Truth and Lies

Long post today. Sorry.

My two sisters and I had totally different upbringings. Same family. But . . . I was oldest, and by the time I left home, pretty much for good, my youngest sister was only ten. My middle sister left a couple of years later, which meant for high school, my youngest sister was an "only." When MY life started out, my parents and I lived in an apartment building in Yonkers, NY, on the same block as my great-grandmother and great-grandfather, great-aunt, and a couple of cousins. We all left for safer neighborhood and better schools, or, in my great-grandparents' case, through death. By the time my youngest sister was in high school, we lived in a 5,000 square-foot French colonial, with a Jag and two or three Lincolns parked in the driveway. All I remember of my father's old Buick from when I was little . . . was that it smelled. You get the idea.

When I tell the "truth" about my upbringing, it is MY truth. And when my sisters tell about theirs . . . it is their own. My father changed from when I was born to when my youngest sister left the nest. He mellowed out, he probably wasn't as stressed about making a living--we got a whole new set of stresses, like the real estate market plummeting, not did he and my mom have enough paycheck at the end of the month to put food on the table. Now, as a mother, I have dragged my kids to war protests and brought them with me to march on Washington. I have insisted we boycott a SLEW of products for political reasons: Burger King, General Mills, I could go on with a lengthy list. When their schools do Box Tops for Education, it's all I can do from going down and protesting by staging a sit-in in the principal's office (Box Tops is sponsored by General Mills). I have dragged them along to the 'hood to help a family in need. They have wrapped presents for 12-year-old teen mothers. I think the "truth" is I am raising them to be fully conscious of issues of social justice. They may just think, "Mom's a nut who won't let us eat cereal."

So I'm sure, if you are a reader/writer, you saw the two major hoax stories this week, that amount to a search for truth in memoir. The first link is to the Margaret Seltzer story, the author who made up a life of foster care amongst the gangs of South-Central, LA. The second is about Misha Defonseca, who invented a life raised by wolves during the Holocaust.

Here are my thoughts--three major ones. Feel free to voice yours in the Comments section.

1) The obvious. Where the hell were the fact checkers? Move beyond that to something MORE obvious. Where was anyone with a brain? In the case of the first book, the Seltzer story, nothing about this woman's story rings true. I can tell you that when I, a white woman, took my kids into the worst of the worst mostly black and Hatian 'hood to do social work, I didn't see a face like mine. I didn't see a car like mine (which at the time was just a kind of crappy older van). When we got out of the car, 90% of the windows in this place shot out or broken, we were stared at. We were going to dinner at a friend's house. I never walked so fast in my life, even though at the time, I was pregnant. So maybe I would more adequately state I never waddled so fast. The fact is . . . people can spot an outsider in a second, and it would not be so easy for a white woman to move, fluidly, amongst gangs in that part of LA. I could also go on about the politics of fostering children from other races, and how the system looks at it closely, so even that rings false, but suffice it to say . . . it doesn't even SOUND real. The second story? Of the Holocaust hoax? A simple Google search would tell you how rare it is for a human being to be "raised by wolves." At times, I think Demon Baby came to me via a wolf pack, but since I can clearly recall giving birth . . .

2) Truth is subjective. Hence my introduction about my truth versus my sister's or my children's. We are EACH entitled to a truth.

3) BUT . . . bear with me. When a Buddhist eats a meal, he or she bows their head and thinks not just of the food on the plate, but the sun and rain that grew the food, the farmer or truck driver or whatever who brought it to market, all the hands involved in creating that meal. It is the idea that we are all interconnected. As such, it becomes a lot harder to be an a**hole. No one is lesser or greater. We're all connected. It becomes harder to eat cereal from companies that do the wrong thing. It becomes harder to be silent, in some ways, over injustice. So I get incensed over these hoaxes, particularly the gang one. And James Frey. Because when you so lose the thread of truth in the quest for a book deal, you are necessarily RIDING ON THE BACKS of real people whose stories those are. There ARE countless children in foster care, countless gang bangers, countless people without hope in extreme poverty and socially unjust situations. There are countless addicts for whom every day is a struggle WITHOUT the exaggeration for the sake of a sale of a book. And so, that, in my sincere opinion, is what karma is. You are, in my opinion, using the rapes and murders and drugs and gangs, using them in an intimate and real interconnected way, to sell your first novel. And Seltzer has taken all of the heaviness of that onto her soul. Just as James Frey has taken in the real death of the so-called "girlfriend" he had, whom he actually barely knew. All her family's grief and pain? He has taken that on. In the case of the Holocaust, I actually believe that writer is mentally ill; nonetheless . . . there is no greater tragedy to take on.

Were I to sincerely believe that any of these people walked a path in which they felt what they wrote was their "truth," I would be more forgiving, just as I am a lot more forgiving of Augusten Burroughs. I think he probably feels he owns that story pretty much as it is.

Finally, we all want deals. I could take certain aspects of my life, memories, triumphs, and tragedies, and mine my life for a sale (perhaps, if anyone thought it was interesting enough). But I would never put my life under a microscope like that, nor, more importantly, my families' lives. So I have chosen the route many of us take. I have "borrowed" bits and pieces of my own life and put them into fiction. But to try, as Selzter has done, to excuse her behavior and say the story must be told, when she knows full well that a first novel is a tougher sale than a white woman as the face of minority gangs in a memoir . . . is so many shades of wrong. All writers who toil at their craft should, I think, be outraged.

