not like my mother: truth and the author in creative...
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NOT LIKE MY MOTHER: TRUTH AND THE AUTHOR IN CREATIVE NONFICTION
AZRA ALAGIC
BACHELOR OF ARTS (USQ), GRADUATE DIPLOMA IN CREATIVE WRITING (QUT)
SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTERS OF ARTS (RESEARCH)
CREATIVE INDUSTRIES FACULTY QUEENSLAND UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY
2009
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KEY WORDS: Creative Nonfiction, New Journalism, Truth, Fact, Narrative Satisfaction, Authorial Truth, Ethics, Balkans, War, Yugoslavia. ABSTRACT: This exegesis examines how a writer can effectively negotiate the relationship between author, character, fact and truth, in a work of Creative Nonfiction. It was found that individual truths, in a work of Creative Nonfiction, are not necessarily universal truths due to individual, cultural, historical and religious circumstances. What was also identified, through the examination of published Creative Nonfiction, is a necessity to ensure there are clear demarcation lines between authorial truth and fiction. The Creative Nonfiction works examined, which established this framework for the reader, ensured an ethical relationship between author and audience. These strategies and frameworks were then applied to my own Creative Nonfiction. STATEMENT OF ORIGINAL AUTHORSHIP:
The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted to meet requirements for an award at this or any other higher education institution. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the exegesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made. Signature Date
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The journey to writing and preparing the exegesis and creative work for this Masters has been a long and at times arduous one. Its completion could not have been achieved without the guidance and assistance of my supervisor, Dr Nicole Bourke. A very special thanks to Angela Slatter, who shared her personal Master’s experiences with me (thanks for answering all my questions!) and provided wonderful editorial advice. Thank you to Dr Vivienne Muller for her assistance with the Exegesis and valuable feedback on my creative work. To Caroline, Alan, the two Mares, Juanita, and Linda for the wines that consoled my despair at ever finishing! To my parents, who lent me their stories. Thank you for the lessons and revelations of your lives. I would not be the person I am today without you both. Tata, you started it all. I will forever be your sine. Mum, your strength is inspirational. Fairy, La La and Shoniko…we survived together and find hope in each other, day by day. Nane and Deda, Nagymama and Nagytata: the foundations of who I am. May my book keep your memories alive forever. To Nick for his patience and support. To my three beautiful children, Nicholas, Yasmina and Dominic. May they learn the lessons I have not. To Gary, for his unwavering belief in who I am and what I can achieve. And finally, to the Balkan people. May peace and understanding of our differences be everlasting.
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CONTENTS 1 RESEARCH QUESTION 1 2 INTRODUCTION 1 3 LITERATURE REVIEW 7
a) Subjectivity and truth in New Journalism/ 7 Creative Nonfiction b) The amplification of truth 12 c) The authority of the author 13
4 CASE STUDIES 18 (a) Approaches to representing truth in Creative Nonfiction 18 (b) Misrepresenting authorial truth 22 5 REFLECTIVE CASE STUDY 26 (a) Finding my authorial voice 29 6 CONCLUSION 32 7 BIBLIOGRAPHY 33
1 RESEARCH QUESTION
In what ways can the relationship between author, ‘character’ and authority be ethically
delineated in a work of Creative Nonfiction?
2 INTRODUCTION
In the field of literature it forbids what has in every age been the writer’s essential task—to look at the world from his own independent viewpoint, to tell the truth as he sees it, and so to keep watch and ward in the interest of society as a whole (Milosz, 1980 12).
I first decided I wanted to write a book about the civil unrest in the Balkans when my
family, who resided in Sarajevo, sent me footage of the atrocities the Serbians were
committing against the Bosniaks in the 1990s war. The film was so horrific—including
images of mounds of massacred bodies, children raped and abandoned, whole villages
destroyed, people being tortured—that I was unable to sit through the initial viewing. It
turned my stomach and made me sick to the very core. I could not understand how the
people of my cultural heritage could self implode in the way they had. The last time I had
been to Yugoslavia I had seen none of these tensions, which had triggered the division
that eventually exploded into civil war. The people embraced me, a stranger, and drew
me into their world of song and dance. They were proud people who had dreams of a
fruitful future for themselves and their children.
The Balkan people are complex. I understand this because my parents are
Balkans. It is through their eyes I learned about life, though it was, at times, a violent
education. This propensity towards violence, anger and abuse had puzzled me. Where
did the rage stem from? I did not begin to understand until the day my father found the
strength to tell me of his past and that of his family. I will never forget the time he broke
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down and cried as he told me how his father used to beat him—I had never seen my
father cry. My mother had a story, too, one of disappointment, abuse and betrayal.
In all this—my parents’ lives and the explosive political situation in the
Balkans—I knew there was a story to be told, but which story? As a journalist it is natural
for me to want to write about facts. I wanted to tell the truth, to bear witness to my
parents’ incredible lives and be the scribe for those who did not live to tell their stories.
What I did not foresee was the struggle I would face in being a bearer of truth. I
was mindful that my authorial truth—that is, my individual perception of the truth—
would inevitably colour the narrative of my work. Whose truth would I tell? Everyone’s
truth was different. In the Balkans, Serbians argue they are justified in their war against
Bosniaks and their mission to reclaim land stolen from them by the Turkish ancestors of
the Bosniaks. The Bosniaks, too, argue their truth: that history has nothing to do with the
present and they should not pay for a crime they did not commit.
Ultimately, it led me to exploring these questions through my creative piece Not
Like My Mother and in my exegesis by writing and examining Creative Nonfiction. For
the purposes of this dissertation, the terms New Journalism1 and Creative Nonfiction will
be used interchangeably. I argue that the margins of difference between the two genres
are too slim to warrant a differentiation between the two. New Journalism and Creative
Nonfiction incorporate fact with fiction in a narrative form to achieve a novel-like genre.
Both genres have grouped writings as diverse as memoir, biography, autobiography,
literary fiction and other life writing (Brien 2000, ¶ 3).
I contend that Creative Nonfiction evolved from New Journalism into its
modern, now repopularised form. Gutkind (2004, 14) acknowledges this transition. New
Journalism adds to a factual story by enhancing the narrative with literary techniques,
such as establishing landscape and character development, various points of view,
1 New Journalism is considered a hybrid form of journalism that blends fact with fiction and reads like a
novel. Writers often insert themselves in the copy and employ novel narrative techniques in their writing.
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employment of metaphorical devices, etc, as does Creative Nonfiction, creating a ‘fourth
genre’ (Brien, 2000, ¶ 3). At times, the New Journalist places himself/herself in the story,
as Thompson and Mailer did, so, too, do Creative Nonfiction authors like Frey, Khouri,
Gutkind, Talese, Garner, and Kremmer.
