1. The State of Truth in Creative Nonfiction

***This is work from an 8-part series (Truth, Lies & Bullshit in the Art of Creative Nonfiction): Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Works Cited (includes intro and sections).***

Truth in creative nonfiction can have many different forms, definitions and functions with the major agreement being that the stories are “true.” It is at this “Truth” that the waters become murky for some creative nonfiction authors. To curb this truth-murkiness, some authors set rules to protect truth in their nonfiction writing, writing only things that have documented paperwork and scannable recordings. Other authors set disclaimers before or after their prose stating their memories may be lax here or there, or that they have purposefully, for this reason or that, changed some of the facts in the tale. Still, there are other writers that cling to the creative nonfiction genre but write stories that are not true. This last group of writers can be classified into one of two categories: they’re either liars or bullshitters.

According to Harry Frankfurt, an American philosopher and professor emeritus at Princeton University: “It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose” (17).

Before happening upon Frankfurt’s essay, On Bullshit, I was frustrated with trying to determine the difference between lies and truth in fiction versus nonfiction. So many authors, with good reasons, morph the discussion into such an unending philosophical pursuit that a simple concept like truth — the fundamental difference between fiction and nonfiction — becomes something that few can answer, nail-down or believe in. It seems for every simple definition of truth in nonfiction, there is an equally philosophical but also valid one that further confuses the argument.

For instance, in The Truth of the Matter, Dinty Moore writes “though creative nonfiction writers employ considerable imagination in shaping the form of what is being written, in choosing the right words and sharpest metaphors, and in deciding which elements of a story best reveal the significance of a situation, the facts presented by the writer are not imaginary or invented. They are true” (6).

However, in The Lifespan of a Fact, John D’Agata confuses the issue by offering a completely polar demonstration of truth in creative nonfiction. An example of this confusion is listed below noting a heated exchange with Jim Fingal, D’Agata’s appointed fact-checker, who had just notified D’Agata about an error in his essay reporting how many seconds it took his main subject to fall to his death:

“John: Yeah, I fudged that. It doesn’t seem like it should be that big a deal, though. It’s only a second. And I needed him to fall for nine seconds rather than eight in order to help make some of the later themes in the essay work.

Jim: John, changing stuff like Tabasco sauce bottles and thermometers is one thing, but it seems a tad unethical to fiddle with details that relate directly to this kid’s death. In my book, it just seems wrong, especially since the coroner clearly states that Presley’s fall only took eight seconds.

John: I don’t think it’s unethical, particularly because I wasn’t alone in assuming that his fall took nine seconds….”

Jim: OK, I’ll grant you that at one point you didn’t know the correct number, but now you do know better, so shouldn’t it change?

John: Nine is too integral a part of the essay at this point. And I admit that I’m wrong about ‘nine’ later on anyway. So the essay’s not changing. It would ruin the essay.

Jim: It would ‘ruin’ it to make it more accurate?

John: Yup” (19).

In their often combative and sarcastic discourse, D’Agata and Fingal highlight complex issues with standards in generating truth in creative nonfiction. One of these issues is that some writers of creative nonfiction feel that themes that approach truth, or describe a greater Truth (greater than factual truth) are what readers really want when they read nonfiction. These writers express that their nonfiction is based on larger Truths than what can be expressed with factual evidence.

In Joanna Frueh’s The Bed of the Fairy Princess the author presents a truly intimate story that “felt” true and employed techniques that seemingly spoke directly to the reader’s sense of truth. Through using her essay as an example and a discussion, Frueh explained: “Truth: it is uncomfortable, and the uncomfortable truth of ‘true love’ is that it ruins the ‘true lovers’ perception of reality” (Lazar 126). She then folds that to say, “[d]ifferences in observation and perception produced different truths about everyday as well as what philosophers call the Absolute” (Lazar 131).

I should explain that though D’Agata and Frueh both dance with the idea of expanding “Truth” in nonfiction, it seems that writers like Frueh are more trustworthy; these writers transparently present their ideas and offer upfront or obvious disclaimers to what did or did not really happen in the story and the reader is not left to foolishly believe in lies prosed and polished up as truths, nor is the reader “messed-with” by being presented information and then told “just kidding” by the end.

What D’Agata represents about his work and his current ideas on truth in creative nonfiction is that he is neither liar nor truth-teller. As I’ve discerned from his book, he may be one of those writers who is more comfortable using bullshit to dress up his essayed meanderings rather than struggle with creatively rendering truth, and aligning his themes, scenes and structures accordingly.

Yup.

***This is work from an 8-part series (Truth, Lies & Bullshit in the Art of Creative Nonfiction): Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Works Cited (includes intro and sections).***