The news has been full of something near and dear to Ms. Strega's literary life: the budding controversy over James Frey's A Million Little Pieces. It seems he may have tweaked his memoirs somewhat to enhance the story. Frey contends that memoir should not be held to the same standard of strict truth in the way that journalistic pieces are. By the way, speaking of The Standard of Truth, the famous ending of In Cold Blood (at the Clutter gravesite) was fiction, and Capote made that clear. Nobody rode him out of town on a rail for that. A certain memoirist has blasted Frey for fictionalizing some of his memoir--I remember that one of my professors told me that, when this certain memoirist was quizzed about the veracity of sundry details in her first memoir, her reply was "It isn't important." This "certain memoirist" is soon to publish a piece on truth in memoir, which I find a bit funny because of this; I'm interested to see what she has to say for herself.
Personally, I strongly believe memoir can contain elements of fictionalization(but always, of course, clearly letting the audience know that this is happening, via a foreword or introduction). Apparently Frey is going to put a disclaimer of this sort in his book (he probably should have had it before). I don't think he needs to be pilloried in the media.
I make no bones about the fact that some of my memoir--the historical parts and the parts in which I actually speak in a character's voice (such as the long parts narrated by my grandmother) have been fleshed out severely from bones of story told in my family (though everything has an extremely strong basis in true happenings, in much the same way that The Joy Luck Club has a strong basis in real events). My book is thus a blend of historical "fiction" and memoir, which of course makes it very hard to place into the strict category of either--but that's the way it's emerged. I really had no other choice but to suppose what had happened in certain circumstances--most of my older family members are dead and there is no way to know exactly what happened. Still, my intention when the book is published is to make absolutely clear--in an introduction or a foreword-of what I had to do in certain parts of the book. I am driving at essential truths about my family of origin in certain chapters. Whether the book is ultimately marketed as memoir or fiction is probably more up to editors and agents than me--though I don't, for example, want to change last names. Part of the intention of this book is to memorialize people I have lost from my life. Whether I've had to flesh out details of what I supposed my aunt and uncle's North End store looked like in the 1920s is probably irrelevant to what I am driving at (though for those who have read "the Mafia story," that's extremely close to the way that story was told in my family). Still, I have no problem with letting my audiences know that, though all of the book is based on true stories in my family, some of the details have had to be fleshed out, in some instances more than others.
I would hate to see memoir as a genre be put into a strict corset in the way that I'm seeing in the media over the last few days. Memory often doesn't tell the truth, anyway, and to truss memoir up in cords of absolute truth-telling will, in my opinion, keep this genre from evolving. I don't know if Frey contended that his memoir was absolute truth (he could have put a disclaimer in the intro if that was the case--even Reading Lolita in Tehran has one, essentially that names and circumstances have been changed to protect people). I think that there is room to be creative in memoir in ways that one can't be in other forms of nonfiction--though I do think letting the audience know from the get-go when this has to be done is very important. I do love what Oprah said about the book, that it has an important essential message (she gets it, for sure, about the fluidity of memoir and its purpose). Memoir, at times, isn't about presenting a Polaroid of the past as much as it is about capturing the heart of experience, the deep essence.
I also think that Frey's pillaging over the last few days--Random House is offering refunds on his book, for one thing--is an example of the arch-conservative overlay that I feel is starting to filter through into the publishing world during this Bush era. Apparently memoirists must tell the truth at all costs and forget creativity these days--so I fear for other memoirists now whose works will fall under the magnifying glass. It may also make publishers less willing to take on memoir--and a lot of stories will then be lost to the world. Of course, it could have the opposite effect and bring memoir more strongly into the foreground. At the very least, it's opened up a huge dialogue about it.
That's my soapbox rant for the day, for what it's worth.
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