The blog of The Top Ten author J. Peder Zane.
The Truth about David Sedaris
Friday, March 30, 2007
Scandals involving memoirists such as James Frey and Tim "Nasdijj" Burrus have led many reporters and critics to wonder about the veracity of work published as "nonfiction."
Last effort - by Alex Heard of The New Republic - focuses on an unlikely subject, David Sedaris. In a long article, Alex Heard cites various instances in which the humorist embellished or fabricated episodes inn hiss bestselling works.
Without challenging Heard's findings I asked - what's the big whoop? - in a column last Sunday. The link to my piece provided by a popular website for journalists, Romenesko, sparked a very interesting discussion on the purity of nonfiction.
Various folks weighed in — the anecdote about Sedaris supplied by Jerome Weeks, former Book Editor at the Dallas Morning News, is particularly revealing.
The most interesting responses, however, have come from Mr. Heard, who responded to my column and then responded to a Newsday interview in which Sedaris sort of fires back at him.
Good stuff!
Posted by J. Peder Zane at 3:18 PM
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Not sure what all the fuss is about -- Sedaris doesn't rank in the top million on my list of quality writers, so I guess I don't understand the hullabaloo.
I won't ask you to name all million, but who are 999,995-1,000,000?
Seriously, I think some of the controversy stems from the fact that the story was reported by a journalist. For us reporters fabrication is a firing offense and embellishment can be. So, journalists tend to take a hard line on such issues.
They'll be fired, of course, unless they're humorists. Dave Barry is a "journalist" who makes up stuff all the time.
In fact, I'd wager that the vast majority of reporter famed for their humor gild the lily.
A test - I just pulled down a collection of New York Times columns by Russell Baker, "The Rescue of Miss Yaskell and Other Pipe Dreams." I open the book to page 148 aqnd a column called "Riches of the Tube." It begins:
"If you've been missing me lately around the dance hall on Friday nights, folks, it's because I have been riveted to my parlor telly in trancelike pursuit of riches beyond the imagination of Kreuget the Match King.
"Fridays at 8:30 find me - aply fed, digestive organs ruminating contentedly to the rythmic sloshing of martini juice - sitting in Louis Quinze armchair awaiting another installment of "Wall Street Week." By 8:33 my mind is reeling so wildly with gyrations of the Dow Jones average and the pinwheeling of money funds, Treasury bills and gold markets that I often require the calming infusion of brandy."
A beautiful work of the imnagination, no?
without commenting specifically on sedaris, i do find the argument over when non-fiction crosses the line into fiction fascinating.
i am currently enrolled in a creative writing program, and remember a guest speaker, an essayist, who did a reading of one of his non-fiction travel pieces. when he was finished, he told us that he had actually changed several details (and at least one of them was not a minor detail!) in the shaping of his story. well, in my mind, that's fiction--because he was creating a story that he liked better than the story that actually happened. that is, he wanted to make a certain point, and not all the facts would fit, so the ones that didn't got changed or eliminated.
now, his story manipulation wasn't quite on the level of, say, frey's apparent truth-abuses, but that brings me back to the question: where is the line, and when do we know it's been crossed?
perhaps i'll find the answer in one of the links in your post... off to surf through them now...