiction which have proved to be full of lies. There’s a good discussion to be had of whether respectable book publishers should make a greater effort to ensure the basic truthfulness, or at least truthful intention, of work published as “nonfiction.” But using “fiction” as a synonym for “lying” isn’t the way to go.
Agreed absolutely. The sort of thing I write is already in competition with flashy crap novels, after all. And if you took all the flashy incorrect or unverified books out of the nonfiction section and chucked them into the fiction section, there'd be a lot more physics textbooks on the nonfiction bestseller list.
I tell a tale of sleepy non-sequiturs, I see. Time to get to bed before the sun turns me to dust and ashes, har har. Brain.
What's more depressing about it being on the Non Fiction Bestsellers after being exposed as lies is the "best selling" part -- people in large numbers are continuing to buy it.
Something being a pack of lies does not make it non-fiction. Look at the garbage that comes out of the Assministration. Fiction is a lie, but we get in with the understanding that it is supposed to be a lie.
The true outrage being it ever made on one of those lists at all in the first place (even before the hue and cry).
I don't think that labeling it as fiction is wrong. It was written as a novel, it was intended to be fiction, and it was presented as such, and it was the editor and publisher who called it non-fiction as a marketing ploy. It was as you have suggested, bad fiction, and the only thing that they thought would make it work would be to relabel it as non-fiction and sell it based on that.
The last time I can think of something similar achieving this degree of success was Dianetics. I don't expect everything in a non-fiction book to be utterly true, but I don't find the designation between the two to be utterly arbitrary as I think you are suggesting.
I'd propose we add a new category, then.
Maybe "voyeur porn" or "truthy" or even "moneymaking disgraces," which would serve a similar function to the proposed ".xxx" TLD, acting as both magnet and warning, depending on your reading habits.
In which category should The Da Vinci Code go?
Thanks for putting words to something I've been thinking since I heard right-wingers grumbling about Farenheit 9/11's status as a documentary.
A question I had to ask when sorting books for a library sale: are the biographies/autobiographies of politicians fiction or non-fiction?
It's so postmodern that the meaning of "non-fiction" as a genre classification is being debated. I'm not saying it shouldn't be debated, it's just that I've always hated postmodernism, what little of it I could understand, and now I'm beginning to feel like they were right.
"I don't expect everything in a non-fiction book to be utterly true, but I don't find the designation between the two to be utterly arbitrary as I think you are suggesting."
Sean, can you tell me where I said the distinction was "arbitrary"? In any way?
I was always under the impression that authors were given a lot of artistic license in their own memoirs. You were given the benefit of the doubt, as long as you didn't say something like, "I was married to Grace Kelly and played bass for Sleater-Kinney."
Fiction: prose that the author claims is false.
Non-fiction: prose that the author claims is true.
So long as Frey says he thinks he wrote a memoir, it should be in non-fiction. Ditto for Streiber's life with aliens.
Sean Bosker: It was written as a novel, it was intended to be fiction, and it was presented as such, and it was the editor and publisher who called it non-fiction as a marketing ploy.
As I understand it, Frey first made the rounds with it as a novel and had it rejected everywhere. He then sent it around as a memoir and got it published. His agent and publisher didn't take a book submitted to them as fiction and call it nonfiction; Frey presented it as nonfiction.
Will Shetterly has it right.
People tying themselves in knots over this are doing so because they don't grasp that "nonfiction" and "non-fictional" don't mean the same thing.
Seems to me the NYT covered the issue perfectly by long ago April 21, 2003 noting the false ring in its signed editorial opinion. Quite agree that looking to the NYT to impose its own judgement on the best seller lists - as opposed to the signed reviews - is to simultaneously ask the impossible and the unwise.
Little problem: This story is supposed to be all true. It is supposed to be a scorchingly honest account of how its author sunk to unimaginable depths,....
April 21, 2003
BOOKS OF THE TIMES; Cry and You Cry Alone? Not if You Write About It
By JANET MASLIN
A MILLION LITTLE PIECES
By James Frey
383 pages. Nan A. Talese/Doubleday. $22.95.
I'd quite agree that looking to the NYT to impose its own judgement on the best seller lists - as opposed to the signed reviews - is to simultaneously ask the impossible and the unwise.
I'd be interested in opinions on the way Slate http://www.slate.com/id/2135069/?nav=fo is piling on Nan Talese for defending the accuracy long after she knew or should have known otherwise. ....Talese had reason to believe Frey hadn't told the truth in his memoir well before that. We know this because Deborah Caulfield Rybak published a piece in the Minneapolis Star Tribune way back in July 2003 that not only flagged other likely fabrications in the book, but solicited comment on those likely fabrications from …[ellipsis in original] Nan Talese......
Timothy Noah writes "Chatterbox" for Slate
Any thoughts on the obligation of the editor and publisher? Especially as the distance from imprint name to business owner grows?
I would like to see a category: lies.
The problem, bryan, is who will decide if something is a lie. Some people do believe all those books about wishy-washy Hillary being the Devil's Bra-burning Lesbian Bride.
It seems perfectly clear to me: fiction is made-up-stuff told to entertain and (perhaps, if you're lucky) turn up some actual truths; non-fiction is non-made-up, although it may be the personal truth of memoir (my mother would doubtless have a different take on my upbringing than I would, for instance). Lies, as you point out, are lies. Perhaps the Times should start a separate category for bestsellers in that category?