However, by the placement of the ‘I’ into the narrative another dimension is
added, that of an authorial voice, which delineates an authorial truth; in other words the
‘I’ is an attempt by the author to convince the reader of the authorial truth. When
discussing the I, I refer to the Aristotelian concept of the speaker’s character. I plan to
examine how the I influences the audience to believe the authorial truth, and by
extension how the author uses pathos to strengthen this truth. Aristotle argues proof and
the art of persuasion are critical to successful rhetoric:
Of those proofs that are furnished through speech there are three kinds. Some reside in the character of the speaker, some in a certain disposition of the audience and some in the speech itself, through its demonstrating or seeming to demonstrate (Aristotle 1991, 74).
The character of the speaker, or the author’s representation of ‘self’ to the reader, can
have a considerable impact on the reader’s interpretation of the truth. Traditional
journalists position themselves as external; questioning, critiquing, and analysing the story
from a disinterested perspective. New Journalists and Creative Nonfiction writers, on the
other hand, often place themselves in the story as a character with inside and intimate
knowledge or expertise. This works to lend their opinions weight, implicitly or explicitly
asserting that their personal truth has the weight of authority. Some of the recent
problems experienced by Creative Nonfiction practitioners—where their truth has been
questioned2—are a result of this characterisation of the I as author and authority. This
dissertation will examine how the framework established by the New Journalist or
Creative Nonfiction author can influence the ways in which their truths are understood
or interpreted in the public sphere.
2 Frey, Khouri et al have been criticised for misrepresenting themselves and/or their stories.
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Fictional writers, while including facts in their novels, clearly establish a contract
with the reader by marketing the work as fiction. In other words, they make a clear
distinction between the author and the character/s of the narrative. But New Journalism
and Creative Nonfiction are generally marketed as either being factual or based on the
truth. This authorial framework sets up an expectation that the writer will rigidly adhere
to the truth, or at the very least provide clear textual markers where the truth has been
enhanced.
Malcolm argues: “In a work of nonfiction we almost never know the truth of
what happened. The ideal of unmediated reporting is regularly achieved only in fiction,
where the writer faithfully reports on what is going on in his imagination” (1994, 54).
Nevertheless, Creative Nonfiction and New Journalism incorporate fact and fiction in
ways that engage, inform and entertain the reader. I was mindful that in choosing to
write my book as Creative Nonfiction, I would have to ensure that I did not allow my
authorial truth to override everyone else’s truth. I also had to contend with the
questionable validity of memory. I relied heavily on memories of my childhood, and
interviews with family members who also largely relied on their memories. Disparities
between these truths were apparent. Each interviewee, nevertheless, claimed their
memory was the more accurate version. Malcolm argues memory is a fickle thing:
“Memory is notoriously unreliable; when it is intertwined with ill will, it may become
monstrously unreliable” (1994, 134).
Ultimately, it came down to employing an approach that sought to find what
fitted with the narrative and provided the reader with the satisfaction that would
encourage the reader to read on while pursuing the maintenance of an aesthetic moral
historic truth, and adhering to those facts that are documented and verifiable. After all,
that’s what a writer aims for: to ensure the reader continues to read.
Blending fact with fiction has a long and volatile history. Truman Capote was one
of the first writers who self-consciously united the two in his acclaimed book In Cold
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Blood, first published as a series of articles in The New Yorker (1965). Capote exercised
creative licence in creating a narrative resolution when the real life story of the Cutter
family murder provided no plausible ending.
More recently, authors such as Helen Darville-Demidenko, Norma Khouri and
James Frey have been criticised for blurring the lines between fact and fiction. Most
authors assert that some aspects of their writing stem from personal experience, whether
consciously or subconsciously3. The desire to put down on paper the inner workings of
our emotions and thoughts, and insist that they matter as much as historical facts, is a
strong one. The need to connect with the reader has long seen writers from many genres
conduct extensive research into their subject matter to ensure they can provide a more
realistic or truthful portrayal of a story. The ‘real’ factor rings true for many readers.
This was evident when Helen Darville-Demidenko claimed she was of Ukrainian
descent, thus lending her book, The Hand That Signed The Paper, authorial credibility based
on her persona and familial history. Do her lies diminish the work? It was not published
as Creative Nonfiction/New Journalism, but as a novel. What discredited the work was
Darville-Demidenko’s extra-textual marketing. Despite establishing an initial contract
with the reader stating the work was fictional, her comments at subsequent readings and
interviews broke that contractual agreement with the reader when she lied about her
cultural heritage.
Many fictional novels draw considerably on ‘facts’. The problem, it seems, is how
a writer negotiates between the authorial truth and Wolfe’s notion of the larger truth.
This larger truth, according to Wolfe (Wolfe 1990, 15), is a truth that can be universally
recognised, one based on basic human morals and ethics. This larger truth, however,
does not tend to consider cultural truths. This may be the crippling force, which brings
3 Writers such as Nick Earls (Zig Zag Streeet), Rebecca Sparrow (The Girl Most Likely), and Kate Grenville (The Secret River) have sourced their stories from real life experiences.
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some Creative Nonfiction books to a sudden, discredited end. Authorial truth, which
incorporates a cultural truth, does not easily translate across cultures.
As a journalist, I am expected to abide by an un-enforced code of ethics. One
ethic, which is particularly relevant here, is to provide a balanced, true account of the
facts, without bias. In writing Not Like My Mother, however, I moved beyond the facts
and used a range of creative writing techniques commonly used by novelists to negotiate
a balance between authorial truth and a larger truth.
This exegesis will examine the process of negotiating between authorial truth and
the ‘larger truth’ in New Journalism/Creative Nonfiction by:
1) Examining subjectivity and truth, and how the placement of the authorial voice
within the text can impact on notions of truth and establish a framework for the
reader.
2) Analysing James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces and Helen Garner’s Joe Cinque’s
Consolation to assess how they have negotiated between competing paradigms of
truth. This section will compare and contrast Garner and Frey’s techniques, and
identify ways in which Garner succeeded in blending fact with fiction while Frey
misrepresented facts, largely due to the placement of the authorial/narrational I.
3) Conducting a reflective analysis on the writing of my own book, Not Like My
Mother, as an attempt at negotiating between authorial and larger truths.
When I first began this project I hoped to adhere to the facts as much as possible. As my
journey progressed I became increasingly aware that I would never be able to represent
everyone’s truth. In the end, Not Like My Mother is mostly fiction, but it also contains
much truth: my truth, my parents’ truths, my grandparents’ truths and the truths of the
people, who were massacred, displaced or raped during the Balkan civil wars. My sincere
hope is that readers of Not Like My Mother will take away their own truth from the
reading experience—whatever that may be.
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3 LITERATURE REVIEW
The way we remember things is not necessarily the way they were (Roy Peter Clark, ¶ 10)
(a) Subjectivity and truth in New Journalism/Creative Nonfiction
The question of what is true has been a philosophical quandary since the days of
Aristotle’s Correspondence Theory of Truth—the notion that truth consists of reality.
