Tayari's Blog: David Sedaris Writes NON-FICTION?
Posted by TayariJones on April 12, 2007 07:14 AM
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Okay. I feel like a dummy. There is an article in The New Republic which fact-checks David Sedaris's stories and discovers that the guy makes up most of the good parts. Then there is an article in Slate musing over the fact that there is no outrage about this.
And then, there is me. I had no idea that Davis Sedaris's stories were suppossed to be true! I honestly thought he was the author of short, albeit autobiographical, fiction. I loved the Elf at Macy's story and many of the others. I find Sedaris to be hillarious, but I did not know I was suppossed to believe him. Granted, I was never fan enough to actually buy one of his books, but still. I feel pretty foolish.
So this brings us back to the James Frey question, I guess. But really, I am so tired of the discussion. I am from the camp that thinks that if we are going to use the labels fiction and nonfiction, they need to mean something.
Of course it's all market-driven. People like to buy a good story that "really happened." They like so-called true stories that makes people say, "truth is stranger than fiction!" But really, for the most part, it isn't. That's why people make stuff up.
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Comment #1, by Michael Fischer ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.tayarijones.com/blog/nav-commenters.gif)
I haven't read Sedaris's "Dix Hill," but based on the excerpted scene in the "New Republic," and what others have told me about that particular essay, I have a problem with Sedaris and other non-fiction writers appropriating “real life” experiences for questionable purposes. For instance, many would argue that Sedaris volunteering at a mental hospital, and thus using that experience as an outsider to spin some slapstick yarn that reinforces stereotypes about the mentally ill, isn't very cool.
But for me, from a writer’s perspective, what's most sad is that he had the opportunity to write about his experiences in a "true" way. Why did he have to “exaggerate”? I mean, geeze, he’s in a state mental hospital. Some of those people will never leave, have been disowned by their families, and some live on the streets when they’re not in Dorothea Dix. Why in the world would a writer need to “exaggerate” when he’s surrounded by people who have suffered such pain and heartbreak unless he's scared to write the actual "truth"?
An essay that revolved around him organizing a party for some of the patients, and framing that entire essay around the party, and how--hopefully--the party allowed some of the patients to escape their condition for just a few hours would've been great. It would've shown the narrator, an "outsider," realizing that the mentally ill are not always flailing against padded walls, drooling, and biting orderlies. That mental illness is insidious and usually subversive. So I guess for me, it’s really not about genre more than it is about writers not trusting themselves to tell the “simple truth,” which is often much more profound that some kind of silly "exaggerated truth."
April 12, 2007 06:26 PM