Is It Memoir or Is It Fiction?

Memoir scandals break out all the time: someone's memoir turns out to be highly fictionalized. But what about the opposite? How much fiction is really disguised memoir?

Over the years I've often been asked how much of my writing is autobiographical, and even people who know me have gotten confused.

My recently re-published first novel Winter Eyes is about the son of Holocaust survivors who've hidden their Jewish past from him and tried to bring him up in New York as a Polish Catholic.

Because the book was set in New York where I grew up, and because it focuses on a child of Holocaust survivors (which I am, too), it actually puzzled one friend who knew a lot about my life. After he finished reading it, he said, "I didn't realize your parents got divorced when you were little." I told him they weren't divorced, though perhaps they should have been.

"And did your parents pretend they weren't Jewish?" I explained that of course they hadn't, and we'd even talked about my Jewish background before, more than once.

He wasn't done. There was a whole series of things he said he hadn't known about me, but those were all drawn from the life of the boy in the novel, not part of my real life. In each case, I explained the difference. After a long pause, he said, "No wonder I was confused."

Because I had woven in bits and pieces of my real experiences, refracted in complex ways, he caught their scent, but those few traces of reality made him assume it was all true.

My novel Winter Eyes is emotionally real, or more accurately, an alternative reality. I wrote it imagining an almost completely different life from the one I had. For instance, I had a very troubled relationship with my older brother, but the boy in Winter Eyes is an only child. So in a way, you could also call the novel a secret memoir.

My friend's confusion is especially strong with stories and books I've written in the first person, and people after a reading from one of those will invariably refer to "The part where you...."

I reply, "You mean the part where he...." and they smile indulgently. It's happened not just in America, but at readings I've given in Germany. Years ago, I was annoyed, but I eventually learned to take it as a compliment. The narrative had seemed so real to the audience that people automatically assumed I was transcribing something from my own life.

The confusion reminds me again and again of the power of storytelling to move people so much that it seems it must be real -- even when it's fiction. I fell in love with that power way back in second grade. Reading authors as different as Isaac Asimov and Dumas, I started to learn and appreciate the gorgeous ways in which, as Robert Browning said, stories are "always old and always new."

 

 

 

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Comments

[dterrydraw]

09:44 AM on 04/30/2011

That was an intriguing article, so thank you.

However, I've got to say that,having been raised among&by perhaps-reconstructed-but-utterly-unregenerate Southerners, I've known since the age of five to always recall that no one in these circles has ever let that "facts" get in the way of a good story.

Consequently, I've been perplexed over the past few years when, suddenly, there's a mass of readers (and an impressive mass of Oprah in her Strict-Mommy role, for that matter) wailing and bellowing over their "betrayal" by some writer they "BELIEVED in!!!!".....

At the risk of seeming more than usually flippant?....I read about these "scandals", and I think "Good Lord.....it's just a BOOK...it's just a STORY.... if it's not 'true', that doesn't say anything about you...".

In any case, I read about these "memoir scandals" and wonder if the same people would, had they been born thirty years earlier, have been so thoroughly distraught to learn that Rock Hudson and his wife WEREN'T, actually, a model couple. These readers seem dismayingly needy .

In closing, I should add that I just finished a memoir (given to me by a friend, and I scarcely ever read flapjacket copy) which I heartily enjoyed. I thought the book was an admirably accomplished piece of invention. To be honest?....I was sort of disappointed, later, to find that the woman hadn't made-up a bit of it.


Sincerely,

david Terry
www.davidterryart.com

[Lev Raphael]

07:02 AM on 05/03/2011

Story-telling always involves shaping for dramatic effect. The memoir scandals aren't about artistry as much as they are about dishonesty. When someone writes a memoir about being a Holocaust victim and isn't, that's a scandal. When James Frey ends up turning fiction into a memoir so as to sell the book, that's a scandal. Now, whether people should get all up in arms about it, that's a different story, right? And might say more about them than about the book.

[Hope Edelman]

08:58 PM on 04/29/2011

Thanks for this post, Lev. Very true, and in the reverse as well. My last memoir read like fiction, I've been told, and is sometimes referred to as a novel. Readers' perceptions do seem to be very fluid, and perhaps it's is a compliment to writers rather than evidence of confusion when readers become engrossed in a story to the point where the definitions get blurred. Do you think this happens only when the book is written in first person or do you find that readers have the same response when you write in the third? (I couldn't find an excerpt from Winter Eyes online so don't know if it's written in first or third.) Stunning cover, by the way.

[Lev Raphael]

10:00 PM on 04/29/2011

I think it's more of a problem with first person, but basically a problem with any fiction that connects to readers deeply. That's what I've seen over twenty years of doing readings from all kinds of books.