Traditional models of journalism are anchored in the objective representation of reality,
the truth and accurate reporting, though many academics have questioned objectivity
within journalism (Tuchman 1972, 662), some even arguing that objectivity is
unachievable. Certainly, there have been examples where the public have questioned the
media’s claim to objectivity, such as in their coverage of the Vietnam war (Staub 1997,
55).
New Journalism/Creative Nonfiction provided journalists with an alternative
form of writing in which subjectivity, and the merging of fact with fiction, is encouraged
(Gutkind 2004, 15). Combining fact with fictional techniques can be traced back to
writers like Defoe, Dickens and Orwell, to name a few (Van Luven 2000, 5; Wolfe 1990,
55). New Journalism fed the mass’s desire for an insight into the story behind the facts,
or a larger truth, which identified the social and political changes occurring at the time.
The public wanted ‘stories’ that did not toe the government line through a regurgitation
of propaganda (Conley 1997, 225). Traditional forms of journalism relied on voices of
authority, particularly political voices. Hirst argues: “Ninety-nine per cent of political
reporting is only churning out the dominant ideology. It rarely, if ever, goes outside the
framework of parliamentary free-market liberal democratic ideas” (Hirst 1998, 209).
Recent, biased media coverage of world issues and events such as the Gulf War,
Iraq, Climate Change, Islam, terrorism, etc. indicate the media are still influenced by
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voices of ‘authority’ and succumb to pressure and bias (Manning 2006, 37; Shah 2004, 1).
The inability of the majority of the media to include the ordinary voice, instead relying on
voices of authority, has been criticised by many (Shah 2004, 1; Manning 2006, 37;
Romano 2004, 44; Ewart 2003, 213; Forde 1999, 61; Meadows & Molnar 2002, 9).
Through New Journalism or Creative Nonfiction the ‘ordinary’ voice can often be
represented, providing journalists with a more independent form in which they can
address and explore social and political changes, and subjective truths, without editorial
control on content. Texts such as Garner’s Joe Cinque’s Consolation, Waris Dirie’s Desert
Flower, Dave Pelzer’s A Child Called ‘It’, Irris Makler’s Our Woman in Kabul, and George
Negus’s The World From Islam, explore minority voices, which are not often represented
in mainstream media.
Increased sales, reviews and publication of New Journalism in the 1960s
indicated a growing market for this new way of writing4. New Journalism became
popular because it provided a more subjective view, an insight into the minds and lives
of the journalists’ subjects (Weinberg 2006, 45; Wolfe 1990, 28; Hanson 1999, ¶ 7
Hartstock in Miller, 10). Journalists such as Hunter S. Thompson pressed against the
barriers of political propaganda to reveal other ‘truths’ in a style that was daring and
entertaining. This did not mean that facts such as names, dates, places or direct quotes
could be inaccurate (Gutkind 2004, 14), but rather that the New Journalist could indulge
in novelistic techniques. It was the New Journalists’ mission to get behind the
propaganda and dig for the ‘larger truth’. New Journalism had a purpose, and everything
was fair game (Hirst 1998, 209), but traditional news also has a purpose—to report the
facts objectively, to inform, to act as the fourth estate5 and reflect society to itself.
4 Magazines such as Esquire, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, and Playboy regularly published New Journalism
(Wolfe, 1990, R.V.B, 1998, Carney, 2006). 5 Journalism is often considered to be The Fourth Estate. The watchdog of the legal realm ‘building on the three estates of the Lords Spiritual (the Church), the Lords Temporal (the House of Lords) and the House of Commons, through which the public could hold politicians accountable’ (Tanner, 2002, 4).
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There is still evidence of factual reporting in Australia today. The style and tone
of most news stories remain firmly entrenched in traditional news style writing; reporting
facts, and avoiding personal feelings or adjectives to ‘colour’ the copy. New
Journalism/Creative Nonfiction, however, engages and entertains the reader, seeks
connection, empathy and understanding, and allows the journalist to write subjectively
about a topic they are passionate about without all of the restrictions of conventional
journalism.
The New Journalism story is not just about the facts, but includes peripheral
information about the subject’s life, such as their day-to-day activities, their lifestyle
choices, their favourite drink, colour, opinions on politics, and so on. These elements
colour the narrative and offer subjective truths. Wolfe (1990) contends that, far from
exaggerating the truth through subjective points of view, “the recording of such details is
not mere embroidery in prose. It lies as close to the center of the power of realism as any
other device in literature” (1990, 47).
New Journalists borrow elements of fiction writing to enhance the traditional
news story in an attempt, as Wolfe argues:
[to show] that it was possible to write accurate non-fiction with techniques usually associated with novels and short stories. It was that–plus. It was the discovery that it was possible in non-fiction, in journalism, to use any literary device, from the traditional dialogisms of the essay to stream-of-consciousness, and to use many different kinds simultaneously, or within a relatively short space. . . to excite the reader both intellectually and emotionally (1990, 28).
Critics of the genre have argued the techniques employed by New Journalists—varying
points of view, dialogue, metaphor, simile, etc—are misleading, that one of the crucial
ethical components of traditional journalism—objectivity—is lost in this newer literary
form (Wolfe 1990, 24). This is exactly the point of New Journalism: to offer a ‘larger
truth’ that includes the subjective viewpoint of the writer.
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Given these claims to a larger truth, the reader might still wonder what is fact and
what is fiction. Van Luven (2000) points out negotiating the truth can be a juggle
between ‘collision’ and ‘fusion’:
If the writer does his or her job properly and manages to link private understanding with an accurate portrayal of the external events, then she will create an artifact, a third reality, which brings inner and outer worlds together in a piece of prose which illuminates a larger issue, enables readers to understand a larger truth (Van Luven 2000, 7).
Capote’s acclaimed book (considered to be an example of New Journalism) In Cold Blood
(1966) shows how a third reality can be achieved. In Cold Blood became an instant success
after The New Yorker published excerpts from the work in progress in 1965. The success
of In Cold Blood was an unprecedented response to a new form of writing. As Wolfe
observed, “Capote himself didn’t call it journalism; far from it: he said he had invented a
new literary genre, ‘the nonfiction novel’ ” (Wolfe 1973, 41).
Another, more recent, example is Gornick’s memoir, Fierce Attachments (1987),
which was considered by the New York Times a “fine and unflinchingly honest book”
(Quoted in Keyes 2005, ¶ 7). However, as Keyes explains (2005, ¶ 7), Gornick eventually
revealed, a decade and a half after the book was published, that she’d invented parts of
the memoir and included composite characters. This creative manipulation offered a
subjective truth. A truth that is peppered with her individual perception of events as they
occurred in her world.
In Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gang (1966),
Hunter S. Thompson, on the other hand, was much clearer about his position within the
narrative —a character with inside knowledge—but Parkes (2005, ¶ 6) argues that doing
so confuses the reader, or makes them justifiably suspicious. He claims:
Readers need to be educated that creative non-fiction is exactly that—a melding of fact and fiction. What they choose to believe or disbelieve is up to them (2005, ¶ 6).
