Fact and Fiction: More About The Dotted Line

The June 20, 2015, "New York Times" carried a lengthy obituary on James Salter, depicted as one of America's most under-appreciated recent novelists and writer of short stories.  The piece is interesting in a couple of respects, but I just want to touch on one of them here.

In an earlier post, I wrote about the dotted line between fact and fiction, which, as a commentator subsequently noted, is not necessarily a problem when fiction makes use of fact, but deceptive when something purporting to be non-fiction is actually made up.

When Love Fails to Heal, See a Psychiatrist

We often hear or read about the healing power of love. But it doesn't always work -- it can't overcome all obstacles -- and when that happens, perhaps one should consult a psychiatrist.

That appears to one message of "Sleep," a short story by Colm Toibin in the March 23, 2015, edition of "The New Yorker."

I know what you will do when morning comes. I wake before you do and I lie still. Sometimes I doze, but usually I am alert, with my eyes open. I don’t move. I don’t want to disturb you. I can hear your soft, calm breathing and I like that. And then at a certain point you turn toward me without opening your eyes; your hand reaches over, and you touch my shoulder or my back. And then all of you comes close to me. It is as though you were still sleeping—there is no sound from you, just a need, almost urgent but unconscious, to be close to someone. This is how the day begins when you are with me.

That's the opening paragraph of "Sleep." It's a very fine and powerful piece of writing that drew me in. Unfortunately, however, it isn't stylistically equaled by anything that follows, but that is beside the point here.

The Dotted Line Between Fact and Fiction

One may conventionally think of fiction as stories authors have invented -- out of the ether, as it were. But at times, not just inspiration, but certain details, come from life, viewed or experienced.

The first character one encounters in "Ulysses," -- 'stately, plump Buck Mulligan' -- is largely based on a man named Oliver St. John Gogarty, and to those who knew him, obviously so. Likewise, various other characters in James Joyce's epic can be linked to actual people. And Joyce clearly incorporated versions things that happened to him in his book.

In my novella, "Manhattan Morning," the final scene at an eatery in Grand Central Terminal is very close to an actual occurrence. After I had the experience, I thought it would work well as the final scene of a story, serving as a foil, mainly in the realm of values, to what had gone before. It is also a sympathetic and somewhat poignant portrait of a woman attempting to balance a demanding job and motherhood in a hectic world -- a good story.

I doubt that readers find such linkages distressing. But what about the reverse -- when something represented as fact turns out to be made up?

Fiction That Forecasts the Future

The lead article in the Book Review section of the Monday, May 17, 2015 "New York Times" took a look at two non-fiction offerings that purport to forecast the future.

In "The Rise of the Robots," Martin Ford argues that even the well-educated will soon face a jobless future as a result of increasingly sophisticated technology. Meanwhile, Craig Lambert, in "Shadow Work," notes that there will still be plenty of work that needs to be done -- much of it rather menial because, well, humans will still be humans. But no one will pay for it.

I mention these books not for their own sake, but rather because the NYT review reminded me that one of the roles of fiction is to look into the future.

"Here's To You Mrs. Dalloway"

"And here's to you, Mrs. Dalloway,
 Culture loves you more than you will know"

 

With apologies to Simon & Garfunkel, this bit of doggerel came to me when I read the Bookends feature of the "New York Times" weekly Book Review Section on April 19.

 

"A weekend is a much bigger character than Watergate."  That quote from Wilfred Sheed was used to kick off the usual "Bookends" offerings by two commentators, this time on the question of whether everyday life is better fodder for fiction than grand events.

 

The most interesting aspect of the unprovocative exchange of views was that both of the commentators, presumably independently, cited Virginia Woolf's novel "Mrs. Dalloway"  as a prime example of "everyday life" fiction. 

 

I think they got the right author, but the wrong book. In "Mrs. Dalloway," one of the main characters commits suicide and the prime minister of England is coming to the party Clarissa and her husband, a government official, are hosting that night. These are not everyday events.

 

In contrast, Woolf's equally well regarded novel "To the Lighthouse" is concerned entirely with the quotidian affairs of family and friends.

 

Do Moralists Make Bad Novelists?

Alison McCulloch, reviewing Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt's collection of stories called "Invisible Love" in the Sunday, Jan. 4, 2015, edition of the New York Times, said Schmitt, in a writer's dairy appended to the stories, argued that moralists make bad novelists.

"When they try, they bring to their reproduction of reality a coldness, a clinical attitude, a dissection of living matter that reeks of the laboratory."

That got me wondering as to what extent my story "Manhattan Morning" deals with moral issues and what that might say about it.

The Question of Pleasure and "Only the Dead Know Brooklyn"

The "Bookends" page of the "New York Times" Sunday Book Review section has become one of my favorite reads.  The format is always the same: two guest contributors horse over a particular topic or question. On April 5, it was "When it comes to reading, is pleasure suspect?"

Here we need to pause for a moment and consider the question. Why might the concept of pleasure (happiness, delight, joy, satisfaction, gratification, contentment, amusement, etc.) be considered suspect at all? What does this say about our society?