On (Creative) (Non)-Fiction and Accurate Facts

In this article from Slate Magazine, Dan Kois reviews the book The Lifespan of a Fact, which involves the fact-checking of an essay written by John D'Agata and includes the essay, the comments by the fact-checker, and D'Agata's responses to the fact-checker (Jim Fingal). As if the book itself weren't confusing enough, Kois includes his own story about meeting Tim O'Brien in this review, and subsequently fact-checks the review here. Although the majority of Kois's review seems to imply that D'Agata is a jerk for fudging facts to suit the aesthetics of his essays, his own fudging of facts in his review suggests that the exact truth is undesirable in a creative essay, if not impossible. Kois takes both sides in the argument for truth in non-fiction, and leaves his reader (or at least this reader) suspicious of all authors' veracity, not simply that of D'Agata.

D'Agata's argument in terms of his essay's lack of truth is that "it's called art, dickhead," but why write in a nonfiction genre and then make things up? Why was it important for Kois to pretend he had interviewed D'Agata and Fingal rather than simply read their book? I understand that the non-fiction writer wants to arrive at a particular, perhaps essential, truth with his essay, but changing the facts in order to point to this truth seems to me to undermine everything. Furthermore, what's the point of having a fact-checker at all if you simply don't plan to write facts in your work? People want to read essays and memoirs because they purport to tell true stories, amazing or poignant or moralizing, but true. No one's preventing D'Agata from writing fiction about teen suicide and tae kwon do, and this type of realistic fiction would certainly sell. Maybe these little manipulations of fact don't matter, but if not, why manipulate facts at all?

Translation and Truth

I've been thinking a lot about translation lately, perhaps because I've been reading a lot of fiction translated from other languages (mostly French). Several times in the class in which the translated work was read, we have glanced over or mostly ignored the problems that must arise when this highly stylized experimental French or Italian fiction is rendered into English. A Spanish language edition of William Gaddis's Carpenter's Gothic has also just been announced and reviewed, and this translation of one of my favorite authors into a language I also (mostly) read makes me further consider the necessity of and problems with fiction and poetry translation. I have no doubt that translators are extremely skilled and often brilliant to be able to capture the ideas of any writer in a language not his own, but are they often brilliantly inventing their own works of art?

Italo Calvino's If On a Winter's Night a Traveler somewhat whimsically tackles some issues that arise with translations. In the novel, you, the Reader, read parts of almost a dozen different novels translated from various languages in search of the ending to If On a Winter's Night a Traveler. The enigmatic "translator" of the novel, Ermes Marana, is the character who could perhaps best be called its villain because he produces fraudulent and unauthorized translations of books with no apparent concern about their authenticity whatsoever. This character is an abuser of both good faith and ignorance, but is he also the closest of all of the novel's characters to being its true author? As the fringe groups searching for him ask, is there an absolutely true Ur-text, or an absolutely false one, and what's the difference? Furthermore, what am I to do with the fact that the entire novel has been further translated for me to consume?

Quentin Rowan and the Pathology of a Plagiarist

The story of Quentin Rowan, serial plagiarist, is now several months old, but as I was mired in Mark Twain and Frederic Jameson a few months ago, I will discuss it now! The story is as follows: Rowan, slowly rising to success as a poem and short story writer, published the spy novel The Assassin of Secrets in late 2011 with the reputed Little, Brown company. A few days after its publication, readers (including novelist Jeremy Dun) began to see significant similarities between it and several published spy novels. The Huffington Post has an excellent synopsis of the story here. After a brief silence on the subject, Rowan revealed all in a "Confession" where he describes plagiarism as an "addiction" and (sort of) explains why he did it. He says that plagiarism was a substitution for his earlier alcoholism, and encourages the public to see plagiarism "if not as a disease, at least as something pathological."

Rowan's confession is fairly persuasive in its buildup of pathos ("I first tried to get sober when I was 18") and insistence that he confessed to the plagiarism right away once caught (as though one can successfully deny it). I will not call him the names that he says others have called him, but I am suspicious of the addiction explanation he gives. Perhaps I don't understand addiction pathology, so I cannot begin to see how alcoholism would translate into stealing writing from others (literary kleptomania?). However, I do know that there is very little in the way of apology to Rowan's victims: not the authors whose works he stole, not the publishing company, and not his apparently savvy readers. I suppose it's great that he wrote a confession, but shouldn't there also be some contrition?

Creation and Lies

Yesterday I considered that perhaps I should stick to fiction instead of attempting to delve into the minds of forgers and liars, but then today I came across this article which seems to cover both. Most of the article discusses what are called "honest liars," those who make up stories to fill empty space caused by brain damage, usually to the part of the brain "responsible for self-regulation and self-censoring." I never before considered lying as produced by a lack of self-censorship, and the consideration of this is a revelation to me. Part of my obsession with liars and deceit stems from my near-inability to lie myself, and after reading the article I'm convinced that this inability is connected to my extreme self-censorship, though I hadn't considered them connected before. I suppose that the opposite of extreme self-censorship, or always believing you are not quite right, is always believing you are absolutely right no matter what lies you tell.