I note with some amusement, that Amazon's list of statistically improbable phrases in A Charge to Keep includes "school property taxes, reading initiative, education commissioner." As the parent of two kids in public schools...
Just thought you all would like to know that this is currently a subject of hot discussion among American public librarians. It seems to re-surface every decade or so (well-known previous examples: Forrest Carter's THE EDUCATION OF LITTLE TREE and Beverly Sparks's GO ASK ALICE) and never seems to get resolved. Personally, whenever I do a library tour for students, I ask them to tell me the difference between "fiction" and "non-fiction". Some bright spark always eventually offers that "non-fiction is true; fiction isn't." I then offer counter-examples (e.g., political opinions, mythology in NF, barely retouched historical biographies in Fiction). I then point to the poetry and essays and foreign-language literature in the NF section. I add the fact that every book in the "Fiction section" does in fact have a "Dewey number (mostly 813.54)." When they are all stumped and give up, I conclude: "Fiction, for the purposes of the public library, consists of those books the librarians think people are looking for when they ask us: 'Where's the fiction section?'"
You've got Sparks at your library, Lesley? Anyone of them wears Seventies glasses and carries a clock-shaped Clank in her hair?
Sean, non-fiction isn't a genre, it's just a blanket term for everything that doesn't fit in the category of "fiction". A phone book, a book about how to program a computer, a cookbook, a book of photos of Paris -- all of these are non-fiction, but they have very little in common other than that.
What's postmodern about any of this?
Are Robinson Crusoe, Journal of the Plague Year, and Moll Flanders non-fiction then?
It seems to me that they only difference between them and Mr. Frey's work is that they are older and better-written.
Addendum: difference in terms of categorization, that is. They are obviously all substantively different on other grounds.
While I'd agree that some works do not qualify as "fiction", there are some that do, in my opinion, qualify for the label "horror", as in some guy writing about some boogeyman who's gonna get you in your sleep if you vote Democrat next election, etc, etc. It seems to be one of those unending sequels really.
sigh.
Then, of course, you have (if we may spill over into the question of fiction and non-fiction films) title cards like this one at the beginning of "Fargo":
"This is a true story. The events depicted in this film took place in Minnesota in 1987. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred."
On the DVD William Macy tells the story of asking the Coen brothers to tell him more about the actual crime upon which the movie was based. They told him there wasn't any actual crime like that and that they just made up the part about it being true. Macy says he told them "You can't do that!" Their response was "Why not?"
I guess after the movie opened to much acclaim, some enterprising reporter discovered the title card was B.S. The Coen brothers responded with a press release that they were shocked, shocked that they had fallen victim to somebody's ruse, and they promised heads would roll.
Of course, all of that is perfectly true, but I just made it up. :)
Defining nonfiction is tricky. The authors of Why Cats Paint are presenting as true something that their readers should recognize clearly isn't; but calling it fiction wouldn't be right. For one thing, fiction is narrative.
James, literature includes fiction and non-fiction, perhaps because of examples like those.
Theophylact, it doesn't matter whether the author believes something is true. I would argue that L. Ron Hubbard and Joseph Smith were lying their asses off. What matters is the presentation.
The nice thing about "non-fiction" is that defining it is easy: It's anything that isn't fiction.
Defining fiction is what's tricky. When an author adds a foreword to a fantastic story claiming it was told by someone who has since gone on, is that story non-fiction? Depends on whether the author asks the publisher to present it as fiction or non-fiction.
I propose a friendly amendment: There's non-fiction, fiction, and delusion. It seems to me, for instance, that von Danikan is a liar while Velikovsky is a nut. This does not make one more "true" than the other, but preserves the important distinction between "I think so," and "Maybe I can gull another sucker."
BTW, when Whitley Streiber's bad sf came out, Thomas Disch was writing theater reviews for The Nation, so they gave it to him to review. If you have the good fortune to be able to find a copy, read it sitting down, without any beverage in your hand.
Well, Defoe's books were usually published as the memoirs of their title characters (I love the bit at the beginning of Moll Flanders where the author/"editor" deplores all these sensational romances being published nowadays, and doubts anyone will believe the plain and truthful tale he's about to present. Very much like those movie title cards, only snarkier!), whereas Frey was claiming these experiences as his own. Not that it really makes that much difference, from an ethical or descriptive standpoint, as far as fiction/nonfiction. Still.
Brooke... Are you saying that people actually believed that those 'memoirs' were truly true and that the readers didn't see that for the storytelling device that it was? Strange. Did anybody believe that the narrator of A Princess of Mars was for real when he said he was only recounted what John Carter had told him?
A non-factual narrative presented and promoted as factual?
Isn't that usually just called...
...bullshit?
Serge:
They were, indeed, passed off as true, and some people, at least, accepted them as true. There was some scandal when the Journal of the Plague Year's fictional nature became more generally known (of course, the narrator there is anonymous). Kenner refers to them as "counterfeited" memoirs.
The works were all published before the novel had been established, and what we would think of as prose fiction tended to mean prose romances (mediaeval plus the Arcadia and a few other more recent examples). Prose satires might mimic romance or non-fictional forms (the slightly later Gulliver's Travels is slightly different from Defoe, since it overtly seems to pass itself off as memoirs but was intended by the author and publisher to be read as satire from the outset). Defoe is didactic but not satiric.
Defoe went to some pains to maximize the verisimilitude of his work (RC is based on a real sailor's experiences -- Alexander Selkirk -- and MF is based on a recognizable "real life" type).
