After reading the chapter, my thoughts lingered on how much a writer’s level of (self)awareness shapes his/her writing choices, how writers can be guided by their intent to either “capture the messy, real world we live in” or capture a small and highly subjective perspective of that world — to create reality as an object or as the very lens through which to see others and the world. How one determines to write the truth, whether emotional or factual, clearly determines their method and style of writing. The chapter’s comparison of Joan Didion’s view on truth with Anna Quindlen’s worked very well, for me, to illuminate different writers’ perspectives on the role of creative nonfiction: “The Anna Quindlins in the room insist on journalistic adherence to factual truth, rejecting even small inaccuracies of memory. The Joan Didions, standing beside them, argue that crafting one’s sense of truth is what matters” (152).
In discussions with friends who also aspire to write and publish, I know some who quote Joan Didion and praise her emotional writing style. While reading The Year of Magical Thinking, I found my preference (for both reading and my own writing) to be somewhere between a more factual approach and maintaining emotional emphasis. In my writing, I privilege the subjective experience over the objective, but it’s important for me to still ground the character, and so also the reader, in a recognizable reality based on facts. One thing Joan Didion does that I tend to do with caution is speaking for a universal “we” instead of the individual “I,” describing universal human experience over the interior reality of the piece. I do this with caution because I can’t help but question: Who am I to speak for everyone’s experience? What in this world is really universal?
Creative nonfiction has been the most challenging genre to write, both in and out of formal classrooms, among my interests in fiction, poetry, plays and creative nonfiction. While writing about good friends, I’ve found the process and the product to be potentially moving and, as the chapter notes, a way of honoring people who are important to me. Yet, I try (usually unsuccessfully) to avoid portraying family members because of that high level of self-consciousness that comes with revealing someone else’s life. (I’ve written about my family before and, though the writing’s received small awards and positive feedback, I would NEVER desire or allow my family members to read the pieces at this time. I’m pretty sure their embarrassment would be similar to Frank McCourt’s mother).
I do believe that the highest function of creative nonfiction is “to bear witness and pay tribute,” but I believe this is best achieved when a the writer’s relationship with the subject has a high level of transparency. Ideally, they can discuss or collaborate on the project, as the chapter notes, compassion and empathy for the other’s point of view should be shared, and the subject being written about should be willing to be seen in such a public way (meaning, of course, he/she is aware of the writing). I believe it is still ethical for a writer to portray a person who does not express such willingness, if he/she is integral to their sense of truth, but it makes the act of writing an act of potential conflict, which would make the process more challenging to complete. To avoid this, composite characters present a balanced compromise between the writer and his/her subjects (an approach I haven’t practiced very much, but am interested in for the future).
“We are not idealized wild things.
We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. As we were. As we are no longer. As we will one day not be at all.”
― Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking
