By John Gilstrap
www.johngilstrap.com
One of the few undeniable, irrefutable take-to-the-bank rules of the publishing industry is that nonfiction is easier to sell than fiction. It’s as true in the bookstore as it is on an editor’s desk. If you’re a celebrity, your book is a slam-dunk, even if you have precious little to say. If you’re just an average Joe, on the other hand, you’d better have a pretty enticing angle.
James Frey had just such an angle in his explosive memoir of addiction entitled, A Million Little Pieces. You might remember that book as the target of the Greatest Oprah Meltdown Ever, when she found out that the ridiculously unbelievable, over-the-top autobiography was, in fact, fiction. The world learned this when The Smoking Gun did a little elementary school-level fact checking. Frey’s publishers, Doubleday and Anchor Books, were shocked—shocked, I tell you—that a book with their name on the spine (and its earnings in their coffers) was not everything that the author had crossed his heart and hoped to die and pinky-swore was absolutely true.
After all, if it weren’t true, they couldn’t have marketed it and promoted it as vastly more profitable and easily promoted nonfiction.
Stephen Glass had gasp-inducing angles, too, on all the wild news items he wrote for The New Republic in the late nineties. For a kid in his twenties, he had remarkable access to some of the world’s most interesting people and fascinating stories. After stories were published—many of them fantastical and negative—the subjects (victims?) wrote letters to the editor complaining about inaccuracies and fabrications, but hey, isn’t that what people always do when they’re called out by hardworking investigative reporters? It took different elementary school-level fact checking from a Forbes Magazine reporter to knock down that house of cards.
The Stephen Glass scandal rocked the journalistic world. So many investigative reporters, quoting so many unnamed sources, all of them looking for a marketable angle, were shocked—shocked, I tell you again—that one of their brethren had cheated.
Truth is, I expect a fair level of fabrication from young and hungry “journalists” who are looking for their marketable angles. What’s the harm in a little fantasy, after all, if you’re giving the editors and the audience what they want to read? Isn’t the fact that targets can never confront their accusers part of the beauty of using unnamed sources? And if anyone presses too hard on the accuracy thing, there’s always the convenient excuse that the 24-hour news cycle demands corner-cutting, thus transforming the reporters into victims themselves.
Sorry, Killzoners, but you don’t live and work in Washington, DC for as long as I have without becoming cynical.
Even my cynical outlook, though, didn’t prepare me for the New Yorker’s revelation in April that the late, presumably great Stephen E. Ambrose was himself a serial fabricator of facts. His claim that his benchmark autobiography of Dwight D. Eisenhower was based on “hundreds and hundreds of hours” of one-on-one interviews was a bit overstated. The real number of interview hours, while apparently hard to nail down specifically, numbered “less than five.” I understand that we all succumb to hyperbole from time to time, but even the forgiving, non-cynical among you have to concede that there’s no innocent way to exaggerate less-than-five into hundreds-and-hundreds.
Ambrose cheated. Apparently, his many Eisenhower-related books (I confess I’ve never read them) are replete with footnotes and annotations referring to these one-on-one interviews that never happened. All those quoted passages, then, really are only quotes from Ambrose’s imagination—a representation of what he thought Ike would have said if asked.
This one hurts, folks. We’re talking about the author of Band of Brothers here. The author of D-Day. The guy was a freaking brilliant author. He just, you know, made up a lot of his nonfiction facts. The income from his work, however, was very real, and I’m sure that continuing royalties will continue to pay a lot of bills for his descendents.
Let’s be clear: I don’t begrudge the Ambrose estate a penny. Nor do I begrudge the incomes of Messrs. Frey and Glass. They’re gifted writers who understood the markets they were selling to, and they gave their publishers exactly what they craved. I think the authors did a crappy unethical thing, but I know a lot of people who make their livings doing crappy unethical things. (I mentioned that I work in Washington, right?)
When Kurt Muse and I wrote my only nonfiction opus, Six Minutes to Freedom, I made it clear from the beginning that while the story would be 100% true, I was going to take shortcuts for the sake of pacing. Since I was changing names anyway—a requirement of many of the participants before they would agree to be interviewed—what difference would it make if I combined some personalities and created dialogue that represented the gist of what was said, even if the direct quotes were fabricated? Hell, in the “true” movie The Perfect Storm, Warner Brothers took us into the wheelhouse to witness the conversations of people who never lived to be interviewed, and the world ate it up.
Unlike the other examples I mention of fabrication, when I wrote Six Minutes to Freedom, I was protective enough of my integrity as an author to clearly explain my shortcuts in my Author’s Note. I was honest. And I paid a price. More than a few nonfiction purists objected to my admitted juggling of reality, preferring, no doubt, to read works of history by true scholars like Stephen E. Ambrose. He used footnotes and everything.