The question I asked was a bit of a trick question: they antedate our modern ways of dividing up literature, and in the period "fiction" would simply have made "a thing made up". There was no market for realistic prose fiction as such (that would have to wait for Richardson and Fielding). By C17 usage, they were fictions; by today's usage, which has added the technical genre meaning to the word, they are fictions but not "fiction".
While not arguing Patrick's general point, in Frey's particular case, he maintained for a long while that the memoir was true, but of course it wasn't. It was also first pitched as a novel before it was sold as a memoir. I think there's a pretty good evidence chain for it being re-listed as fiction, in the roman a clef style.
Brooke: I think that was a trope at the time. The "publisher's note" at the beginning of Les Liaisons dangereuses is a case in point.
re my previous comment: I am an idiot who forgot what century Defoe is from. But it makes the Laclos preface funnier.
The forward/disclaimer that something is a true story is an old device in fiction*; sometimes it really does mean that a narrative is a fictionalized account of actual events, and sometimes it's there to add artistic verisimilitude to the purely fictional story. Robinson Crusoe is not an exact account of the experiences of Alexander Selkirk; it is inspired by them. It is a fiction with truth behind it; its pretence of being an entirely truthful account is a literary device.
What we have in the case of Frey and his agent and editor is a case of bllshttng, and as someone raised in the American frontier tradition of improving a story so it is more entertaining, effective (for various values of effective), or what have you, I feel we're not out of line in saying it's capable of competing at the world-class level**. However, since it came into print dressed as nonfiction, it remains in that marketing category until it's reissued with the claim that it's fiction.
*see Sir Walter Scott, and lots of others as well.
**As we say here at the South "I am something of a bllshttr myself, but I like to watch a professional at work, so I'll just sit back and let you have at it."
Thanks, James. Very interesting.
On the overall subject of BS or delusion... There's this TV show called medium that I watch, in spite of the original episode saying that this is inspired by a real person. Thank goodness that they very seldom bring up that canard anymore because the show is fun. (The middle kid makes me think of what my wife must have been at that age, based on what I was told about her sordid past.) I can thus enjoy it wihout feeling I'm subsidizing crap.
I must confess I was briefly tempted to read The Da Vinci Code in spite of all this, with the intention of approaching it as a work of fiction. But some reviews said that it's not even well written BS. So I passed.
Wow... did I really plain-as-day miss when the DaVinci Code was presented as non-fiction? I remember some bits about Brown claiming he researched stuff... but Neal Stephenson does a lot of research too, but that doesn't make The Baroque Cycle non-fiction (I hope).
Fiction which refers to true things (that really happened, or really exist, or really work) is still fiction. Though, I admit, I really am actually capable of having blocked and forgotten the pitch of DVC as non-fiction. Am I missing the point? Is there some other reason DVC is relevant to this discussion?
A more interesting question would be something like Flatterland which is really a book about math, but presented in narrative.
You mean, Scott, that The Da Vinci Code is not supposed to be a fictionalized rendition of something that has been claimed as true? In that case, I apologize for my comments. But that means that I misunderstood everything I read about it and I'm not that far gone yet. I hope.
The didact in me maintains that believing and not believing what you claim as true should stay subsets of non-fiction; declaring the latter to be bullshit isn't much use, because we decide for ourselves what's bullshit. Ariana Huffington and Co. may want to recategorize Frey, but their success would open the door to Republicans wanting lefty work in fiction, Catholics wanting Baigent and Leigh in fiction, and so on.
The artist in me says all writers try to make their writing as true as it can be on its own terms. It's just a shame that some of them don't realize that when we speak of truth, we want metaphorical and literal truth to be the same, or to be acknowledged as different.
Another interesting border-case would be George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman series, which, though clearly fictional, maintain straight-faced a conceit of non-fictionality in the forwards and footnotes...
(Even though the Fraser of the forward 'claims' them to be actual memoirs, we are obligated to ignore that claim in sorting the works, are we not...)
Serge: I haven't followed DVC carefully. But it was not my understanding that his protagonist was believed to be a real person... or that cardinal guy who dies in the first chapter was a real person.
It was my very limited understanding that Brown was intentionally and unambiguously writing a piece of fiction (imaginary characters, imaginary plot). Then Brown claimed (though possibly in bad faith) that the discoveries that those fictional characters make are factual (an action which does not change that the book was fictional). Though in the real world they had been discovered by other people in other situations. (For what it's worth, even if he does claim that they're real, they're mostly not.)
But let me disclaim again... I haven't payed much attention to DVC marketting and media. So, if Brown claimed that all of the people in the book were real people and that those things really happened, I am utterly and entirely mistaken.
Jeff R: there are other authors working in that tradition, although perhaps none with such thoroughness as Fraser; Laurie King's Holmes&Russell series comes to mind.
An even more interesting case would be George MacDonald Frasier's McAuslan novels. They are essentially true stories. He changed the names, and ran two soldiers together into McAuslan, but all the incidents happened. He ended up having a very interesting conversation with the colonel of his regiment about it, years later.
My apologies, Scott. I didn't mean that DVC's characters were supposed to be based on real people. I was refering to the premises of the Code itself, that there is a Secret Order, that kind of stuff. Again, my apologies.
Anyway, my original point was that I was tempted to read it as a work of fiction thru and thru, but my understanding was that it wasn't particularly well written. But that was one reviewer's opinion.
Besides Flashman, there is Elisabeth Peters's Amelia Peabody mysteries, which are supposed to be real - as a literary device.