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In his defence of the techniques used in New Journalism, Wolfe (1990) contended the
non-fiction writer must embrace realism, while allowing for variations in interpretation:
I am talking about technique; as for the rest, from character to moral consciousness (whatever that may be), it depends upon the writer’s experience and intellect, his insights, the quality of his emotions, his ability to see into others, his ‘genius,’ to use the customary word – and this remains so whether he is working in fiction or in journalism (1990, 49).
Hirst (1998, 208) argues New Journalism has disappeared in Australia. It died a rapid
death following criticism of its misrepresentation of the truth (Proyect, 2005, ¶ 1), but I
would argue that it has emerged under new labels—such as Creative Nonfiction. Works
of non-fiction have increased in popularity by encompassing a wider pool of approaches
such as literary journalism, memoir, the personal essay, travel writing and embedded
journalism6.
Today we are seeing a renewal of the popularity of New Journalism/Creative
Nonfiction. The public’s infatuation with ‘real’ stories has created a demand for
individual truths:
Readers, as Random House Canada publisher Anne Collins notes, have an insatiable appetite for true stories: ‘We're infinitely curious about the way other people have stumbled along. There's a resonance to a story if we can say: it's true’ (Bethune 2006, 68).
Books such as Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, Jung Chang’s Wild Swans, Nikki
Gemmel’s The Bride Stripped Bare, and Gregory David Roberts’s Shantaram have fed the
public’s thirst for real life stories. Like New Journalism, “it is the authority of the truth
the idea of truth, anyway—that makes the memoir attractive to readers” (Kupfer 1996,
¶1).
6 See for example Jane Cramer, Phil Dickie, Ted Conover, George Negus and Susan Orlean, all of whom offer subjective truths.
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(b) The amplification of truth
The amplification of truth can be seen in tabloid journalism, where journalists regularly
sensationalise facts to create a ‘bigger’, more controversial story. Despite the public’s
consumption of sensationalised journalism and infotainment, readers seem less forgiving
and accepting of broken demarcation lines in Creative Nonfiction. More and more
Creative Nonfiction writers, such as Frey, Khouri, and Darville-Demidenko, are being
challenged over their creative practices and their reasons for ‘enhancing’ the truth. I
focus on these more recent examples rather than older examples in order to ascertain
why the notion of truth is such a struggle for these ‘newer’ writers. These examples have
also received more attention from the media.
With the reader’s hunger for an insight into various truths—individual, cultural,
political, and social—the line between fact and fiction is increasingly being negotiated.
Staub (1997, 57) argues the over-involvement of the reader in the truth and the writer’s
ability to enhance the truth to the point of evoking ‘moral panic’, present ethical
problems. Perhaps the notion of objectivity needs to be re-thought (Cunningham 2003, ¶
10) to acknowledge a human, self–reflexive concept of truth and recognise how writers,
whether they are traditional journalists or New Journalists, construct their authority at
the expense of other truths.
New Journalism, like Creative Nonfiction, was credited with relaying the ‘story
behind the story,’ or what Wolfe termed the ‘larger truth’ (1990, 55). It invited readers to
engage with realism, a story based on facts that read like a novel. Wolfe (1990) argues
that older forms of the novel were ‘drenched in realism’ (55), that is, they included
factual details and not just fiction. Despite this, novelists did not and do not attract the
same amount of criticism as Creative Nonfiction writers because novelists don’t claim
their work to be true.
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When writing about truth, writers need to clearly establish a framework, which
the reader will be guided by. This framework also acts a guide for future readers, who
may not be aware of the social or cultural context of the time when the book was
written. Proud notes that, “In general or literary fiction the facts may be those of the
society in which the story is set, as well as those of human nature known to the author
through experience” (2004, 30).
When writers make claims that their story is based on truth, they are often
criticised, as in the case of Darville-Demidenko, or Moorhouse’s Martini. If the book is
marketed as being based on a true story, the reader justifiably expects some truth, but
might also be aware that the writer has indulged in some creative licence. However, if the
writer indicates that the story is ‘true’, as Frey did, the reader expects the writer to adhere
to the truth as rigidly as possible. This genre-labelling, is crucial to how the book is
perceived by readers.
(c) The authority of the author
Creative Nonfiction has evolved as a hybrid form of New Journalism and the novel,
exploring analogous forms of truth, authority, reality, and narrative satisfaction. In
writing The Secret River, Kate Grenville stressed the importance of the credibility genre can
provide to a story:
The subject matter of The Secret River is so important, and so politically charged, I didn’t want readers to be able to say oh, it’s only a novel – she made it all up (Grenville 2006, www.users.bigpond.com/kgrenville/SFTSR/sftsr.html).
Grenville was very mindful of honouring the facts, while at the same time ensuring she
told the story and maintained her authority as an author. She explains how she struggled
with finding an authorial truth. Eventually, she realised, based on her interpretation of
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Michael Ondaatje’s Anvil’s Ghost, that she could ‘fictionalise the quester but not the quest’
(Grenville 2006, 156).
The perception of truth varies from one individual to another and this is then
reflected in the representation of truth, which will be examined more closely later.
However, what might be true for one person may not be plausible to the next. In his
research on objectivity, Cunningham (2003, ¶ 8) found ten journalists provided ten
different definitions of objectivity. While Gutkind and Wolfe argue a ‘larger truth’ can be
achieved in a work of Creative Nonfiction, they do not consider the external influences
that may affect authorial truth: the notion that a singular, homogenous truth is
unachievable due to a number of contributing factors including, but not limited to,
political, social, religious and cultural influences.
Ge contends that the authorial intention in writing about an event is more
important than the event itself. “If the event is accessible to the reader only through
writing, what is it if not as perceived by the writer and mediated by language?” (2003, 4).
Indeed, some critics contend that authorial intention is the most practical approach of
interpretation for the reader and that, without it, the reader is given too much freedom
to secure a single interpretation (Hirsch in Shusterman 1988, 401).
One of the problems Creative Nonfiction has consistently faced has been the
writer’s inability to effectively juggle fact and fiction to achieve an authorial truth (Taylor,
2002). Often the writer enhances the truth because their memory, or the facts, is unable
to fill a hole within the narrative. Roorbach (2001, 9) argues that writers are not perfect,
and ultimately can be sure of very little. This includes not only their own perspective, but
also those of the people the author may be interviewing for a work of Creative
Nonfiction. The authorial truth can be misinterpreted as a lie, and, as Brien (2002, ¶ 17)
claims, once the reader discovers they have been lied to, the bond between writer and
reader is forever broken. Executive editor at Random House, Daniel Menaker, argues
readers of Creative Nonfiction do not expect just the facts:
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I don’t think anyone has such expectations of a memoir…it’s not that memoirs don’t have autobiographical material or meaning…it’s just that they’re more selective and more concentrated on single things – the memory of a parent, the memory of a childhood, the memory of a great professor (Menaker in Hughes 2006, 4).
