photo by jez.atkinson
I recently finished reading David Jauss’ collection of essays, Alone With All That Could Happen. The book’s seven essays explore the craft of creative writing in ways that are both immensely practical and wonderfully unconventional. Each essay provoked a cascade of possibilities and connections in my mind, so I’d like to write a couple posts to bring the discussion to this blog.
Today we’ll dive into “Autobiographobia,” the first essay of the book.
So, what makes a true story?
Writers talk a lot about truth. Unveiling truths of the human spirit, telling stories true to our experience, or aiming purely for the ultimate truth.
On the first page, Jauss describes two phone calls he received from readers who wanted to let him know he was not alone in the powerful and tragic experiences recounted in his stories. One caller, a Vietnam vet, had read Jauss’ short story in which a soldier steps on a mine in Vietnam, but the mine fails to explode. The caller was furious when Jauss revealed that they had surely not been in the war at the same time — in fact, Jauss had never been in the military.
“Clearly, he felt as if he’d been taken in by a con man. And in a way, he had, for what is a fiction writer if not a confidence artist, someone who trades words for your trust, and — if he’s lucky — your money?”
If the most universally repeated advice in creative writing workshops is “Write what you know,” then Jauss is a rebel in the field. He explores realities far from his own in all his short stories, striving for a different type of truth.
“Its truth is not the kind that can be captured by a surveillance camera but the kind that appears in our dreams, a truth heightened by distortion and the odd juxtaposition of a lifetime’s accumulation of images. Like a dream, a story, if it’s any good, tells the truth about the author’s secret, inner life, and as often as not it does so by telling lies about her public, outer life, for, as Oscar Wilde said, ‘One’s real life is so often the life that one does not lead.’”
The secret life
Jauss does not believe that autobiographical facts and details reveal a person. He agrees with Chekhov, who once proclaimed in a letter that he had “autobiographobia.”
“Checkhov believed that the public life, not only of a character but also of its author, is the false, ‘accidental’ one, the inner secret life the real, ‘essential’ one.”
Of course, what we write will inevitably be deeply colored by what we know — Jauss makes no attempt to deny that. Instead, he explains that “if you’re trying to write into what you don’t know, you’ll discover things about yourself that you didn’t know. In short, you’ll discover your secret life, and so will your readers.”
This is a powerful idea, and one that I agree with wholly. Literal language strives, by definition, to reveal an objective truth. I believe, however, that we are incapable of attaining such an objective truth, as our entire experience of the world is shaped by our perception. Therefore, it is the stories that allow us to feel or sense the essence of a person or thing that reveal the most honesty.
Jauss leaves Jorge Luis Borges to explain this notion (a wise decision indeed!):
“A man sets himself the task of portraying the world. Through the years he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and people. Shortly before his death, he discovers that that patient labyrinth of lines traces the image of his face.”
We cannot reveal a secret directly, because it will kill the secret. Instead, we must disguise it, distort it, so that it becomes a lie that actually tells a larger truth. A secret spoken feels insignificant, but a secret hidden carries a heavy weight.
“The principal paradox of literature, then, is that by lying it simultaneously reveals and represses the truth about the author’s secret life.”
Do you write what you know?
Do you think the most engaging prose is rooted in objectivity, or secrets?
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{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Zoe,
It’s uncanny how you always have something to say that relates to my own recent thoughts. I learn so much from reading your blog. Thank you for all the work you put into making Essential Prose the quality site that it is.
I’m saving the last paragraph you wrote in this post (the one in the middle of the Borges quote) to referrence later. Absolutely brilliant.
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Zoe,
Mentioning Chekhov caught my eye–I recently finished reading his Ward No. 6 and Other Stories; I loved it.
Reading his work definitely impresses upon the reader his view that our (and our characters’) inner life is the truest expression of who we are. Chekhov’s characters are plagued with intensley active inner lives.
If you haven’t read that collection of stories, you may want to “Chek” it out.
By the way, why did you change the url from your name to the blog name? I’ve been pondering the use of our own name vs. a “brand” name as a writer. Not sure where I stand right now.