I found Teresa's comment on Huffington's article. Couldn't figure out how to link to it directly, but it was there: under January 31st, 2006, 8:35am.
And I concur on the idea that we don't need any sort of "lies" section, or any change to the system as-is. Borders already puts all the political stuff in sociology, and I, therefore, have a more interesting time trying to find the real sociology books (not that I then buy them there anyway, but big-box stores can be good for browsing and then ordering at small, friendly, local outfits).
My roommate and I are both wondering what annoyed Oprah so much about this that she down-dressed Frey on live TV. This little tidbit can't be all there is to the story.
Into which category would you put Avram Davidson’s Adventures in Unhistory?
Into the "I MUST OWN THIS" category. Alas, the cost...
The author asserting that what follows is totally, completely, utterly true, honest-injun, is such a common trope that when Arthur Golden wrote in the intro to Memoirs of a Geisha that it was a true story, I took it for granted that this was verisimilitude, so I was totally surprised when his subject later sued him for breach of confidentiality--
-- I just now suddenly thought that I ought to check on the facts of this, and it turned out I was half-wrong. The intro to Memoirs is written as by a fictional character, so it is added verisimilitude. But it later emerged that Golden had interviewed a famous retired geisha, Mineko Iwasaki, as part of his research, and ended up basing the story substantially on her life, except for some of the nasty stuff he made up, causing Iwasaki to lose much face in Gion. I hope she's getting some of the movie money as part of the settlement.
Eh, if you're going to be inspired by someone to write a piece of fiction, but lack the imagination to create a new story (the opposite of Frey's case, I guess), then you should have the good sense to treat it as a biography and check that it isn't socially embarassing.
For some reason we have a Browsing Section in the academic art library where I work, which has the latest New York Times bestsellers on it. I'll eventually have to decide what to do with Mr. Frey's little book, since tossing it sideways out the back door isn't an option (strict no weeding policy. It sucks major Dewey).
on the plus side, I soon will get to catalog our school's collection f comics, all 7500 titles, including Spider-man #1. It's a trade off for the Nicki Hilton biography and the Portuguese exhibition catalogues.
Serge, Dan Brown and Baigent & Leigh are relevant here. While I pay as little attention as possible to Brown, I've gathered that he read Holy Blood, Holy Grail, believed it was true or truish because it was published as non-fiction, and wrote his remarkably badly written novel. Then Baigent & Leigh sued him because the only good things in his book are theirs. But Baigent and Leigh are in a bit of a trap, because they can't say they ran with an old hoax because it looked like a fun way for writers to make beaucoup bucks.
Maybe this will help to clarify the nature of non-fiction. It's like "not guilty," which doesn't mean you're innocent; it only means you're not declared guilty. Non-fiction is "not fiction", which doesn't mean it's true; it only means it's not declared fiction.
Another interesting border-case would be George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman series, which, though clearly fictional, maintain straight-faced a conceit of non-fictionality in the forwards and footnotes...
The Lensman books do some of this too: all of the books have footnotes (some of which refer to the other books), and Children of the Lens begins and ends with a note from a character to the reader.
(At least, the editions I have do.)
I have the feeling there are other books which have footnotes in a similar style that I've read, but aren't coming to mind. I do like such things.
I don't think it's really a problematic category, but the "fiction jokily presenting itself as non-fiction" trope is way older than Defoe, and goes back at least as far as Lucian's True History. And possibly to Apuleius' Golden Ass, too, which Augustine certainly understood to be autobiography rather than fiction (and which led in part to Apuleius' reputation as a wonder-worker to rival Christ - the man transformed himself into a donkey, for goodness' sake, what more do you want?[*]).
It may even go back to Plato, depending on what you make of his Socrates.
[*] The other reason for Apuleius' reputation as a magician was his genuine trial for using magic, which accusation he pretty firmly refuted.
A bit of a side issue - but if I was asked to categorize Adventures in Unhistory, I'd say that it falls into the category of books that I covet shamelessly, but can't afford given the ridiculous prices ($800+) that people are asking for it. Wessels mentioned a couple of years ago that Tor was thinking of reissuing it - is this still on the cards?
I'm reminded of one of the bits in the glossary of Le Guin's Always Coming Home, where it discussed the difference between "fact" and "fiction", and how it isn't so black and white for the people in the book. (It's out on loan, so I can't quote it right now.) For example, "propaganda" is hard to place on a fact/fiction axis, but was far off to one side of the peoples' "map" of such things.
Yo, bro, don't be hatin' on Edgar Cayce.
Forget "Fargo", think "Blair Witch Project".
quoting some IMDB trivia about the movie:
When promoting the film, the producers claimed it was real footage. Some people still believe it.
So, when Blair Witch first came out, was it "Fiction" or "non-fiction"?
James Frey is just a symptom of a larger marketing scheme, which is an outcome of some interesting human psychology: the suspension of disbelief can be enhanced by telling people you're telling them the truth.
There was a movie I saw with a friend a number of years ago. I can't remember the movie, but it was something like a blair witch project or something, where it was at least the people and technology were in line with reality, the only thing the audience had to swallow was a ghost or monster or something. Anyway, the thing I remember when we walked out, was that I asked my friend what he thought, and he said:
"If it's true, it was pretty scary. If it isn't true, it was pretty lame."
And that line has always rung for me whenever the fiction/nonfiction boundary gets blurry.
And of course the V.C. Andrews novels, which as I recall were initially marketed as a true story.
