April 11, 2007
From the desk of Jane Galt:Culture matters
Last month, when I read Alex Heard's piece on David Sedaris in The New Republic, I thought that Sedaris's fabrications probably aren't the crime that he made out . . . raise your hand if you haven't cleaned up a funny story in the retelling to make it really hilarious (Sorry Marcie, Annabel) . . . but that they were bad enough to warrant a chastened admission from Sedaris. As Jack Shafer attests, this hasn't happened. And as a big Twain-o-phile, I find the "Twain Defense"--Uncle Mark did it!--ridiculous.
Let's be honest: Mark Twain made stuff up. And not just minor stuff. My understanding is that when he was a journalist in Nevada, he used to fabricate things like house fires in remote areas when he didn't have a good story. Certainly, anyone who's familiar with his later work knows that he liberally borrowed anecdotes that happened to someone else, lied about his past, and thoroughly exaggerated every incident that he ever wrote down. Anyone who thinks of "The Innocents Abroad" as straight reporting needs to sit down with a cool compress on their head until the seizure passes.
But his readers didn't think of it as straight reporting. Mark Twain was working in a very different journalistic environment from the current one. Even much later writers got away with, for example, building "composite" characters to dramatise their non-fiction. People expected less from their newspapers, which were in Twain's time often house organs of one political party or another, and later the only source of print most households could afford.
All that changed in the 1950's, and the standards of fidelity to facts have become more stringent with each passing decade. That gives people the expectation that when they read something labeled as non-fiction, or journalism, it is not merely "truthy", but actually true: the words said are things people said, the actions portrayed were actually performed by some person. Obviously, there is a little leeway. I clean up the quotes I print, which otherwise would often go "I, uh, think that there's, um, a few kind of . . . a few things that you have to, you know, think about if you want to, um, implement a school voucher programme." And if your mother gets out of a chair suddenly when she sees a mouse and demands that you kill it, we'll give you humorists a little leeway to describe her as shooting out of the chair like a rocket, screaming "Kill that little bastard dead!" But you can't then go on to say she broke her leg trying to get away with it if she didn't even stub her toe.
When Sedaris makes up whole scenes and large swathes of the dialogue in them, he is trading on the fact that people believe the stuff he writes about actually happened. If it didn't happen, it isn't nearly so funny . . . and as others have pointed out, Sedaris's stuff isn't really amusing enough to make funny fiction. It's like the time I rode up in an elevator with a perfectly normal-looking, straight-laced businessman who positively reeked of pot. This is funny only because it actually happened; the very thing that makes it amusing is that you have to believe something pretty unbelievable. If I wrote that scene in a novel, it wouldn't be funny. It would just be unconvincing.
If Sedaris was as funny as Mark Twain, he would need no defense.
Posted by Jane Galt at April 11, 2007 7:23 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links"); ?>Oh, dear.
I think one of the greatest failings of the linguistic turn and the horror of structuralism and post-structuralist criticism is the failure to study narrators as people.
David Sedaris is what one used to call an Unreliable Narrator. He says so himself over and over.
It's why we love him. We all have a cousin like that. Mine is an aunt. We tell her nothing for fear of what she'll turn it into.
Of course, I don't believe most of what I read from so-called reliable sources, either.
Posted by: Michael Tinkler on April 11, 2007 8:07 PMI have read all his books and enjoy them not because they are all that funny, some of his stories are depressing, but because he has a way with words that I appreciate. His sister is a hoot, however.
Posted by: alan on April 11, 2007 9:45 PM"Obviously, there is a little leeway. I clean up the quotes I print,..."
Yes, but I doubt you "Dowdify" them, which represents more than "a little leeway" and is arguably enen less than "truthy".
I suspect that recent improvements in the accuracy of reporting what people actually said is the result of the availability of audio and video recordings, which make the exercise of "journalistic license" at least a bit more challenging. Of course, it also makes "deniability" more challenging.
