Does Writing MAKE Us Lie?

Vivian Gornick once delivered a talk at Goucher College about writing memoir. She fielded an innocent question, “How can you so precisely recall conversations with your mother?” She answered just as innocently, that she didn’t remember. She recollected some of what she reported and the spirit of the rest of it. She added particulars to fulfill that spirit.

Though her “creativity” didn’t attain the same scale as James Frey’s, her confession was nonetheless startling. If we rely on spirit to tell the truth of an event, where does spirit come from? What happens when impressions become conclusions? Can raw experience tranform into carefully orchestrated and effective compositon without losing something as well? What if our spirit is to please our audience?

Writing is orderly. You have the broadest choices to make about the subject and what to leave in and take out. You have tiny, cumulative choices as you select words, sequence words into sentences, and stack sentences in paragraphs. Even if you could remain absolutely objective, writing necessitates some system, authority, a prime mover.

But the deeper, more abstract compulsions are more devastating. Lucy Grealy’s Autobiography of a Face told the story of a series of surgeries that left the author’s face disfigured. For most of the book Grealy wrestles with her fate more courageously than Jacob or Job. She takes on all-comers—every dangerous meeting with blame, self-pity, or pollyannaism ends in a stand-off. She stays out of the grip of sentimentality by staring it down.

For most of the book, anyway.

Near the end, Grealy’s work becomes—to me—a little tinny. Her prose can’t bear quite the same weight as she begins to shed complexity for clarity and completion.

Perhaps she sought only formal resolution or the most gentle and subtle settling on key issues, not answers. She probably didn’t accept or believe in real life restitution, but as the book closed, it became much harder to distinguish between the structure imposed by writing, the structure imposed by artistry, the structure imposed by hope, and the structure imposed by a desire to please. She wanted something. Her readers, she knew, would want something. She could not entirely resist giving in.

Grealy was an instructor where I went to graduate school, and, though the faculty felt very warmly toward her, she seemed prickly to many students. She was brilliant, perceptive, and funny. But I’ll never forget her yelling at classmates for whispering in the library. Peremptory reactions after lectures and notorious comments on student work underlined her toughness. It did not always seem real. I wonder if her confidence and—I’m sorry to offend those who knew her better—her arrogance helped her accept herself in the mirror. Or whether acceptance was only possible in writing.

Sadly, Grealy’s overdose in 2002 casts darker shadows on every affirmation of those last chapters. While Frey and Gornick may have committed errors of fact, what happens if an author slips into errors of spirit?

Americans laughed when Charles Barkley, the former NBA star, said he’d been misquoted in his autobiography, but should we have laughed? It seems too easy to misquote ourselves when we aim for gravitas and a well-shaped urn decorated with acceptable sentiment.

In a nation of overwhelming life-hype, it’s hard to claim ignorance of what’s expected of us. The rewards are greater for playing nice. And it’s easier too.

I’m not immune. Tonight, I thought of writing about my inability to accept my anger as a healthy emotion, but I pressed an ejector button again. For all my talk about the need to choose topics according to what you can’t figure out, can’t face, or don’t want to discuss, I’m a coward. Thinking about how I might be received, I was afraid to open the closet again for another self-loathing monster.

Saying what you mean is hard enough when you don’t know what you mean. It’s even harder when you DO know, and dare not say.