BTW, "Winter Eyes" is on Kindle so you should be able to sample it, and it's in 3rd person. Glad you like the cover! I picked it and helped with the design. That's one of the joys about taking your books to ebook; this cover is so much better than the original one, and the ebook also has the full version of the book as it was meant to be published (see here: http://tinyurl.com/48nvutv). Call it "the author's cut." :-)

[Commonwealth]

03:55 PM on 04/29/2011

I remain at a loss to understand why people become upset to discover a memoir is not always historically accurate. Nikos Kazantzakis, one of the favorite authors of my youth, wrote a marvelous "autobigraphy"/"memoir", "Report To Greco", which he introduced by noting that his account contains memories both subjective and objective and he could not distinguish between the two. If I were to write my own memoir, it would probably be 3 parts subjective memories and thoughts to 1 part actual events and the actual events would be filtered through the lens of memory as well. When I read a memoir, I expect that I am reading about the author's life as he thinks about it, sometimes idealized. Time is an illusive element at best and I would also expect that many a time frame of many a memoir is condensed and contracted or elided or otherwise historically inaccurate.

[Lev Raphael]

04:08 PM on 04/29/2011

Readers have a right to be disappointed and angry when they find out a memoir has gross falsifications of the truth. Granted, some readers may think memory is like a DVR, and they're wrong.
But it's not appropriate to write a memoir and make things up entirely.

[Commonwealth]

06:45 AM on 05/03/2011

See, I think this is incorrect. But readers have been encouraged in their disappointment. I don't know why Mortenson made the exaggerated claims he did and leavened his account with points that mislead. Even Krakauer admits he is doing good work-- Krakauer's objections seem to be over the number of schools built and the account of his initial encounter with Korphe. I assume that, since Mortenson is not a professional writer, those who assisted him in the writing and publication insisted on a nip here and a tuck there and told him it would be a better read.

[Professor18]

12:38 PM on 04/29/2011

I confess, I'm one of those readers you mention. If a novel moves me deeply I end up feeling connected to the author and assuming that it's heavily autobiographical even if it isn't. As you say, that's the magic. Conversely, with so many memoirs being exposed as faked in some serious way, I find myself reading them with a bit of suspicion.

[Lev Raphael]

02:26 PM on 04/29/2011

I experience the problem when I read fiction by someone I know. I find myself trying hard not to identify the character or narrator with the author, but then I also wonder about things from a technical standpoint, like how my friend came to a certain insight or constructed a certain scene. That's shop talk, however, and fun, and doesn't tend to piss anyone off. :-)

[Lisa Solod Warren]

08:37 AM on 04/29/2011

Love this. I have had readers SURE that my fiction was "real." It drives me nuts..... Just because one takes a fact or idea from real life doesn't mean that the story is true. What we writers try to get to is the big Truth.... although it is always impossible to convince some readers.

[Lev Raphael]

12:14 PM on 04/29/2011

Glad it spoke to you and for you!

[Brad Craft]

07:50 PM on 04/28/2011

Wonderful post. Sort of the what defines you as a good novelist, that convincing detail leading to confusion between author and character. Also, less admirably, exactly what would seem to define the chief fault of the fake memoir, where that confusion is calculated to get on Oprah.

[Lev Raphael]

08:48 PM on 04/28/2011

Yes, Oprah has a lot to answer for....... Thanks for stopping by.

[Susan Dormady Eisenberg]

06:20 PM on 04/28/2011

I think it's a tribute to your imaginative gifts that your friends think that everything you write has happened. You bring detail, nuance and texture to your fiction, and those qualities ground your work in reality. But the truth is, everything an author writes does "happen" to us...at the moment we're creating the book. (Kudos on the republication of WINTER EYES. I loved it.)

[Lev Raphael]

08:46 PM on 04/28/2011

Glad you liked the book so much, and thanks for your comments. You're so right, what we write is real to us in a way. There's a whole 'nother blog about *that.* :-)

[runheidi]

05:22 PM on 04/28/2011

For me, the magic of good fiction lies somewhere along the line between the fictitious and the real. The blurrier that line, the better.

[Lev Raphael]

08:47 PM on 04/28/2011

I love falling under the spell of that magic--I'm reading "The Leopard" now and it's so magical I read only a few pages at a time and let them sink in.

[Buffy Naillon]

02:43 PM on 04/28/2011

What a wonderful post, Lev. I had someone say the same thing about some of my writing recently. I was enormously flattered. Thanks for bringing this to light; the power of stories can change us. That's the most important value in being a writer.

[Lev Raphael]

05:00 PM on 04/28/2011

I'm glad this spoke to you.