Posted by: Ed Reid on April 11, 2007 10:13 PMPerhaps a good rule is that the person you are reporting on should never have reason to disagree with what you said they said.
If I am quoted in a report, I won't go to the reporter and complain that she edited out all my "umm"s and hesitations. I probably didn't notice making them.
If I am reported as having an actual different opinion to what I have on the other hand...
Posted by: doctorpat on April 11, 2007 10:43 PMI disagree entirely. Twain, Thurber, Sedaris and company are writing tall tales. The facts are an inspiration to the story, but the point of the story is the stylistic exaggeration. You seem to be inventing a genre of literally true observations, but I can't see why Sedaris is obliged to abandon a rich literary field to write in your genre. Your story of the reeking businessman, while funny, had no narrative drive, no connection to the rest of your day, and revealed nothing about other characters in the story. It would probably work *better* in a Sedaris story, because in the Sedaris story it would have those things.
Likewise, I don't see any reason to carve out an exception for Twain which may or may not be extended to Sedaris. _The Innocents Abroad_ is hilarious. It's one of the best works of a literary great. The literal truth or lack thereof of incidents in it is an interesting glimpse into how the book was written, but the book stands on its own merits.
Posted by: Zach on April 12, 2007 12:26 AMZach's characterization of Sedaris as a writer of tall tales is exactly right.
Anyone who thinks Sedaris isn't funny has never heard him read the "rabbit of Easter" bit. Maybe that only affects me because of all the French I took. I don't for a minute believe that the class discussion unfolded exactly as Sedaris describes it, but his telling makes me wish it did.
Posted by: bearing on April 12, 2007 9:08 AMbearing, I decided to post a comment about "the rabbit of easter" before I read your comment. I still can't read that one without breaking into laughter at least three times.
Anyone who thinks any of these "memiors" or "autobiographical" stories are correct need to a) rethink the stories they themselves tell and b) realize what an unreliable source the human memory is. I have a few great childhood stories about Jane. I suspect 90% of the story is wrong. Doesn't make it bad, just makes it somewhat inaccurate. Anyone who expects accuracy in this type of "non-fiction" is both a fool and a spoilsport.
Posted by: Kate on April 12, 2007 9:47 AMPersonally, I was a little turned off by the movie version of _Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas_ because it destroyed the book's tall-tale style. I think the book works much better if you read it as about 50% humorous exaggeration (Even though Thompson probably _did_ do all of those things!).
Posted by: Zach on April 12, 2007 11:03 AMWhat Zach said.
I saw Sedaris live last fall, and during the show he read an early version of a bird-attack story that appeared in the New Yorker a few weeks ago. He mentioned that he tries stories out on audiences before publishing them, and that in general his work involves lots of drafting and revising before he gets the final product.
That statement alone suggested to me that Sedaris is in the tall-tale business. After all, unless you're Alberto Gonzales, why do you have to painstakingly draft and revise the unvarnished truth?
So yeah, his truths are very varnished. And I personally don't think any less of him for that, because I never expected them to be dead-on factual.
Posted by: Chris Anderson on April 12, 2007 1:40 PM"School voucher programme."
Ms. McArdle, I know ya gotta have the "programme" habit, being as you have the _Economist_ gig and all. And "programme" doesn't bug me at all in the _Economist_. But for some reason "programme," "colour" and the like bug the _crap_ out of me coming from an American writing as an American. I ain't saying it's rational or defensible, I'm just sayin'.
Posted by: Sanjay on April 12, 2007 1:47 PM"It's like the time I rode up in an elevator with a perfectly normal-looking, straight-laced businessman who positively reeked of pot. This is funny only because it actually happened; the very thing that makes it amusing is that you have to believe something pretty unbelievable. If I wrote that scene in a novel, it wouldn't be funny. It would just be unconvincing."
Sigh. We now have proof that Megan doesn't read all comments.
And driving home Zach's point; in that thread, someone's suggestion that businessman didn't reek of pot, his suitcase did.
Posted by: aaron on April 12, 2007 2:10 PM