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell has footnotes, which are as well written as the text.
Also quoting IMDB trivia for "Blair Witch Project":
This film was in the Guinness Book Of World Records for "Top Budget:Box Office Ratio" (for a mainstream feature film). The film cost $22,000 to make and made back $240.5 million, a ratio of $1 spent for every $10,931 made.
cd: We are reissuing Avram Davidson's Adventures in Unhistory this coming December; that's why it sprang to my mind.
Will Shetterly writes:
"Maybe this will help to clarify the nature of non-fiction. It's like 'not guilty,' which doesn't mean you're innocent; it only means you're not declared guilty. Non-fiction is 'not fiction', which doesn't mean it's true; it only means it's not declared fiction."That's exactly right, and it renders 4/5 of the definitional pilpul in this conversation moot.
Something there is about arguments over the precise borders between categories, that's just catnip to people like us. Chip Delany helped wean me off that a few years ago, when he observed that endless arguments about edge cases leave us with less understanding of the center, rather than more.
That's good news on the Avram Davidson front: put me down for a copy. (I missed it the first time only because -in those distant pre-Amazon days - I was too busy changing diapers to get myself to a real bookstore.)
I think some people are mistaking verisimilitude for non fiction.
Here's the part where Frey screwed up: he didn't play by allegorical autobiography rules. He didn't have conversations with God, or pretend that reality was conspiring against him. He simply passed off his bad novel as a loser's memoir. And people bought it, because they believed he was really screwed up. Turns out they were right, just not in the way they thought they were.
Which points a finger at an ugly truth: the book reading public would rather read sloppy prose about some loser, so long as they think it's true because it makes them feel better about themselves.
Sean, can you tell me where I said the distinction was "arbitrary"? In any way?
No, I can't. In retrospect, I can see that I misinterpreted your OP. I thought I might be on shaky ground, which is why I qualified my post with "I think." When you posted other non-fiction that was lies, I took this to mean you were saying that non-fiction is another kind of fiction.
Avram, my point was that when we get to a point where it becomes difficult to decide what is non-fiction and what is not, we start having to parse things based on intention and unverified claims, political opinion, all the subjective shades of meaning that the post modernists seem to spend a lot of time on. That said, as soon as I use the word 'post modern' I'm in over my head.
P J Evans asked:
"A question I had to ask when sorting books for a library sale: are the biographies/autobiographies of politicians fiction or non-fiction?"
I simply can't help it; don't hold it against me.
They're classified as fantasy.
This has been a discussion about books presented as non-fiction, that turn out to be untrue.
Are there any cases of books presented as fiction, that turned out be true? I don't mean historical novels, but books recounting actual events, but concealing them in the guise of being made up.
They're classified as fantasy.
So now I'm imagining Profiles in Courage as ghosted by the other T. H. White, in which John Quincy Adams learns about the responsibilites of the people's servants by being turned into a badger by the Masonic wizard Benjamin Franklin.
One should be careful. Anthologists are listening.
See, and I was imagining Profiles in Courage as ghosted by the other other Ted White, in which the Federalist Papers wind up being run off on the Tuckahoe Street Gestetner while Ben Franklin scores a couple of...Never mind. Nothing to see here, nothing at all.
Endless arguments about edge cases leave us with less understanding of the center, rather than more.
That "clunk" you're hearing in the background is a piece of my brain settling into its proper place. Thank you, Patrick.
I think one has to draw the distinction between the story-telling device used in so much fiction, where the story is presented as a telling of true events, and how the work is marketed.
Which American TV cop show was presented as true stories, which had the tagline "Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent"? There's certainly a lot of true stories they could have used.
And wasn't there a Hollywood movie that used Dillinger's escape from jail, which modified the story to make it more plausible? Dillinger, allegedly, carved his fake gun out of a bar of soap. The movie character used a piece of wood.
I think what hit the people in this Frey case was the selling of the book. You can tell your fiction in an autobiographical mode, you can build a pretence of reality, you can lie your head off to the reader, but you can't lie to the customer.
And the non-fiction label isn't really sensitive enough to tell a customer anything. It puts Cornelius Ryan in with Elizabeth David. There is at least some common art linking Dan Brown and Terry Pratchett; the art of telling a story. You can make some useful comparisons. But how do you compare Knuth to Boethius?
Dave, the "only the names have been changed" show would be "Dragnet".
Many many of the crimes portrayed on the various Law & Order shows are broadly based on actual events, but embellished to the breaking point: at the very least, they're all moved to New York City; plus, the writers seem to be under the impression that no white collar conspiracy could be interesting without a murder or two tacked on.
Many of the incidents in "Homicide: Life on the Streets" hewed closely to stories told in the non-fiction "Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets" by David Simon, generally more closely than the L&O stories do. This includes some of the bits that seem most over-the-top, such as the woman in the very first episode who has killed umpteen husbands and seems intent on continuing.
I think a large contributing factor to the fury about Frey's book is the subject matter: recovery from substance abuse. In particular, recovery without using a 12-step, powerless-over-my-addictions framework.
For some people, in other words, it's more than "oops, I lied" on his part - it's a betrayal, and one less reason to make the effort to stay clean.
After TCM showed Rhapsody in Blue, with Robert Alda (yes, Alan's dad) as George Gershwin, we were told that pretty much everything in that biopic was made up. In other words, this was the kind of movie that should begin with the warning:
"This is a true story. Only the events have been changed."