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Okay, this made my head spin *smile* So, not quite sure how to answer except that all my characters are either a piece of me OR they are from my observations of others. I’m a people watcher. Not just their actions, but how they think and act and react. That is the fact part of my writing. The fiction part is the scenes I put my characters through.
Am I anywhere in the ballpark on this one?
Hi, Zoe~
Excellent post. I like the term “autobiographobia” very much. Thanks for sharing!
it has been my life experience that no one sees an event or scene the exact same way. How could we? Our brains are all wired differently, and it is what is called being an individual. Witness that by this little experiment. Write a short description. Gather 8 friends together. Send all out of the room but 2. Tell them your story, without them taking notes. (Use a lot of descriptive elements in your description – the one I always use is about an automobile accident.)
After you have told the first couple, take your seat and have the second couple come into the room. The first couple will tell them the story as they remember it. I can guarantee you this – that no matter how sharp these people are, that by the time the fourth couple tells the story back to you, it will be completely different than the original.
It is all about how we perceive things. what may be traumatic to you may seem like small potatoes to me. Life is driven by emotions, and the good storyteller writes this same way. I can guarantee you that if I wrote an exact account of my day, you would be bored to tears by the time you were one third the way through. Then, allow me to write it in the voice I use for fiction. I can safely bet that you would be amazed. It is just how these things work.
I have written all my life, and come from a family of writers. The biggest compliment I ever got was when my mother told my wife to “watch Alden, he is a wonderful liar.” This quote “The principal paradox of literature, then, is that by lying it simultaneously reveals and represses the truth about the author’s secret life” I find to me to be inaccurate. I think I might see this the other way around – to reveal your secret self is not something we would wish to do. But if we take that secret self, dress it up in literary clothing, it then becomes a masterpiece. And that is what I have always attempted to do…
Peace,
Alden~
So, let’s get a debate going here, just for fun, eh? What about A Million Little Pieces by James Frey. Touted as a memoir, yet embellished(?)/fictionalized(?) enough to cause great controversy (thanks, Oprah!). Is a memoir different from an autobiography? Is a memoir a characiture of those events that stick out in your mind, versus an autobiography which sticks to facts?
What say ye?
BTW, I loved the book, and didn’t really care that it was ‘based on facts’ as opposed to ‘being facts’.
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@ James – I’m happy my posts are in line with your thought processes! It’s wonderful to have a community here that gets interested in the same topics.
@ Jesse – Chekhov is an excellent read for quality inner voice. And for strong, compact stories. I’ll definitely have to “Chek” that book out, if only because you made that pun
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As for the URL — I actually switched it more because I foresee wanting to use zoewesthof.com for something else. I didn’t initially intend to get so involved in blogging, but I now feel the blog merits a home of its own. zoewesthof.com still redirects here, as I don’t yet need to use it for other purposes.
@ Alden – I love that “extreme telephone” experiment! Although I think that on the surface, we don’t wish to reveal our secret selves, I think that the process you described — dress it up in literary clothing — is our way of admitting that the best literature tells these secrets… with prose full of “lies.”
@ Urban Panther – Yes, perfect topic for debate!
(I have not read the James Frey book). I think the term “memoir” has the connotation of being based in memories, while “autobiography” sounds like it’s supposed to be “fact-based” to me. From what I understand, the memoir industry sells BIG, while fiction is on shakier ground. People want to believe that they are learning the truth — reading a true story.
It was actually a marketing decision for Frey to publish the book as a memoir instead of a novel — and that clearly backfired in many respects…although he did become famous and controversial.
When scandals like this are revealed, it pushes me to ask how much it matters. If the author conveyed that experience so vividly, if he allowed readers to live it, how much does it matter whether it actually happened or not?
I think it’s a sleazy move, to label a book as “memoir” so that it sells more copies, but I do think it proves that we are too devoted to the idea that what’s written is true.
How many history books have been grossly manipulated? How many official records have been censored?
This is deep intellectual writing. Perhaps not all that common in the blogosphere. I could probably benefit from reading a blot such as this.
Though, I tried subscribing up via e-mail and it appears there is some technical problem, just to let you know.
When it is solved, I’ll sign up via e-mail.
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@ Bamboo Forest – Thank you for pointing out the glitch — I’ve updated the code, so hopefully you’ll be able to subscribe by e-mail now
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