James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces; is a memoir based on what Frey claimed was his
personal struggle with alcohol and drug addiction. However, it has been revealed that
Frey embellished aspects of the work (Peyser 2006, 62), including his claim to have been
involved in a train accident, which killed a girl from his school, the period of time he
spent in jail—in the book it was three months in reality it was only several hours—and a
root-canal procedure, which he claimed in the book to have undergone without
anaesthesia. After his misrepresentations were revealed by The Smoking Gun, Frey received
international criticism. However, it did not impact the sales of A Million Little Pieces
(Woodward 2006, 10). In subsequent editions of Frey’s book, an insert, written by Frey,
was included, explaining why he felt it necessary to embellish the truth. Apart from the
need to supplement his poor recall of events, Frey argues he “wanted the stories in the
book to ebb and flow, to have dramatic arcs, to have the tension that all great stories
require” (Frey 2004, insert).
Frey is not the first to embellish the truth; others who have done so include
Nasdijj (The Blood Runs Like a River Through My Dreams) and Norma Khouri (Forbidden
Love). However, according to some publishers, readers are still keen to absorb the ‘reality
fix’ of Creative Nonfiction, ensuring the genre remains in strong demand. Barnes and
Noble state they have “about 500 memoirs in print—as are close to 20 books about how
to write memoirs” (Hughes 2006, 2). Some publishers, however, are starting to impose
stricter expectations on Creative Nonfiction writers. Authors will be questioned about the
authenticity of their work and publishers say they’ll include disclaimers to protect
themselves from authors’ lies (Hughes 2006, 4).
16
Whether sales are impacted by embellishments of the truth is difficult to
determine. Khouri, for example, lost the trust of her readers and her publisher, while
others, like Frey, continue to enjoy solid sales. Khouri was accused of misrepresenting
Islamic women in Jordan (Taylor 2003, ¶ 32). Ultimately, her truth was coloured by her
personal agendas. Unlike traditional forms of journalism, where the journalist approaches
a story with a degree of skepticism, Creative Nonfiction writers are very close to their
topic, and, as a result, approach the work with a strong sense of I.
When Khouri and Darville-Demidenko were exposed for misrepresenting the
truth—Darville-Demidenko for claiming she was of Ukrainian descent and Khouri for
claiming the events in her book happened to her best friend—they each claimed they
were attempting to establish their authorial truth, hoping this would enhance the
narrative (Know & Overington 2004, ¶ 4; Knox 2005, ¶ 2). Kupfer (1996) argues we
need to give “memoir writers permission to lie, but only when the reconstructed version
of the story does not deceive the reader in its search for the aesthetic truth” (¶ 12). By
aesthetic truth, Kupfer means a truth which enhances the narrative and fills in the blanks
which memory cannot. She goes on to contend that there are three kinds of lies that are
acceptable from the Creative Nonfiction writer:
1. Lies that can fill what memory cannot.
2. “Lies that narrative structure often demands: composite characterization,
compression of time, omission of unnecessary detail” (¶ 12).
3. And the lie that enables the writer to “tell what we do not know”(¶ 12).
Gutkind takes a middle ground, stating, “The creative nonfiction writer tries to be as
truthful and factual as possible. Making things up to enhance the narrative is
unacceptable” (Gutkind in Brien, 2000, ¶ 6). He argues that fact and truth are totally
different from each other, and that while facts can be incorporated within a creative
framework, they should not be tampered with. However, he also argues that:
17
A writer's concept of the truth may not be universally accepted and may even conflict with the facts as others understand or remember them. Good creative nonfiction does not deny personal opinion; on the contrary, it welcomes the subjective voice (Gutkind in Brien 2000, ¶ 13).
It is in their inability to distinguish fact from truth that some writers come undone. So
passionate are some Creative Nonfiction writers about their agendas that they don’t
believe accessorising the facts (adding information to make the narrative seem more
appealing to the reader), to achieve authorial truth, is detrimental to the work. Gutkind
argues this passion for the subject matter is an essential element of Creative Nonfiction.
However, as shown by the examples of Khouri, Darville-Demidenko, Frey, and others,
using this passion as a justification for lying about your persona, or how the story
originated, can have negative consequences. Writers and readers need to consider that
the truth is a matter of perception and can vary from one person to the next, and that
truth is an abstraction negotiable in the context of various conflicting cultural, political or
social interpretations.
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4 CASE STUDIES
When someone is honestly 55% right, that’s very good and there’s no wrangling. And if someone is 60% right, it’s wonderful, it’s great luck, and let them thank God. But what’s to be said about 75% right? Wise people say this is suspicious. Well, and what about 100? Right? Whoever says he’s 100% right is a fanatic, a thug, and the worst kind of rascal (An Old Jew of Galicia in Milosz 1980, 5).
The increasing popularity of Creative Nonfiction has provided writers a new marketing
opportunity. Just as journalists in the ‘70s made the transition from journalism to New
Journalism, so too present day journalists are making the transition into Creative
Nonfiction. Helen Garner, Christopher Kremmer, George Negus, and Irris Makler are
examples of those who have stepped over the line. In this section Helen Garner’s Joe
Cinque’s Consolation and James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces will be examined to assess how
both writers handled the representation of truth, while trying to establish an authorial
voice.
(a) Approaches to representing truth in Creative Nonfiction
Approaches to Creative Nonfiction vary. Both Garner and Frey place themselves within
the narrative, and both have chosen the Creative Nonfiction genre to tell their stories.
While Frey acts as his own voice, Garner becomes the voice for Joe Cinque by reporting
his story. There are correlations between the two works, yet their narratives are vastly
different. Frey’s work reads like a novel: it consistently employs literary techniques such
as metaphor and first person points of view, however, he fictionalised part of his
narrative.
Though Garner’s work, at times, does this also, her writing style is more
restrained: she is being much more careful with the facts than Frey, who seems intent on
spilling as much exaggerated detail about his life and suffering as possible rather than
being concerned with accurate representation (Mordue 2003, ¶ 9). The revelation that
19
Frey embellished the truth in his work is reflected in the finer details of his writing, long
before the truth was revealed, such as in this example where his memory fails him as he
tries to explain to his brother what drugs he was taking:
So what was it? What was what? What were you taking? I’m not sure. How can you not be sure? I don’t remember. What do you remember? Bits and pieces Like what? I don’t remember. (Frey 2003, 5)
There are many other moments in Frey’s text, which provide an early indication to the
reader that Frey’s memory is vague at best and cannot be relied on. In an added insert to
explain his deceptions, he claims he used “supporting documents, such as medical
records, therapists’ notes, and personal journals” (Frey 2003, insert). Despite this claim,
Frey has not directly quoted from these sources or interviews.
On the other hand Garner exposes the facts with the careful dedication of a
criminal investigator. Much of Garner’s story quotes lengthy transcripts from court
proceedings and face-to-face interviews, which Garner meticulously conducted and
transcribed. In the following extract, Garner sets the scene by identifying each of the
‘characters’ before directly quoting the cross examination of an expert witness the
defence has called upon:
‘Doesn’t that show,’ said Golding, ‘the capacity for developing some intimacy in the relationship with the first boy?’ ‘No!’ said Byrne. ‘She’s a self-centred, angry girl who’s punishing this boy quite unnecessarily. She sees boys as an expendable commodity. You get one, you use him up, you throw him away.’