Mike, Patrick, how many T.H.White guys (and gals) are there out there?
Has anybody ever done an anthology with the theme of what-if-famous-writer-A-had-authored-the-stories-of-famous-writer-B? Philip Jose Farmer wrote a story in the early Seventies as if Edgar Rice Burrough's Tarzan had been written by William S. Burroughs. It was, to say the least... different.
> Another interesting border-case would be George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman series, which, though clearly fictional, maintain straight-faced a conceit of non-fictionality in the forwards and footnotes...
I'd always read the footnotes as Fraser's, not Flashman's, and presenting the factual background. Or am I thinking of endnotes not footnotes?
Patrick: oh, thankyouthankyouthankyou!
Jonathan Carroll writes about this thread's very subject - sort of - in today's column and points out "...The truth is a cruel mistress. The truth is a mistress who very often has a headache, or a previous appointment, or something that you shouldn't take in the wrong way..."
Forget "Fargo", think "Blair Witch Project".
I was thinking "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" myself.
Chip: The thing about the Holmes and Russell books that always gets me is Russell musing about how it's becoming more and more common for people to believe her husband is fictional. And I absolutely adored the bit in A Letter of Mary in which Mary runs into Lord Peter Wimsey. :) Raving fangirl, me.
Serge: One feels sorry for the Emersons, because they can't ever make a big discovery without disturbing the verisimiltude. Tetisheri's tomb is almost going too far.
True, true, Carrie, about Amelia and her mercurial hubby. But they're so much fun. By the way, when you read those books, do you do a bit of casting? I very much see Emerson played by Russell Crowe. As for Amelia, I'd see Bramwell's Jemma Redgrave. She's played that kidn of character in that era. And she definitely has Amelia's conk.
So Patrick, you might want to talk with your local library. The news in the trade press today is that Brooklyn PL just reclassed their copies as fiction.
I was taught as a child on my homeworld that Truth is a matter of the imagination.
Sorry, just playing around.
Some years back, I was having a conversation at work in which I quoted a fictional character. When one co-worker asked who said that, I told them what character and what book. The person was absolutely appalled that I would quote a fictional character as if it was the truth. First, I realized why this person was still in data-entry after twenty years, and second, the futility of explaining the difference between "being true" and "truth" in that context. I've found more gut-wrenching truth in fiction than in non-fiction.
"The truth is usually just an excuse for a lack of imagination."
Patrick: Thanks for the words of wisdom from Shetterly and Delany!
Something there is about arguments over the precise borders between categories, that's just catnip to people like us. Funny, I'm just the opposite and hate that sort of thing -- a dislike that extends to many philosophical theories (arguments), and even to the Schroediger's Cat debates in physics. Limited human concepts and conundra! Yesterday was Feb. 1 Down Under while we're only having it today, B.C. vs. A.D. is even more artificial, Orion used to be a mythological figure in the sky, etc. etc. We like our patterns crisp and clear, our borders precise, but by and large the universe refuses to cooperate. [End tangential rant]
Interesting discussion because I just read C.S. Lewis's _An Experiment in Criticism_. He describes a class of "unliterary" reader who is extraordinarily distrustful of anything that smacks of imagination and only demands of his reading that it be "true" -- the sort of person who reads the most luridly sensational "true-crime" books without ever questioning the reality of the events or motivations of the characters -- accepting (to paraphrase Lewis) grossly improbable psychology and incredible events as long as they "really happened" but unable to handle anything fantastic or supernatural. They want narrative and event, not style and real characters. I think there are several categories of people who are offended by Frey's admission that his book wasn't 100% true, and this is one of them -- perhaps this is the category a lot of Oprah's viewers fall into.
Alan Braggins: The thing is that Fraser, in his footnotes, maintains the illusion that Flashman is a real character, to the point of treating the book proper as a real memoir and correcting Flashman's "faulty memory" from time to time (when in actuality it was Fraser who conflated events or changed a date to improve the story -- very recursive if you stop to think about it!).
It just occurred to me that if Frey's book were true, then reading it would be a form of voyerism. And all the people who thought they were paying for a good peek found out that it was nothing more than a foggy telescope pointed at a blowup doll in lingerie posed on someone's balcony. No wonder they're ticked off.
;)
Serge: Russell Crowe is about as far from my mental image of Emerson as he can get and still be a reasonably handsome Caucasian adult male in good shape. :) Not tall enough, not broad enough in the shoulders, too pale, wrong color hair and eyes... He could do the attitude, but his looks are all wrong--though I guess most of it could be fixed with makeup, but also he's getting into too old for it. Emerson's less than 30 in Crocodile on the Sandbank.
I dunno if Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio can do a convincing English accent, but she would have made a fine Amelia a few years ago.
Just dear heaven don't let them cast Haley Joel Osmont as Ramses.
How about Hugh Jackman then, Carrie?
Jonathan Carroll writes about this thread's very subject - sort of - in today's column
Just to be pedantic*, Jonathan Carroll is the author of 12 books (according to his website) including Outside the Dog Museum.
Jon Carroll writes for the San Francisco Chronicle, and is the one whom Patrick referred to as "the best unsyndicated columnist in America". (Absolutely no argument from this corner.)
*Hey, what's that chorus of "One of us! One of us!" that I hear?
I suppose Hugh could do it, though he still doesn't have the kind of classical features I picture on Emerson.
