3. Memory & Intention 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).***
The complicated, divergent techniques that Talese describes in detail above are an example of the work creative nonfictionists must employ in order to generate and accurately represent truth and Truth. Part of what makes our work special, i.e., different from fiction, is that we work under the constraint of factual truth. When an author is not working under that constraint, that author writes fiction or poetry, not creative nonfiction.
Still, other writers, like Cris Mazza in Trickle-Down Timeline, write fiction mixed with historical and political facts. As is the case with good fiction, her story shed light on narrative Truths, yet neither she nor her publisher, pretended that all of her occurrences were real. That is honesty. Writers that make up facts and then offer ad hoc literary theories stating they can classify their writing in any way desired do a disservice to themselves as artists, their readers, and the entire nonfiction genre (Blackstone 106).
Whether you agree that creative nonfiction should be always factual or not, memory and intention are critical components to consider in creative nonfiction. Literary professionals often point to the fallibility of memory and the subjectivity of perception. Mark Doty, in Bride in Beige writes of struggling with his memory and certain details of his sister’s wedding outfit: “Memory’s an active, dynamic force, not just a recording one; over the course of a life, as perspective shifts, we keep moving into different relationships to the past, reconsidering, so that what happened turns out to be nothing stable, but a scribbled-over field of revisions, rife with questions, half its contents hidden” (Lazar 11).
In Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, David Shields (famously without citation) stated his case on memory and nonfiction: “Anything processed by memory is fiction” (57). Shields, apparently, is one of those purest who feels that because memory is fallible and there are no absolute truths, then there can be no “true” nonfiction. Kathryn Harrison in The Forest of Memory notes that “if biology, chemistry, and psychiatry can agree on anything, it is that memories are not received but created. What’s more, they’re subject to automatic, unavoidable revision. Honor is useless here” (Lazar 19).
And then there are documented debacles like what was revealed in Oliver Sack’s In Gowers’ Memory. Sacks reviewed past statements from the obsessive fact-recorder, Dr. Gowers, who on two separate occasions, that spanned several years apart, published two different chronologies of one patient’s experience of an epileptic seizure. Sacks noted that “…Gowers, if we are not misinterpreting his words, [sees] memory as part of an ongoing and evolving inner life, and, as such, an activity that is anything but permanent and fixed, but one that will change, reorganize, reconstruct, endlessly, in the light of new experience, new needs” (Lazar 64).
Using memory in writing is certainly a slippery slope, however, we live life everyday with the same memory issues and subjectivity, the same fallibility. Moore summarized the simple covenant with the reader on how to approach memory and truth in nonfiction writing: “If, however, you can look yourself in the mirror (and your reader in the eye) and say, ‘This is my honest memory, and though my recollection certainly isn’t perfect, I’ve done my absolute best to get it right,’ you’ve done your job…” (16).
Some writers lean on memory’s faults and use them to explain away bad decisions, faulty ethics and outright lies. In his “Note to Readers” within newer editions of A Million Little Pieces (and after he was already outed on Oprah), James Frey wrote, “A Million Little Pieces is about my memories of my time in a drug and alcohol treatment center. As has been accurately revealed…and subsequently acknowledged by me, during the process of writing the book, I embellished many details about my past experiences, and altered others in order to serve what I felt was the greater purpose of the book….” (Frey). This nice little note was missing from the first editions marketed as truth and memoir. Although Frey is no longer lying, per se, he still covers his authority with bullshit by stating that his book is “about [his] memories.”
Intention of memory is also a big caveat in creating nonfiction and should be used to gauge whether one is writing truth, lies or bullshit. We already know that most bullshitters are not concerned with the truth as factual and tend to side with loose philosophies on what is “essentially true” for their poorly written fictions marketed as fact and in order to suit their own purposes.
***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).***