But then we come to fiction and creativity. It can definitely be argued that the best actors and fiction writers are those who lie the best, and perhaps for that reason I don't act or write fiction. The article eloquently finishes with the following:
Of course, unlike Aitken, actors, playwrights and novelists are not literally attempting to deceive us, because the rules are laid out in advance: come to the theatre, or open this book, and we’ll lie to you. Perhaps this is why we felt it necessary to invent art in the first place: as a safe space into which our lies can be corralled, and channelled into something socially useful. Given the universal compulsion to tell stories, art is the best way to refine and enjoy the particularly outlandish or insightful ones. But that is not the whole story. The key way in which artistic “lies” differ from normal lies, and from the “honest lying” of chronic confabulators, is that they have a meaning and resonance beyond their creator. The liar lies on behalf of himself; the artist tell lies on behalf of everyone. If writers have a compulsion to narrate, they compel themselves to find insights about the human condition. Mario Vargas Llosa has written that novels 'express a curious truth that can only be expressed in a furtive and veiled fashion, masquerading as what it is not'. Art is a lie whose secret ingredient is truth.

I'm not sure I can put it better, so I won't try to make something up.

Authenticity and the Collector

This morning I came across this item for auction on ebay and, though I have little interest in buying it, spent several minutes wondering about its authenticity. How can a book published in 1995 have "1994" written in it by the author? Then I realized that I didn't really care whether it was authentic or not. I am not a collector, and I see my books' values pragmatically: will the binding hold up? is the text accurate? can I mark in it with impunity? I enjoy a beautiful copy of a novel as much as the next person, and would also like to have a signed copy of my favorite book, but in our age of mechanical reproduction, every book is a "copy," and even the signed ones are hardly one-of-a-kind.

So then, what value does the signature add to the book? Why does the seller referred to above want $200 for a signed copy, and why might it be so important to a buyer to have that copy? Perhaps the first edition, especially the signed first edition, is as close to an "original" as is possible in publishing. The first edition novel is like the band a hipster liked before everyone else heard about it, and its price is indicative, not of its worth, but of the passion the buyer has for the work. But this passion often seems to diminish once the passionate begins to collect. The collector wants that which is closest to unique, if he cannot find something unique, and his use for the item is restricted to re-selling it at a profit or showing it to friends at parties. I don't think Gaddis would want his books to sit unread on shelves, nor to be shown off because they were expensive or exclusive.

On Plagiarists and Lawyers

A few years ago, this young adult novel was published and subsequently pulled from shelves when it came to light that the novel had at least "45 'strikingly similar' passages" to Megan McCafferty's novels, and those of several other popular novelists. The author, Kaavya Viswanathan, claimed to have "internalized" passages from these books and "accidentally" incorporated them into her own, and despite the fact that no one really believes this is true, it seems to have been accepted--Viswanathan lost respect and her second book deal, but suffered no other repercussions of this fraud. She graduated from Harvard, where she was a student at the time of the scandal, and is now happily attending Georgetown Law.

I'm glad that this kind of fraud still causes at least some media scandal, because it means that most of us find this scandalous. But Viswanathan lost so little--shouldn't there be punishment for this? To me, this plagiarism is at most grand theft, and at least copyright infringement, both of which have serious punishments. Perhaps a tinge of jealousy is behind my desire for justice as well; not simply dishonesty, but also money got this girl's book published and got her into Harvard. She may be smart, but she has gotten much of what she has (and what I or people I know and love want) with a combination of money and dishonesty, neither of which I have in any great quantity. Perhaps I am not morally outraged: maybe I am just jealous.

"Oh, you must have confidence."

I've been looking for a moral lesson in Herman Melville's The Confidence-Man, or at least some way to properly understand the book, but so far I am simply confused. The confidence-man, who may or may not be the devil (according to copious notes in the Norton Critical Edition of this text), spends most of his time convincing misers, misanthropes, and other con men to gain "confidence" in others, and when they are ultimately convinced, he uses their new-found confidence to steal their money. Is this loss of economic wealth a punishment for faithlessness, or is it proof, for the miser and the suspicious barber, that they should never trust men (especially with their money)? The confidence-man, moreover, does not manage to get any money from his fellow con man, Charlie, but simply thwarts his companion's own attempts to swindle. The book seems to simultaneously attempt to increase its readers' "confidence" and advance a sort of misanthropy itself. Whom shall we trust, and why? What does Melville want us to believe?

On Fiction Writing and Liars

Last night my professor said of an author's magazine interview, "of course it's hard to know how much of what she says is genuine, since all writers are liars anyway." Edgar Poe once ran a fake news article about the arrival of a hot-air balloon from across the Atlantic, and gathered huge crowds to buy the paper in which the story appeared. We all know, of course, that writers of fiction must fabricate characters, plots, and settings, as part of the creative process, but it's often difficult to tell to what extent the fabrication extends to the writers' real lives. Do we, as readers of fiction, allow some lying from our authors outside their fiction? Is it possible to know whether truly great fiction writers are lying or not? Perhaps we don't care, as long as the writing is good. Maybe the genuine and the fake are indistinguishable for some people. One wonders which came first, though--the lying, or the fiction writing? It's quite likely that I've been unable to write fiction because I've been unable to lie. Perhaps I could take some tips from Poe.

Pictured is (possibly) Poe in his coffin, from www.celebritymorgue.com. It's quite likely to be as fake as Poe was.