Cathy beat me to it; I was just coming here to point this tidbit from Library Journal. (The kicker, of course, comes in the last sentence: "Not that the book has actually been placed on the fiction shelves yet; all the copies are either out, in transit, or on the hold shelf." It's the same for all of our library's copies.)
Also, yesterday's Publisher's Lunch email newsletter pointed out that Frey is likely due to receive most of his Oprah-driven royalty windfall around March 31. They speculate that the cheque will amount to a substantial seven figures -- "for argument's sake, somewhere vaguely in the neighborhood of $3 million."
I recently found out that my local library keeps Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary in the Reference room.
The "textile artist" link in Particles has a double-quote at the end which causes it not to work properly (it goes to a page on the same site about tattooing one's Powerbook). This is the correct link.
As seems inevitable in retrospect, I posted that on the wrong thread. Sorry.
"According to Dionne Mack-Harvin, BPL's Chief of Staff, 'It is important that BPL classifies books in its collection in a way that reflects the community's expectations. When BPL learned of public and publishing industry concerns of the discrepancies in James Frey's A Million Little Pieces, we felt it necessary to react in a way that would assure Brooklyn's library users that the information they want and need is easily available and accessible within a clear and truthful classification system.'"Goodness. I think I'll go up to the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library to pull a few other books off the "non-fiction" shelves whose truthfulness they might want to examine. I may have to take a shopping cart. Or six.
Seriously dumb, folks. And seriously insulting to the practice of real fiction.
Dan: Particle fixed. Thanks.
"I recently found out that my local library keeps Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary in the Reference room."
your local library in HADES! you mean...
Used bookstores must have any number of examples of meeting the community's expectations - or satisfying the management's whimsey - in shelving.
A common example is putting Polly Adler's A House is not a Home in business histories and Glide Path in SF.
Remembering the exthread rejection letters for Proust (and similar) perhaps Mr. Frey lacks an understanding of the classic or the classic New Yorker - suddenly he felt very tired - story.
"I wanted the stories in the book to ebb and flow, to have dramatic arcs, to have the tension that all great stories require," Mr. Frey said, explaining the reason for the changes. "I altered events all the way through the book."
Good rant, Patrick. I started Gary Bernstein's Jawbreaker the other night -- "the book the CIA doesn't want you to read" -- and was reduced to helpless giggles by the end of the second page. I gather from someone who appears in the book that it is just the sort of toxic waste that would get dumped into "fiction" under the circumstances you describe. Let us be very clear. "Lies" are not fiction and fiction can be more true than what is published as "non-fiction."
I guess they put Glide Path in with the rest of Arthur C. Clarke's books so it won't get lonely.
greg, It just occurred to me that if Frey's book were true, then reading it would be a form of voyerism.
isn't reading anything that has to do with people's lives, fictional or non, something like voyuerism?
if not, is reading any & every memoir a form of voyuerism?
Our Host wrote:
We are reissuing Avram Davidson's Adventures in Unhistory
Might Tor consider also bringing Diana Wynne Jones' Tough Guide to Fantasyland back into print? I'd expect there'd be demand for it, since it's one of the books that aspiring authors are regularly pointed to.
The Glendale/Pasadena (CA) library has decided that Neil Gaiman's Adventures in the Dream Trade is properly shelved in the (science) fiction section, despite the fiction content filling only a dozen or so pages at the end.
And this despite their own catalog including this quote from the dust jacket: "The majority of this book is a journal--a web log--covering Febrary to September 2001."
isn't reading anything that has to do with people's lives, fictional or non, something like voyuerism?
I think that the audience empathizes with a Fiction story character, such as Ripley in Alien, to the point that we identify ourselves with Ripley, and her fate becomes ours on some level. We "know" that it isn't real going in, we know its special effects and latex molds, but we are looking to allow ourselves to get caught up in the emotional state of another character.
In fiction, the audience usually becomes the character on some level. Either separate identities, but emotionally involved, or collapsed identities. We jump when the monsters chase Ripley because they are on some level chasing us.
I think a voyeur maintains themselves emotionally separate from the subject of their viewing. They specifically do not want to empathize with them. A peeping tom, for example, doesn't submerse their identity into the person they are watching.
I don't think the people who read "A million pieces" wanted to identify with character, they wanted to spy on the author's life.
I think there is a fundamentally different mentality there.
Greg - that would seem to imply that professional historians are more akin to voyeurs than they are to fiction readers.
The discussion about truth, lies, and fiction reminds me of the disagreement between Lewis and Tolkien. Lewis maintained that a good novel was a noble lie, while Tolkien replied that it was a different kind of truth.
Allan, that may explain why I like Tolkien better than Lewis.
What Will said, precisely and exactly.
There's much to be said for Lewis, but whether you're reading his SF, his criticism, his apologetics, his fantasy, or his memoirs, you never get far from the sense that here's a very clever man who's exerting all his intelligence in order to game you.
Whereas, at the end of the day, Tolkien really didn't care what you think.
There's also Amelia Peabody's Egypt: a Compendium, published Morrow 2003, described as 'entertainingly blurs fact and fiction'. It's a history of excavation in Egypt, with the Emerson's digs reported along with all the real ones. The Amazon comments are amusing, with some people annoyed that this is not a FACTUAL book.
The casting for the Elizabeth Peters books has been discussed on the ABE books forum as well. There's a suspicion that the people responsible for The Mummy films are fans, and that Rachel Weisz and Brendan Fraser are meant to suggest Amelia and Emerson.
Ioan Gruffudd for Ramses as a young man, I think.
