Tuesday, February 12, 2019

So what if they lied?

Thinking about memoirs. And lying. I hate lying in real life, dishonesty is about one of the only thing I cannot tolerate in people. I've been lied to a lot, and honestly, I have lied a lot. As an adolescent facing a lot of life challenges I was ill equipped to handle, lying sometimes seemed like my best and only option. But even then, I didn't lie to change who I was or how my story appeared. It was more an act of self preservation. And now, almost 10 years after removing myself from the environment and situations that triggered those lies, I have made it my own personal practice to be completely honest, even when it hurts.

So what if they lied? This summer I read four different memoirs; Chasing Excellence by Ben Bergeron, The Making of the CrossFit Games by Dave Castro, First by Rich Froning, and How I Became the Fittest Woman on Earth by Tia Claire Toomey. Most people have probably never heard of these books and their authors, let alone read them. But as someone with a keen interest in functional fitness, overcoming physical adversity, and training through challenges, these books held a significant interest to me. Their authors are so distinctly different despite traveling in the same circle of athleticism; but their personalities are only part of the reason I was drawn to their stories. Mostly, I was looking for their honesty.

Some people may think that writing a memoir gives a person creative licence to exaggerate the details a bit, if doing so adds to the theme of their story instead of detracting from it. I disagree. I write, and read because of the catharsis that accompanies writing the truth for others to see and for how reading the stories of other people's lives have shaped them and what I could take away from that. I read fiction as well as nonfiction. And maybe I'm too much of a stickler, but I don't think the boundaries between those two categories should be blurred.

This paragraph from Nothing But the Truth, On Lying and Memoir Writing:
"In The Art of Memoir, Mary Karr repeatedly emphasizes the same sort of moral compass, where north isn’t the direction of legalistic truths, but truths that are more difficult to discern: Is this really how I felt at that time in my life, or do I only wish I was that self-aware? Did my parents’ divorce really influence my character, or is it some genetic heavy heartedness that I inherited from them at birth? These, Karr says, are the sorts of questions memoirists must confront — and the task isn’t easy. She cautions potential writers not to view their personal stories as therapy, instead likening the craft to mastering your own psychology so that you, the memoirist, become a sort of therapist, your reader your patient."
seems to sum up the reason I read memoirs perfectly. I am looking for that next level analysis of self, I am holding the writer to that standard, and secretly judging them if they fall short of meeting it. But this is nothing I wouldn't do to my own writing. And I would hope others would do the same.

I feel as if memoirs riddled with cliche's and dishonesty only detract from the value memoirs bring to the field of literature. The more people exaggerate and fill their stories with what they think they should be thinking, or what they think their audience wants to hear, the less these works resemble literature in its most basic sense.

If in these books, their respective authors had lied, I would have been thoroughly disappointed. I benefited a lot from what appeared to be their honest accounts of these particular life experiences; finding out that these held certain untruths would undo all of that learning and definitely leave me feeling a bit jaded. I read these books expressly for their honesty. None of the authors write for a blog that I know of, but all contribute to podcasts, which sometimes resemble blogs in certain ways. I didn't start listening to these podcasts until after I had read these books; trying to determine if the people could be believed. I would love for them to share their stories in blog format, I think each of them shares a perspective of the world of CrossFit that is unique but not unique to them. Their experiences are unique, and certainly their responses and the way the trajectory of their lives has shifted as a result, but there are universal themes throughout and I believe these would lend themselves well to the world of blogging. But only if they brought the same honesty to their blog as to their memoirs.

As Maddie Crumb touches on in Nothing But the Truth, "There is, after all, a fluidity between who we were to other people, who we thought we were, who we think we were, and who we think we are now. And many contemporary memoirists confront this fluidity, either indirectly, or by personifying it, making it the nexus of their stories. "
That fluidity is what I am looking for when I read memoirs. Without it, they hold little value. And I deeply believe that fluidity and honestly are counterparts in the formula for exemplary memoir (or online blog) writing. Without it, they hold little literary value. They also hold little personal value to the reader. So what if they lied? Well, if they lied, they become unreliable, untrustworthy, uninspiring, and unworthy of recognition.

In my opinion. Even if there is universal truth scattered about in the lies, it becomes a decaying shadow of itself in association with dishonesty. It serves no purpose, holds no value for the reader, and contributes nothing to making sense of their stories and ours in relation. So if they had lied, even though their stories of athleticism may not have deep philosophical meaning for the rest of the world, I would have lost all of what I gained from reading them. And what I gained goes far beyond an appreciation of their athleticism.

Sources:
https://www.amazon.com/Chasing-Excellence-Building-Fittest-Athletes-ebook/dp/B0743MP21F

https://www.amazon.com/First-What-Takes-Rich-Froning-ebook/dp/B00AM259DY/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=First+by+Rich+Froning&qid=1549984632&s=digital-text&sr=1-1-catcorr

https://www.amazon.com/How-Became-Fittest-Woman-Earth-ebook/dp/B07DJTJD8M/ref=sr_1_1?crid=14MVQ0GY576PT&keywords=how+i+became+the+fittest+woman+on+earth&qid=1549984677&s=digital-text&sprefix=how+i+became+the+fittest+woman+on+%2Cdigital-text%2C1038&sr=1-1

https://www.amazon.com/Constructing-CrossFit-Games-Dave-Castro/dp/0998615056/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1?crid=2VQMN8QZGCZ7M&keywords=constructing+the+crossfit+games+book&qid=1549984711&s=gateway&sprefix=constructing+the+cross%2Cdigital-text%2C1162&sr=8-1-fkmrnull

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/memoir-writing-facts_us_56044f0be4b08820d91c2132

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