Week 5: Fluidity vs. Lies

     The article titled "Nothing But the Truth: On Lying and Memoir-Writing" discusses fluidity and the impact it can have on a reader. It mentions that sometimes, memories or the re-telling of events can become a little distorted, which is where fluidity comes in to play. It is acceptable for writers to stretch the truth to a certain extent. You never want to lie to your reader, but at the same time, your stories have to be interesting enough that they will want to keep reading. The article states, "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." This is basically just saying that our perception is constantly changing, so it can be difficult to remember exactly how you were feeling in a certain past moment. We can't remember every single detail of our lives; it is simply impossible. Your emotions can distort a memory- you might think you remember something clearly, but you might actually be remembering something incorrectly. Fluidity affects the craft of writing a memoir because you have to go with the flow when writing about things of the past. You have to be as honest as possible while filling in the blanks you cannot remember to the best of your ability.
     A memoir I enjoyed reading, even though it was very upsetting, is called Night by Elie Wiesel. This memoir is about the experience that a boy and his father have in a concentration camp in Auschwitz. It is a disturbing, eye-opening piece of work. A few quotes from the memoir are as follows: "To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time", "Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere", and "That night, the soup tasted of corpses". Anybody who reads this book can learn a lot. Not only do you learn about a piece of history that happened in our world, but you also learn about how the human soul perseveres even in the absolute worst of times. If I found out the writer had blurred the lines between fact and fiction, the reading experience wouldn't change that much for me because of the overall message of the book. This was a piece of dark history, and even if the author ever wanted to blur the lines between fact and fiction, I would still be just as impacted by the work. I wonder if it was difficult to remember details when writing this memoir due to the memories being so emotionally charged. Whether the author wrote fluidly or not doesn't matter because of what this work discusses as a whole.
     If this memoir was ever transferred to a blog, I think it would be just as impactful as it is written in a book format. Nothing would be changing as far as the content, so I think people would still get as much from it as they would by reading it from a hard copy of a book. These circumstances may be different for other types of memoirs, but since this one is about such a widely taught subject, I don't think the method of reading it would really matter.