Memories from my own selfish and carelessly hurtful youth flashed through my head, scenes I did not care to examine. I shifted in my seat. I had joked with the journalists about it, but this stuff was getting too close for comfort (Garner 2004, 44).
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Garner does place herself within the narrative, but through internal dialogue that details
her personal reaction to the testimony. The reader is no longer simply a disinterested
observer of the court proceedings, but is also invited into Garner’s thoughts and
emotions. The reader begins to empathise with her, and travels along the path guided by
Garner.
According to Grenville, Garner mixes “memoir, history and speculation”, which
give her books richness and life without compromising the factual basis (Grenville 2006,
147). However, Garner struggled with relying on the memory of the people she
interviewed surrounding the death of Joe Cinque, and at times had to fill in the details to
achieve narrative satisfaction. Though she speculated how the courts can rely on
memory, in the following quote, she indirectly questions how she, too, can rely on vague
memories:
If memory is not to be trusted, what can courts rely on? How can they establish what ‘really happened’? How can things from the past, even the relatively recent past, be proved? (Garner 2004, 124)
This inability to directly quote can entice the writer to lie. As Malcolm points out, when
memory fails, “the scope for immoral action may be even greater”(1994, 114). Garner
has resisted this temptation despite also having to rely on, at times, vague memories.
Though she has elaborated and reflected on the facts, Garner has not created new facts,
she has devised techniques that clearly indicate to the reader where facts stop and
imagination begins. In the first chapter, Garner establishes a foundation for the reader to
follow by using a number of sources, such as paramedics, a fire officer and police, to set
the scene. These statements of fact are simply linked in narrative form without any
obvious departure from the truth.
21
Garner indicates her departures from fact to fiction with clear demarcation lines,
such as when she directly quotes, or when she enhances the narrative with literary
devices such as in the following example:
The psychiatrist was warm, she was motherly, she was professional. The way she spoke about her patient was tinged with possessiveness. ‘I think she trusts me,’ she said earnestly, and a flicker of spite ran through me: So you have gained the trust of this ‘witch’. You have tamed a wild, glamorous creature whom others fear and see as evil. You are not afraid of her. She will peck grain from your hand (Garner 2004, 117).
To develop the characters, she uses the insights of close friends or relatives whom
she has interviewed, or letters written by the characters themselves, such as in the
following example were Garner quotes directly from letters written by Anu Singh
to her family, providing a unique insight into Singh’s mental state while in
custody:
I watched him die, she wrote. Didn’t save him. Then I thought, fuck, I don’t want to die…The prosecution has a very strong case against me. I could be looking at 20 years…What a mess I have made out of a potentially perfect life (Garner 2004, 17)
Frey, unlike Garner, writes about his experiences with heightened emotion. His authorial
truth draws the reader in through raw exposure to graphic detail, such as the following:
I wake up to the drone of an airplane engine and the feeling of something warm dripping down my chin. I lift my hand to feel my face. My front four teeth are gone, I have a hole in my cheek, my nose is broken and my eyes are swollen nearly shut (Frey 2003, 1).
The truth in Frey’s work is assiduously hidden beneath the bravado of his self-
revelations. His accountability to the truth is limited by his experiences and cannot
necessarily be verified by other talents as Garner’s work can. For readers of Frey’s work,
his willingness to provide a stark portrayal of the life of a drug addict and alcoholic may
override any deception he may have committed (Wyatt 2006, ¶ 9).
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(b) Misrepresenting authorial truth
When Frey was publicly accused of embellishing the truth he admitted to doing so,
claiming, in some parts, that his memory did not serve him correctly and that he had not
put much thought into the genre he was writing in (Frey 2003, insert). He said he wanted
his experiences, or authorial truth, to tell his story about drug addiction and alcoholism.
However, his authorial truth became littered with outright lies, such as his role in a train
accident that killed a girl from his school, in reality, he was not involved in the accident,
or the period of time he claimed to have spent in jail, which in the book was purported
to be three months, but in reality was ‘only several hours’ (Frey 2003, insert). At which
point does embellishing the truth become bald lies? It could be argued that that point is
also subjective. After all, a lie is not only defined by morals and ethics, but also cultural
boundaries. What may be a lie in one culture, may simply be part of ‘telling the story’ in
another. Though claiming to be in an accident, when you were not actually there is a
clear lie, rather than the latter example, which is more of an embellishment.
While Frey claims his truth is subjective, his confessionals seem unable to adhere
to the truth and shows how fragile truth can be; this presents a moral dilemma, for as
Yeoh claims “The end of confession is to tell the truth to and for oneself” (2003, 333).
Frey was unable to do this. It may have been the drugs and alcohol that made his
memory foggy, but Frey’s claim that embellishing his past experiences for ‘the greater
purpose of the book’ (Frey 2003, insert) indicates his primary desire was to entertain the
reader and not accurately report his authorial truth. Yet, Frey reasons his authorial truth
falls in line with the expectations of a memoir. As he told Larry King in an interview:
Memoir—the word literally means ‘my story’. A memoir is a subjective retelling of events. A memoir is within the genre of nonfiction. I don’t think it’s necessarily appropriate to say I’ve conned anyone. You know, the book is 432 pages long, The total page count of disputed events is 18, which is less that 5 percent of the total book (NA, Winfrey stands behind ‘Pieces’ author, 2007).
23
In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, Frey said, “I think I wrote about the events in the
book truly and honestly and accurately” (Smoking Gun, ¶ 6). However, in A Million
Little Pieces he writes, “I drink and I smoke and I think about her and at a certain point
blackness comes and memory fails me” (2003, 6). This is an excellent example of what
Brien argues is an overbearing of the ‘I’ where the author’s subjectivity overshadows the
subject being discussed (2000, ¶ 10). The egocentricity of Frey’s narrative becomes all-
consuming with little deviation to other aspects of the story-line, a common theme
through the book.
His memory failure is typical of an alcoholic, yet he consistently claims his book
was based on his memories. Like Khouri, Frey misrepresented himself post-publication.
Not only did he lie in his book, but he continued to lie in interviews after the book was
published. He had many opportunities to provide clarity, to explain his approach to
writing his memoir and ensure readers were not misinterpreting his intentions. The lies
made in the book may have served to enhance narrative satisfaction, but what Frey did
not account for was the dissatisfaction readers would feel when the truth finally came
out.
