Mixed in with the hyperbole,there's an interesting dust up from Friday's Dr. Sue column in the comments section and it's made me think quite a bit about the current state of the essay said the tabloid times we live in.
The issue is: what's a lie, what's selective editing of the truth, what's okay embroidering, what's kosher in non fiction essays and where do you draw the line?
Dr. Sue says, "Be as truthful as you can, and if you find yourself veering from the truth in significant ways, decline the essay and write the story as fiction. I don't see how this could be clearer."
Nor do I.
Memory playing tricks is not the same as lying.
Consciously pumping up the essay to make it more exciting is.
Some essayist do it, some don't, we we all know that. I've even been told by an editor that it would be fine to just "spice it up" when I complained my "truth" on his subject was too boring.
I think we're living in a tabloid time and too many of us, desperate for the attention and name recognition we need to keep our books selling, are finding higher and higher tightropes to walk.
Ultimately the problem is we can't compete with the celebrities who grabbing all the ink. We are not late night show fodder or tabloid stars and for the most part we never will be.
If you look at the only authors getting serious ink you'll find 99.9% of them got caught or were accused or were sued for something.
If you really want fame and fortune, the message is, lie, cheat, steal or be accused of it in a very public way.
We know more about a plagiarizing Harvard sophomore than we do about the last three winners of the Pulitzer prize for literature.
Name her, good, now name them.
See?
We need to come up with more creative ways to grab attention for our work.
We're good at making things up, that's what this is all about, so why the hell can't we invent some really spectacular ways to do that?
I agree that authors have to get creative...and I'm convinced that myspace and other social networking sites have great potential and have yet to be used effectively by authors. They're certainly a million times more effective than your average poorly attended bookstore reading, for example. I am currently helping YA writers to promote their work online through social networking sites and by other means. Online is pretty much the ONLY way to reach teens now...but it's still not easy to generate heat without committing an ethical or legal trespass of some kind! We're not willing to go that far. See what we're doing instead at http://www.bookburger.com.
Posted by: dj | May 15, 2006 at 09:29 PM
Wow. I've never seen a Pinocchio still that looked so ... phallic. Who knew?
Posted by: Glenn Ingersoll | May 17, 2006 at 11:11 PM