A New Take On Memoirs
I’ve been waiting for Sebastian Junger’s newest, The Belmont Strangler. In the wake of the memoir scandals visited on all of us by James Frey and others, Junger writes about a murder of an elderly woman (Bessie Goldberg) in his old neighborhood. Junger was about six years old at the time. A black man was arrested and convicted of killing a white woman in an affluent Boston neighborhood. Junger wonders if a man who worked for his family could have been the killer. The man turns out to be Albert DeSalvo. For those not up on their true crime facts, DeSalvo was the Boston Strangler (or so most believe).
There is a review of the book in Sunday’s New York Times Book Review. Since I already know I’m buying the book, one of the more interesting items for me came near the end of the review. It goes like this:
In an intriguing paragraph, Junger makes a disturbing claim about the genre of nonfiction that many have made about great fiction: “Maybe the truth isn’t even the most interesting thing about some stories, I thought; maybe the most interesting thing about some stories is all the things that could be true. And maybe it’s in the pursuit of those things that you understand the world in its deepest, most profound sense.”
The reviewer goes on to argue that Junger is wrong about nonfiction. The reviewer says, and I agree, that: “Nonfiction must be about actual truth, not about how coincidences could lead to a deeper understanding of truth.”
Junger’s book is getting great reviews, but all this pseudo-truth talk makes me nervous. If it’s Junger’s theory that DeSalvo killed this neighbor and not the guy convicted for the crimes, that’s fine. But say it’s “based on a true story” not that it is one. In the end, the reviewer calls the book a must read but warns to read it, like all nonfiction, with the idea that the author is looking for “a literary or dramatic payoff.”
Kind of sounds like fiction, but okay.
April 19th, 2006 at 8:27 am
Lauren Slater is another author who has been accused of writing pseudo-truth (I think I like that word!). It makes it hard for me to read her because I’m never sure if I’m reading fiction, nonfiction, or her unique version of the truth. One of her first books (which I will look up if you really want the title) was popular because it could be “just all in her head.” I guess the novely that it could be pseudo-truth was intriguing at the time. To quote my kids who constantly quote Adam from Mythbusters: “I reject your reality and substitute one of my own!”
A few years ago, I read a memoir by Madeline L’Engle. And in the book, she actually confesses that the people she just wrote about didn’t exist. She used these characters as an illustration of outsiders trying to fit in. I remember feeling very betrayed and hurt. I was also a little surprised how strong my emotions were.
Basically, I just don’t like being lied to.