So, Killzoners, what do you think? Borrowing from the great Stephen Colbert, is “truthiness” a high enough standard in the world of nonfiction? On a scale that measures ethics alone, absent personal preference, are the offenses of Frey, Glass and Ambrose all equal? And the depressing, distressing elephant in the room: Does any of it matter in the end if the little white scholarly lies sell books?
I think it matters.
I care about my reputation and I don’t want to lower myself to write what the masses want just so I can pocket the change if it violates my values. The truth will out eventually.
One interesting point to ponder: these guys were already gifted writers who *didn’t need to cheat* yet they did anyway.
Why?
Expectations? Deadlines? Greed?
Regardless, they ended badly. They will never be trusted again. All their works will fade and be forgotten in time because of a single bad decision. That’s too high a price to pay for me as I consider the risk not worth the reward. But some will always take that risk and some will also be held accountable for it.
I discovered I’d never be able to make it as a journalist in my first journalism class when I realized I’d rather make something up than do all the legwork required for the assigned articles. Thank goodness my instructor didn’t do any elementary-school-level fact checking, because none of mine would have checked out! Of course, I never really thought I wanted to be any kind of writer other than a fiction writer . . . the few times I tried keeping a diary in my life, even those entries turned into “what if” or “alternate ending” exercises in writing, never “just the facts, ma’am.”
But, telling lies for fun and “fortune” (farthings?) is a lot more fun than trying to tell the truth!
It matters. A lot.
I just finished reading David McCollough’s mammoth biography of John Adams and I can only hope he did the research he said he did. I’m inclined to think he did. The book was worth reading. And I saw the mini-series based on the book and the scriptwriters and directors took some liberties with the book for the sake of–I guess–emotional resonance. That’s fine, I guess, different medium. But in fact, George Washington did not suggest to John Adams upon turning over the reins of government, that they would now see which person was happier. In the film Washington whispers that to Adams. In the book it’s a comment John Adams makes in his diary, that he could imagine George Washington thinking it.
That’s a remarkably huge difference.
I am struggling with this myself.
My first book, Sea Fare was about being a chef in the yachting industry. I wrote a 100% true account with names of captains, crew, and boats. And so, I only told the positive. (I did want to keep my day job after all) I didn’t lie, but I omitted the problems and drama involved. With every reader I talked to, I heard the same question, “But, what about the gossip?”
And so, my second book, is still a memoir of being a yacht chef, but it tells the rest of the story, the drunken parties, the crazy guests, the out-of-this-world demands. I find myself having to change names and creating characters to hide who I am talking about (think celebrity guests who party all night or businessmen may not have come on board with their wives…) With each chapter, I go over and over where the line of fiction and fact lies.
The second book is a whole lot more interesting to read, but when do I stop calling it a memoir? I am still the same character, but everyone else…
It matters.
Cash can only buy stuff. It can’t buy integrity. It can’t buy the ability to be able to look at yourself in the mirror. It can’t erase memories of humiliation when it all inevitably comes out.
But most people who prefer the shortcut aren’t looking to the end game. Partially, I think, through arrogance. They think they’re smarter than everyone else. Smart enough not to get caught.
To me, finding out a non-fic author fudged facts ala Ambrose is like finding out your neighbor is a serial killer. It’s betrayal. As prolific as he was, how do you know what works were legitimate? And it turns you off the author completely. I’d much rather have someone be honest with me in explaining why something was ommitted or a name changed–if I see the rationale, I accept it.
I understand writing non-fic is hard work. There are quite a few topics I’d love to do nonfic projects on if I had enough lifetimes to live. But if you’re going to do it, do it right.
This sounds like the beginnings of a novel plot–up and coming new author releases a book on which he relied on facts from a certain non-fic author, which turns out to be a scam and the big contract falls through due to the scandal. Sounds like the groundwork for a crime of passion. 😎
Re: Victoria Allman
I empathize with you, I really do. I have to weigh the pros and cons of things in my day job as a high school teacher too often for my tastes. But I think telling the actual truth is more useful. Covering it up prevents people the opportunity to be confronted with themselves and be put in a position to do something about it. Being honest by telling the truth is intervention. It’s painful, sure, but the final state of the person afterward can be much better for it. A trial by fire, if you will.
I read a book recently that provided this viewpoint. It’s the sequel to Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card which is called Speaker For The Dead. It’s a futuristic science fiction novel, and the portuguese can be intimidating, but get past it and there’s a great story of redemption hiding beneath the surface. Card writes the main character as something of a philosophizing detective, but it’s good fiction.