His misrepresentation of the facts managed to sell 1.77 million copies of A
Million Little Pieces in the US in 2005 alone (Smoking Gun, ¶ 3), and perhaps that was his
incentive. Frey seemed unsatisfied with his authorial truth and set out to sensationalise
his experiences. According to Smoking Gun (2007, ¶ 6) he exaggerated his criminal
history, trying to convince readers of his ‘malevolence’. He claimed he underwent root-
canal surgery without anesthesia and was on a plane trip with a gaping hole in his cheek,
bleeding, with his clothes covered in blood—all falsehoods. Perhaps what Frey
perceived as the truth and in essence his memory—which contained variations of the
truth and outright creations of truth—are more real to him than the truth because it is
what he perceived or wanted the truth to be. However, by this time, his reality becomes
24
so implausible, it causes his readers to question the accuracy of his recollection of
events.
Frey does not stop at embellishing the truth. He uses other devices to further
sensationalise or emphasise his experiences. One such technique is his unnecessary use
of capital letters. “I walk into the Room” (2003, 8), and again, “We have the highest rate
of any Facility in the World. At any given time, there are between two hundred and two
hundred and fifty Patients spread through six Units…” (2003, 9). This technique only
serves to exaggerate the content and context of the story.
Often the narrative is repetitive, perhaps an indication of the cycle of drug and
alcohol abuse. The language is simple; the sentences often short. For me, these
techniques highlight Frey’s embellishments of facts; the repetition—an indication of
poor memory and an inability to accurately recall the facts.
I grab the end of the bed and I lift it and I flip it and the mattress goes and I grab the simple metal frame and I lift it and I throw it down with everything everything everything and it snaps but it’s not enough so I stomp it stomp it stomp it and it snaps again again again and there are only bars and bolts and screws and I’m screaming and it feels good and I’m just getting started (Frey 2003, 60)
The above example contains a number of repeated words. The only purpose it serves
is to sensationalise the incident, to express a greater degree of frustration and anger.
What Frey did not seem to realise was that there was no need to embellish the
facts: his authorial truth would have been a sufficient story and an honorable one. The
courage it takes to write about your inadequacies, your lowest point in life, to take the
step and admit that you have a problem—a difficult thing to do for an alcoholic—
would have made for a powerful story supported by authorial credibility.
Garner, on the other hand, has received less criticism, despite relaying the facts
of other people’s stories, which requires greater discipline in adhering to the facts than
when portraying a personal story. Perhaps, this is where the difference between the two
works is most symbolic, in that a memoir could initially be considered as coming under
25
less scrutiny than a work like Garner’s purely because certain events can only be
confirmed by the individual writing the story. A writer who attempts to portray
someone else’s story, on the other hand, is held accountable by the existence of
witnesses, as was the case with Garner. In writing Joe Cinque’s Consolation, Garner’s
journalistic background provided her with the discipline necessary to adhere to the facts.
But as Frey inevitably discovered, memoir also has its witnesses.
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5 REFLECTIVE CASE STUDY
The journalist works under the same curse as the biographer (Malcolm 1994, 113)
As a journalist I have been taught to report the facts accurately and objectively. I was
encouraged to approach a story with a degree of scepticism, to research and uncover the
truth and report it without any use of literary devices. Certainly, I had an opinion about
each story that I covered, but I was not personally invested in the story. Readers were
not interested in what I thought, as I was not a voice of authority.
However, when it came to writing Not Like My Mother my personal connection
to the story provided me with some authorial credibility. I quickly realised that the story I
wanted to tell would be subjective. Because of this personal connection to the story I
could not distance myself and be objective. In any case, given the reaction of readers to
authors such as Frey and Khouri, I did not feel that readers would be willing to accept
my work as fact, but I wanted to report the story as truthfully as possible. There were a
lot of holes within the narrative, which needed to be filled, but the basis of the story, I
felt, was an important one that needed to be told.
In Searching for the Secret River Kate Grenville explains why she chose the genre of
Creative Nonfiction for The Secret River:
I wanted to tell the story of what I’d learned about the frontier, to explore that sad history of fear, misunderstanding and violence. It was a tale that drew its power from the fact that it was real. Interposing a layer of invention would defeat my aim: to tell the unvarnished story as truthfully as I could (Grenville 2006, 146).
For nearly the same reasons that Grenville identifies, I opted to write Not Like My
Mother as Creative Nonfiction. I also had a frontier (years of Balkan civil wars),
misunderstanding (Serbians, Croatian, Bosniaks and Albanians, all of whom struggled to
understand each other and seemed unable to effectively communicate their needs), and
violence (war, and family violence). All this was composed out of a collection of facts,
both historical and familial, which I had to juggle and incorporate within the narrative. It
27
was a mammoth task. The Balkan situation is a complex one. Toss into the mix my
family’s personal experiences: my grandparents living and trying to survive World War II;
my parents fleeing a communist-driven, oppressed Yugoslavia; and me, growing up in a
religiously and culturally mixed family.
What I hoped to achieve in my work was a fusion of multiple truths, which
would represent the Balkan people and their plight. I hoped to show many truths, not
just a Bosniak truth, but also a Serbian and Croatian truth. Mindful that Creative
Nonfiction did not have a credible modern history, it seemed, however, the only genre in
which I could effectively deal with facts and the larger truth.
Through Creative Nonfiction I hoped to give a voice to the ordinary people
caught up in the Balkan conflict, and while the story is based on some facts, such as the
history of various Balkan wars, geographic locations, familial accounts, historical facts,
socio-economic facts and cultural problems, I felt the story needed to be assisted by
literary techniques commonly used by novelists: multiple points of view, composite
characters, metaphorical devices and so on, to draw on fact through imagination
(Simpson 2003). I felt this would result in a richer text, which would achieve greater
narrative satisfaction. I wanted to explore the relationship between mother and daughter
in a culture of conflict; to explore the notions of identity, displacement, unconditional
love, pride, loss, and infidelity. I would have been unable to do this if I had simply
reported the facts, as Garner had in Joe Cinque’s Consolation. It is the inner nuances of each
character, which helped craft a story in which conflict existed not only on the surface,
through civil wars, but also through interpersonal conflicts an aspect of history not easily
reported in traditional modes of journalism. By exploring the text through Creative
Nonfiction I was able to incorporate the inner working of the characters’ minds and
show how the social and political changes and religious upheaval in which they were
caught up, moulded the characters’ personalities.
28
This need to embellish the facts came about from gaps within the factual story
that my family told. They are uneducated people. Their stories live on only in their
memories and not through the written word. Relatives had died and so, too, had their
stories, their truth. An alternate truth had been passed on, but it was unreliable.
With this eclectic palate of truths and facts I began to weave a story which
depicts the lives of three generations of women who struggle through their individual
battles. Though I attempted to remain objective in what I wrote, I struggled to detach my
personal connection with the stories of these women. To ignore this connection would
be to lie, in the same way that VS Naipaul perceived his representation of his childhood
memories in his collection of stories Miguel Street. He felt he could not disassociate
himself from what he knew was outside his ‘ childhood view’. His adult knowledge
coloured his work (Jack 2007, 5), and so, too, does my truth colour my work.