Thoughts??

True

Alcoholics drink. Liars lie. Demon Babies? They are fascinated with things like the trajectory of saliva. But because they are Demon Babies with extraordinary powers of Demonology, they aren't like mere mortal babies who study the physics of saliva trajectory as it applies to spit hitting sidewalk. No, Demon Babies are interested in the trajectory of saliva entering the ear canal of sleeping mothers. But you're not surprised, are you?

Moving on . . . children giggle. Flowers bloom. The sun rises. Every day. But people? Well, ministers pray. Buddhist monks chant. Chefs cook. A helluva lot better than I do. Crack addicts steal and lie. People . . . tend to be true. True to who they are.

Sometimes, it may seem, I am sure my dad would say, as if I am hopelessly optimistic. WHY on earth would I think saving a single teen mother from a life of crack and poverty by mentoring her as she studies and makes dean's list, will make one damn bit of difference. There's a cesspool of poverty in this country. ONE will not make a difference. But pessimists? They're pessimistic. They are true to that. So I expect him to believe that. And that's OK. Me? I'm a realist. I'm NOT an optimist. I know people are true to themselves. That Demon Babies love the physics of saliva trajectory, that drug addicts will steal your car to buy drugs, that . . . you get the idea. But I choose, I guess, to think starting with ONE is okay. It's enough. For now. Then you can start with another one. And then one . . . and . . . it's not optimism. I think it's TRUE.

What brings on this whole discussion? Well, I went to see JUNO last night. For me, it totally lived up to the hype. But what amazed me, in terms of script and character, was how TRUE it was. Because people in the movie remained true to who they really are. The stepmother character was remarkably three-dimensional. She loved a man, married him, got an unusual stepdaughter in the mix, and kept as tight a lid as she could on the whole situation. She wasn't bad--she just . . . well, got Juno for a stepdaughter and did the best she probably could. And then she had moments--these amazing moments--of championing this girl (no spoilers here . . . ). And it wasn't like a Hollywood movie where music swells and everyone is all happy and rosy and wonderful and everything is fixed. We're never "all" fixed. Not ALL.

And to me, when writing character, that's what's true. Too often, it's easy to give everything a happy ending in a neat little bow, to solve the crime and fix it all. But what's true? In my first novel, Spanish Disco, do you know I actually heard from more than a few readers who said, "I am your new biggest fan because you actually wrote a romantic comedy that ended with the word 'testicles'"? No easy feat. I started the book with an analogy to bloody bodies scraped off the pavement of I-95 like roadkill possums. Along the way, Cassie Hayes changed. She learned to cry. She learned to love people a little. To try to trust. But she also had to grieve something she thought she could never grieve. She was changed, for the better. But she was also true. Because she didn't suddenly have an epiphany and become someone else. She was her. True. Using phrases like, "Touch a word of this manuscript and I'll cut off your testicles." From page 1 to the end, she was true.

People spout, to writers, to be "true." To stay true to character. Sometimes that's not easy. There's a temptation to veer from truth. Usually, what's true is a shade of gray. A lot of times it's not pretty. But it's true, and that's sometimes beautiful.

You see, saliva physics isn't beautiful. I won't lie. But there are other truths that are beautiful about Demon Babies. Like how they like to put their heads on your pillow, nose to nose, and stare at you, then kiss your lips and say, "You're beautiful, Mom." Even when you have saliva in your hair.

Thoughts? What is true about your character?

Clinging

Okay, first, as an aside . . . when the blue Wiggle starts looking like a sex symbol to you, you've been home mothering sick kids for WAY too long. Baby Girl, after seeming to bounce back, took a major step backward last night, and I was up all night long with a vomiting child again. The blue Wiggle looks HOT to me today. I think I have finally lost whatever tentative grip on sanity I had.

But back to writing. I have a Buddhist quote for you:

The truth you believe and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new. ~Pema Chödrön

Think about this as it applies to your writing.

Some people cling to the "truth" that they "can't" do x or y in their fiction, or they aren't any good at queries, or they can't venture out to a conference and do an agent appointment, or they can't ask writer x to blurb their manuscript. They cling to insecurities that hold them back from any new reality. They fear rejection so much that they hold onto a false vision of truth that pins them, clinging, to the side of a rock, hanging over a precipice. They create truths to support their fears.

Others . . . well, they cling to the idea that they don't need an editor, that they are ready, that they know all there is about craft. Their truth keeps them from taking risks and improving as writers. They stop growing. They surround themselves with newer writers who fawn over them so that their truth is supported. They fancy themselves "editors" or teachers, when we all need editors and teachers ourselves.

Others? They cling to the rumors that spread through this industry like wildfire--that you can't sell a detective story right now, or a historical or a fill-in-the-blank (when really, if a book blew 'em away, you could sell anything at any time), or you have to follow x and y rules to break in. That there even ARE rules (aside from what's in Strunk and White).

And the worst truth to cling to has to do with facing that precipice. Peering down. Because nearly every writer has SOMETHING he or she really doesn't want to face. That, deep down, the current work in progress is a mess and maybe cannot be salvaged. That the voice isn't working. That they are surrounded by yes-men critique partners and there's some cold, hard reality about their writing that they just cannot bear to hear. And so they cling for all it's worth to the safe rock--which really isn't as safe as one might think.

Let go of some truth today. Hear something new.

Thoughts?