Barbara... I still root for Jemma Redgrave as Amelia.
Yesterday, Faren wrote: We like our patterns crisp and clear, our borders precise, but by and large the universe refuses to cooperate.
Actually, except for what goes on inside human society, I don't think that we impose our patterns and structures to the Universe, if we are Reality-based anyway, unlike you-know-who in the White House. It's more a matter of looking at what's going on in the Universe and realize that this action has this effect. If the pattern doesn't fit, it gets revised.
I don't know if that's how it is with scientists. Me, I'm just a computer programmer.
that would seem to imply that professional historians are more akin to voyeurs than they are to fiction readers.
I don't know about that. I mean, I can watch "Apollo 13" and feel fear when things fall apart badly. It's history, but I still care. I guess it would depend on the particular professional historian you wish to evaluate, but I would think that there are at least some historians who go into their line of work because they care about history and the people in it.
THe people who bought Frey's book, thinking it was true, I don't think they read it to identify with Frey. I think they bought it so they could tell themselves "at least I'm not as messed up as HIM".
Not that I was trying to imply there was a hard line between voyerism and fiction, or that one is better than the other. Most of "Alien" is fiction, where you identify with Sigorney Weaver's character Ripley. But the scene at the end where she's tramping around in her underwear, that's pure voyerism. And I'm sure while many of Frey's million readers were looking for a voyeristic experience, they no doubt found points where they identified with Frey's alternate persona, and cared about what happened to him, because they had placed themselves in his shoes.
But I think, overall, you can say that Frey's readers were, for the most part, not standing in his shoes when they read his book. And I think, you could find historians who place themselves firmly in the shoes of their subjects, and therefore, aren't really voyeurs.
Patrick said: Whereas, at the end of the day, Tolkien really didn't care what you think.
Patrick, I like your comment on Tolkien and I think you're right. Or if he did care, he wasn't about to try to snow you under -- he'd just tell his story without any overtly clever fireworks and let it work its way under your skin when you were ready for it. It's probably why I've grown much less comfortable with Lewis's fiction over the years. In at least some of the non-fiction, any "gaming" is a bit more out in the open.
Might Tor consider also bringing Diana Wynne Jones' Tough Guide to Fantasyland back into print?
Perhaps there's room in the market for a Tough Guide to Trash Non-Fiction. Hmmm. That has possibilities.
Patrick Nielsen Hayden wrote:
There's much to be said for Lewis, but whether you're reading his SF, his criticism, his apologetics, his fantasy, or his memoirs, you never get far from the sense that here's a very clever man who's exerting all his intelligence in order to game you.
Good point.
Lewis usually did have a particular point he wanted to drive at (some of the Narnia books suffered from that) but if he were alive nowadays, he'd be a blogger and a pundit and we'd take him more lightly. (And argue with him in context.) The fact that most of his stuff is still in print doesn't reflect well on him.* Time hasn't sorted out the good from the meh
Someone earlier mentioned An Experiment in Criticism, which I like because it's written in a kind of provisional, "given x, then, maybe y?" kind of way.** (And also because its facinating watching an almost pre-modernist thinker plunge headlong into postmodernism. Read it for that, if nothing else.) When he's full on editorializing, you can see this tremendous oscillation between being insightful and merely being clever; for instance there's an essay on commercialism disguised as a lost chapter from Herodotus which is sometimes hilarious and sometimes, just twee.
-r.
*I call it the Heinlein Effect.
**I haven't read it in a while, so I'm not saying provisional=self-effacing. Might be, might not be.
I do agree that the truth or falsehood of books like those by, say, Diamond, de Tocqueville, von Daniken, or Velikovsky isn't relevant to whether or not they're "fiction" or "nonfiction." I'm happy with the idea that they're all nonfiction (the first two being truthful, the others being packs of lies) because they're not, well, fiction by Patrick's definition.
I'd like to suggest, though, that a fair chunk of what we consider "fiction" could be described as "Now I'm going to tell you a story about the lives of one or more people. I made this story up." (No, this isn't the totality of "fiction", but neither is it an edge case; I'd argue it's fairly central.) If I change the definition so that the second sentence is "This story is true", then it's no longer fiction -- it's reportage, or history, or memoir, or some similar nonfiction category.
The problem is that it seems like Frey's book falls right into the "Now I'm going to tell you a story about one or more people's lives" bin. Whether it's a novel (fiction) or a memoir (nonfiction) depends on whether it's true or not.
To my mind, the issue with Frey's book isn't the (wrong) idea that "not true = fiction"; it's the issue of narratives in the mode of novels which get put into into the (vast and motley) category of nonfiction solely because they're true. If it turns out that they are made up, are they still nonfiction?
(Although, having read Ariana Huffington's post, I do get the sense that her argument is more like "Wait -- this book isn't truthful, therefore it should be in the fiction list!" rather than "Hmm... this 'memoir' isn't actually a true story; shouldn't we call it a novel instead?")
I believe Lewis was also the one who said that writers do not really believe in the world they're writing about; they know they're inventing it all.
Which is absolutely true on *one* level, but strikes me as mind-bogglingly wrong on several others.
Every once in a while, I'll read a review that says how manipulative this movie or that novel were. But isn't all storytelling manipulative? Maybe it's the difference between the storyteller who hopes to achieve a certain response, and another who makes DAMN sure of it by putting a kitty in a very perilous situation.
Given that one might expect all biographical or even autobiographical memoirs of true events to be in some degree fictional maybe they should all be fiction.
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