Some observations:
- all stories involved being lied to rather than telling a lie
- a number of stories involved the internet/texting/some kind of not f2f communication as a source for discovering the truth
- many stories involved betrayals/ manipulations within friendships and relationships
These patterns (admittedly from a small, unrepresentative data base) suggest that lies of betrayal told in (important) relationships (friendships, love relationships, w/in family connections) "trouble" us the most (draw our attention). These are "personal" lies - told (mostly) by people we wanted to trust.
James Frey discussion: after counting up and classifying Frey's lies, we came up with the following classification:
- lies that steal/appropriate other people's identities/lives (placing him self within other people's experiences)
- lies that mess with other people's interpretations of what happened (claiming a relationship to the dead teen placed her friends/parents in a confusing position)
- lies that contribute to "bad" stereotypes, may damage a real person's career (lying about police brutality)
- lies to cultivate a stereotyipcal for some reason "desirable" representation of self (the bad boy with a heart of gold lies about how f*cked up he was, yet how 'good' he was to individual people)
- creation of imaginary, stereotypical characters (the heart of gold mafia murderer, the frail girlfriend who tragically dies from the need of him, the convict who wants to be read Russion novels)
- lies about his relationship to drugs (exaggerated his use + claimed if you want to quit you can do it on your own - all you have to do is make up your mind + active disparaging of AA and psychologists/therapy)
- lying about lying (this book is true)
As written here, they are approximately in the reverse order of the ranking the class gave them in terms of seriousness.
Mike Daisey
The class as planned included discussion of the difference between Frey's lies and Daisey's lies, but that did not seem to be in the cards last night. Here is what we would have talked about.
While much of the untruth in Frey was outright untruth, Daisey's work drew more from the moves we read about in Gutkind: rounding the corners, compression, re-casting facts in ways which (as Daisey put it) represented the "feeling" of the truth, but were not literally true. This is a different kind of lying and as pointed out in the interview where Ira Glass rakes him over the coals, if this were "art" and not journalism, it might have been held to a different standard.
So our question as CNF writers, is are we creating art? And if we are, is our obligation to truth literal or figurative? Are we obligated to the particular facts? Or only to conveying the 'essence' of what happened?
The readings we will discuss 3.25 will examine the fine points of this. We will start with a review of Daisey and Frey, and then jump into the middle of a dispute about truth between CNF authors.
For next week (3.18):
Blog 6: Draft Long Essay 2. Your post should include (at the top) an indication of what kind of feedback you are looking for from your group.
During class time, workshop your draft with your group by providing comments your group members' blogs in terms of the following rubric.
1. Say-back/rephrase the essay's focus - so the author gets a feel for whether s/he has gotten the ideas across. Point out (if you can) which parts of the essay led you to your interpretation.
2. Point out what works for you in terms of the essay's content, organization, and development.
3. Reply to the author's requests for feedback
4. Ask questions about any connections, content, backstory etc which you need more information about or which felt unclear.
5. Discuss any other issues associated with focus, organization, development which work well or which could be developed. In particular, review the criteria for the assignment, point out and features the author might want to attend to (e.g. segmenting).
Groups:
David, Brandon, Adrian, Bri
Jennifer, Ashley, Graig
Danielle, Michele, Alexis, Joanne
Becky, Sharyn, Megan, Kyle
For 3.25
Read: Jill Talbert http://brevity.wordpress.com/2012/04/18/border-crossings-fiction-and-the-literature-of-fact/; Dinty Moore http://brevity.wordpress.com/2012/04/20/what-is-given-against-knowingly-changing-the-truth/
Blog 7: In light of comments from your group, indicate which of the two long drafts you plan to revise for a grade, and indicate what kinds of revisions you expect to make.
Have a great break and I will be checking through your blogs.
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