You don’t need to read Ender’s Game to understand Speaker, but I recommend you do anyway. (Familiarity with the recurring characters helped me get past the slow opening chapters in Speaker with their Portuguese.) Note that Ender is one of those polarizing novels that people either love or hate. Speaker is a very different book, and I think the better of the two, but they are very much complementary. I fall into the love camp as you might have guessed.
We live in a world where politicians claim to have fought in a war they didn’t, won awards they didn’t, and were faithful to their wives when they weren’t. What else is new?
Ah, no matter how cynical you get, it’s never enough.
This is depressing news about Ambrose. In addition to BAND OF BROTHERS, his account of the Lewis and Clark expedition, UNDAUNTED COURAGE, was largely responsible for my interest and love of the West. He was such a wonderful writer and storyteller; he didn’t need to make stuff up. Now I’ll always wonder.
I read THE PERFECT STORM. It’s a great read, very enlightening, though his description of exactly what happened when one of the crew members of the Andrea Gale drowned threw me a little; the movie took no liberties Sebastian Junger didn’t take with the book. This is the tightrope we tread with the advent of “creative non-fiction.” Done well–and ethically–it can breathe life into an otherwise dry story. On the other hand, it can also cast doubt on the facts themselves, as the reader is justified in wondering which parts got made up and which didn’t.
Daniel,
My guess is that gifted as they were, they did feel the need to cheat in order to get the attention of their editors and their audience. It’s instructive, I think, to note that at least in the examples I cited, the documented cheating happened early in the writers’ careers.
Mark,
Don’t you think it’s less tempting to fabricate details when working on stories about long-dead people like John Adams? For Ambrose and Glass in particular, the hook of their fabrications was the presumption of live interviews. In that context, without witnesses, who could know what someone did or didn’t say. I think an existing historical record would set the cheating bar much higher.
Victoria,
Yours is the most difficult circumstance of all. While truth is an absolute defense for slander, the burden of proof lies with the author. If I were you, I’d just be honest and tell your readers that the stories are true, but you’ve changed all the details.
Dana,
You put your finger on the tragedy of the Ambrose revelation. Because of his decision to lie about events in his twenties–and his continuing perpetuation of the lie–all of his wonderful writing is brought into question.
John Gilstrap
http://www.johngilstrap.com
i enjoyed LOVING FRANK by nancy horan…the story of F.L. WRIGHT. she intertwined fact with a fiction portrayal of wright and his mistress. but she did indicate this in a forward. so i was aware of the status of the book. i guess i never gave it a thought that it may have been written with a minimum of research. oh, well, i did enjoy the read. and did get the big picture that he was somewhat of an arrogant, amoral little twirp…who just happened to build some not so attractive structures!!
This is a tough one, but still a no-brainer.
When I’m reading or watching non-fic, I want to believe that every word is an exact recording of exactly what happened.
If it is well-written, I can turn off the little cynical voice in my head that says “these guys are all dead, how does the writer know what they said?”
However, just straight up “just the facts” non-fic is a boring textbook.
So, where is the line? Obviously, the line is making up your research, especially if you make up the footnotes as well!
A little artistic license makes the story come alive. Six Minutes is a ripping good read, one of those times when fact is better than fiction. I thoroughly enjoyed it and think it would make a kicking docu-drama in the vein of “Blackhawk Down” or “Killing Pablo.”
Anyone ripping Six Minutes probably get together with their buddies and nit-pick inconsistencies in war movies and sci-fi. Whatever!
Bottom line. Intense research, not just the subject, but the times, and then using that mountain of research to weave together an unembellished story.
I have a very good friend who is a history professor and writes for the university press of his school. His factual stuff can be dry, but he makes magic in the narrative passages he writes to tie all the info-chunks together. I tell him he has the makings of a novelist.
The thing about Ambrose hurts. I still believe he stayed true to the history, but he faked an intimacy that wasn’t there and wasn’t necessary to tell the story.
Terri
http://www.whyifearclowns.com
Truth matters, but absolute truth isn’t always available – hence name changes and combined characters, which, if explained somewhere, sounds fine and honest and all above board as you say. Feeling deceived matters though – feeling betrayed. A perfect storm? Maybe. But lots of “based on a true story” movies are based more on a leap on imagination and lack of facts and that always feels like cheating.
Still feeling sad about Ambrose. Why did he do that?
And wondering if I wouldn’t rather read a fictionalized memoir than a real one anyway – don’t want to feel so much like I’m spying on strangers.
I only write facts. Everyone one of my stories is completely true.
True to the facts as I imagined them to be in my pretend world of make up good & bad guys/gals based on real life but not really too real cuz then they’d actually all end up in the hospital or dead. But the facts as I imagined them are true nonetheless, in the context in which I made them up.
So go to http://www.basilsands.com and download the free and utterly factual accounts of really cool people I made up, for real.
see, I could be like the big boys too