One of the main themes that surfaced in the Balkan conflict was the disharmony
between Serbians, Bosniaks and Croatians. As my father is a Bosniak and my mother is a
Serbian Catholic, I was able to create characters for my story based on their personal
experiences. It is through my parents’ stories that I was able to create a plot through
which I explored the relative cultural disconnection that resurfaced between these Balkan
cultures after 35 years of peaceful Communist rule. By doing so, I was also able to
explore the dichotomous relationship between Muslims and Christians in a modern
historical context. Throughout Not Like My Mother, I have tried to establish a
framework that highlights the differences and similarities between the two religious
cultures and how those differences and similarities are passed on to the next generation.
This is reflected in the repetitive cycle of abuse the three female characters are exposed
to. It is also reflected in how all sides in the Balkan conflict killed those they perceived to
be the enemy. Both Anika and Muhammed abuse their children. These similarities cross
cultural truths, but also individual truths based on the perceptions and individual morals
of each character.
29
To my mind, one of the reasons the Balkan conflict escalated into genocide, was
the inability of generations to let go of past hurts and acknowledge the veracity of their
competing individual truths. Each culture has retained stories of past conflicts from
when the region was first settled, and then invaded by the Turkish Ottoman Empire or
the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The maintenance of these narratives reflects our need to
connect with the past and our ancestors, and our desire for a concrete cultural identity
that can be lived whether through the accumulation of land lost to previous invasions or
through the ability to freely practise one’s chosen religion. I suggest that it is this
connection with our identity that determines our truth. In Not Like My Mother, Ivo’s
knowledge of previous Balkan conflicts informs his opinion of the Serbians; it is through
his stories that he passes on this perception or individual truth to his nephews. Similarly,
Azis, while acknowledging all the Balkan cultures are at fault, fails to realise he too passes
on the culture of conflict through abusing his own son, Muhammed.
(a) Finding my authorial voice
It was unlikely that I would be able to remain objective in writing Not Like My Mother. I
cared too much about the politics in the Balkans, was outraged by the genocide that had
occurred and the lack of response by the rest of the world.
The novel began years ago when my parents and grandparents told me stories
about their pasts. These stories remained vivid in my mind for years. I began drafting the
stories from my memory. In revising the work it was evident that my memory did not
provide the detail necessary to make the narratives fuse. I needed more facts, so I
researched the history of the Balkans, the eruption of World War II, the period of peace
under Tito’s 35-year rule, and, finally, the downfall of Yugoslavia under the reign of
Milosevic. But there were still gaps.
I conducted a series of interviews with my parents who relayed, in more detail,
their life stories and those of their parents. In comparing the transcripts, discrepancies
30
became evident. While subsequent interviews with my maternal grandparents helped to
fill in the gaps, their memories were vague. Time had sucked their anecdotes from their
minds. My paternal grandparents had died many years before I started the project and I
relied heavily on mine and my father’s memories of them. I attempted to emulate
Garner’s technique in representing a variety of truths through direct transcripts from the
interviews I conducted and on researching the former Yugoslavia and the Balkan wars.
However, as Frey found, relying on memories left me vulnerable to my perception of
those memories and interpreting them within the narrative as such.
This compilation of truths moulded the person I have become and influenced the
identity of my characters. Anika and Muhammed fled the oppression of Tito’s rule,
seeking a freer world in Australia, fearing conflict would eventually rise again from the
tainted Balkan soil. The paradox of their need to escape the conflict of their world only
to carry it into their personal lives reflects the personal and private impact of being
exposed to abuse and conflict; how culture and identity are passed on through
generations.
In my research, I also drew on statements made by victims brought forward as
witnesses at the War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague: horrific accounts of rape and abuse.
It was important to me not to soften these accounts and dishonour the reality of the
victims’ experiences, but I also became aware of the need to present the details in a way,
which would not deter the reader from continuing on the journey of the story.
Professional analysis of my draft provided the feedback that my graphic recounting of
the horrors which occurred in the Balkan wars—information sourced from transcripts
from the tribunal, refugee letters and stories recounted by refugees—would scare readers
away and I needed to tone the facts down in order to tell the story.
Unlike Frey, I do not present my work as an example of pure memoir or non-
fiction. It is Creative Nonfiction, a genre in which fact and fiction can be mixed to
varying degrees. While I have tried to emulate Garner’s technique of providing clear
31
demarcation lines between fact and fiction, I found it often detracted from the narrative
and read as journalism, or sounded didactic. As a result, I attempted to weave facts into
the characters’ dialogues. I found this technique was more subtle and did not interrupt
the narrative flow, such as in the following example:
She looked at the plaque that had been erected in honour of the Duke and those killed during World War I. My God, she thought, it was my people who started the First World War. Guilt welled up inside her.
“Why did he kill them?” “The same reason they are stirring up trouble now.
The Black Hand is a nationalist group intent on recovering land the Serbians lost to Turkey during the Ottoman Empire invasion. When the Turks lost control of Bosnia and Herzegovina during their war with Russia, control of the area was handed to Austria. The Serbs weren’t happy; they felt the land should have been handed back to them.” (Alagic 297, 2008)
The authorial framework that I have established is a relationship with the truths
portrayed in the text. I do not profess it to be everyone’s truth, as this can never be
achieved due to different individual perceptions, but what I do propose is that my direct
cultural link can provide a more truthful insight into the working minds of the characters
within Not Like My Mother than perhaps a novelist. I understand the Balkan people; I
have come to understand why my parents were abusive. My personal connection and
living experiences within these truths provide a degree of authority. However, I am under
no illusions that a reader will also perceive this information as being a universal truth. In
the end, a writer can present their perception of the truth, but has no control over the
reader’s interpretation of that truth.
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6 CONCLUSION
In attempting to identify ways in which a writer might negotiate between the larger truth
and their personal authorial truth in writing a work of Creative Nonfiction, I have tried
to construct a framework within Not Like My Mother, which clearly indicates to the
reader that while some of the content rings true, creative licence has been taken by the
writer in an attempt to achieve an authorial truth and larger truth. While these truths may
not necessarily be every reader’s truth, hopefully the reader will be able to identify with
some of the larger truths in the story.
The various genres that incorporate fact and fiction, such as: New Journalism,
Memoir, Autobiography, ‘Creative’ Essay, and Creative Nonfiction (Brien 2000), have all
struggled with similar problems. New Journalism and Creative Nonfiction report on a
subjective truth through narrative. While novels and poems also deal with problematic
techniques and ethics, the author does not purport the work to be true. When a writer
claims even part of the work is based on truth, the ethics of perception and
representation of truth need to be dealt with carefully.
Because of my limited access to facts, I have been unable to quote directly from
transcripts, as Garner was able to. While the general story has similarities to other Balkan
stories, Not Like My Mother is not non-fiction. It is an amalgamation of fact with fiction
in which I have negotiated between my own authorial truth and a larger truth which
encompasses cultural and religious truths not limited by geographical boundaries.
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7 BIBLIOGRAPHY
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No. 2. http://www.textjournal.com.au/oct07/arnold.htm (Accessed November 15, 2007).
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