10.23 Lies, finishing up the long essays, and moving on to the short nes

The James Frey story.  I think one reason I keep his story in the course is that classes bring so many different perspectives on how/whether his work goes over boundaries for ethical creative nonfiction.  I imagined he was a particularly egregious example of self-serving, exploitative, damaging to others use of purported truth for commercial purposes, and what is interesting is that while I didn't really hear too much disagreement with what he did, it seems relationships to those moves cover a broad range of responses.  And then there I Mike Daisy - when journalism gets into rounding the corners, embroidering facts, and compressing/fabricating events. 

At the beginning of class we created a list of different kinds of lies, and created a loose classification of which kinds of lies were "worst" and which didn't matter so much.  The list looked something like this.  Although our classifications weren't exactly mutually exclusive, they suggest the different motivations and functions for lies.

Most harmful
self serving (blame others, take credit, appropriate others' stories. . .)
preserve/cultivate a self image (connects to self-serving lies)

Depends
prevent/avoid conflict (avoid hurting others, social lies)
preserve autonomy (lies typical in conversations across power differentials, like the kinds of lies adolescents tell to parents, workers to bosses [sick days] etc)
preserve someone else's frights/freedoms (similar to preserving autonomy but for someone else)
avoid getting into  trouble (withhold information, don't tell more than necessary - some people didn't even consider this lying)

Harmless (but of course it depends)
teasing (can be playful but also can be bullying)
playful lying

Some general observations about why writers, especially creative nonfiction writers need to think about lies include the following.
1. All of us almost always lie in our writing /thinking, so being familiar with the kinds of lies you tell is important.
2. Different genres have different relationships to truth; so it is important to make sure you are within the "truth frame" for your genre.
3.  Telling a story is always inherently inaccurate - since it involves interpretation=> the imposition of a narrative line which strings what otherwise are unassociated events to make "sense" of unorganized experience.  As writers, examining our relationships to the kinds of stories we tell can tell us not only about the events we write about, but about ourselves.

Discussion of writers who include "lies" in their work. We then talked about Frey and Daisy, and the perspectives were pretty much all over the place, which was wonderful.  Most perspectives fell between either:

 they produced their work to make money and they were successful, and "lying" (strategic representation of truth) is more or less part of the "work" of producing materials that sell;

or these two writers betrayed their readers/audience, perpetucated "lies" that can do damage to real people in the real world, and exploited real people by appropriating and misrepresenting their stories within genres that purport to you true.

We did notice that most of Frey's lies were of the kind at the top of the list (the damaging categories). 

We also noticed, though I didn't spend much time on it, that much of the untruth in Frey's narrative was a good match for "stereotypes" or cultural stories about the "criminal with a heart of gold," "bad cops," "corrupt legal systems," "struggling adolescent boys," "crime bosses with a heart  of gold" and tragic love relationships (the story about Lily).  In other words, part of what made his story believable was that is a good fit with worn out storylines from pulp fiction and romance = which may well be why it was not published as a work of fiction.  Something to think about.

Before the workshop on your long essays, we finished class with a list of observations about the place of lies/truth in CNF.
1. If it can be proved wrong, don't write it (the don't get caught approach).
2.Don't write material that will jeopardize reputation (yours or others)
3. Write your own truth; stay in your own story.
4. Be mindful of the world=> your truth is not the only truth out there
5. embellishment is not bad, but there can be a fine line between embellishment and lying=> be faithful to the central truth of your story
6. Be as truthful as you can be. Don't take liberties for the sake of the story. Your truth is in your perspective.
7. Writers should not plagiarize, slander, or state facts without evidence

There were several more observations, but I couldn't read my handwriting.  Sad but true.

Finishing long essay. I am hoping you got lots of good feedback on your drafts, and have the beginning of a plan for revising your long essay.  We changed the due date for the revised long essay to November 6.  You signed up for conferences (or requested written feedback).  The conference schedule is as follows.

Thursday, 10.24
10:30 Kristen, 4:30 Maria

Monday 10.28
7:00 Tobey

Tuesday 10.29
12:30 Filip,  3:30 Robert; 7:15 Alessia

Wednesday 10.30
1:00 Angelica; 2:30 Sara; 3:00 Nikki; 3:30 Kristi

Thursday 10.31
3:15 Dave

If you have not signed up for a conference or requested written feedback, send me an email and we will set something up.

For next week:
Read:  More about truth!

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/

Short fiction handouts: Fallout by Seamus Deane, and Accident by Dawn Marano  (f you did not get one in class, there are extra copies in my mailbox, next to CAS 301 in the English Department).

Blog  8:.  Brainstorming for short essay.  Think about a focus that can be explored/opened up in terms of a single scene/story - or a set of tightly connected events.

The revised long essay will be due November 6.

Have fun writing, and see you next week.