Dressing up the truth

I'm packing (lightly) and heading for warmer climes—as I'm bound for the Tucson Festival of Books this weekend.

I’ll be on a Sunday panel entitled Bending the Truth: Using Real Events in Fictional Stories, alongside fellow authors Jennie Shortridge and Laura Fitzgerald, with Masha Hamilton moderating.

This is definitely a sticky wicket for many. Whenever you showcase history, or even echo personal stories, there will always be those that want exacting truth despite said book being shelved in the fiction section. Where should authors draw the line? Should we stick to the facts ma’am, or is distortion forgivable—for convenience of plot, or even personal agenda. (Remember the film JFK?)

The irony is, we live in a publishing world filled with ghostwriters anyway. I mean, c’mon, do you really think The Shat writes his own novels?

As far as my personal take, I…guess I’ll save that for the panel.

But what do you think?

And lest I forget, I do have a solo event later that afternoon, if you happen to be in Tucson or thereabouts. Or if this whole “truthiness” discussion makes your head hurt.

Comments

[Margaret]

I have to admit I like authors to stick to the facts as much as possible. I shamefacedly admit that historical fiction is often the way I learn about history these days. :D But if the author warns the reader in advance that the facts are not the actual facts, I do think that's an ok thing to do. Inglourious Basterds didn't bother me, for example. Does that make sense?

[Margaret Dilloway]

I am already running into that too. People do want their fiction to hold up factually. I think that if you cite date of specific events or when specific real people lived, you have to get those right (unless you're totally just making up events, in which case, who cares?).

But all history is fiction, if you're looking through the lens of someone else, or even remembering events on your own. Everyone remembers "how it happened" differently. Emotions color the events. And if you as a writer just spouted back bare facts, then it wouldn't be a very good novel. Even nonfiction books are not simply recitation of facts.

[therapeutic ramblings]

Tim O'brien's books about Vietnam are truthful fiction....my fav. being "The Things They Carried"

[Jamie]

I definitely have a reverence for the facts. Characters I can be fast and loose with, but actual events have their own gravity, which I try not to tinker with for any reason.

But it's all in the contract you make with the reader. In a memoir that implied contract is "This is the truth, or at least an amped up version of it," and when a James Frey comes along and distorts (or lies) it betrays the faith of the reader.

With novels, it's a little different. As long as the reading knows what's up going in, I don't have a problem with playing with history. It can be done incredible well, like Glen David Gold's, Carter Beats the Devil, which fictionalizes how Warren Harding died. He does it so well some people consider that book to be historical fiction.

Just depends, I 'spose.