Reasonable Lies, Unacceptable Lies, and CNF

Tonight we talked about lies - both in terms of our experiences with lies and lying in our own lives, and in terms of lying in writing - particular in terms of the way James Frey used a lie about the "truth" of his writing for his own purposes. I think we started the conversation with the acknowledgement that because our representations of experience are from our own perspectives - and always partial - in some sense everything we write is going to be a kind of - if not a lie - then at least some kind of not-quite-truth. That given - there are some kinds of lying that go beyond what it is OK to do in writing. Different writers draw the line in different places - but all writers should do some serious thinking about where their line is, and what it means to draw it "there" and not somewhere else.

After writing into a prompt about lies that hurt (thank you for the good contributions) we listed all the ways Frey lied - and then we classified the kinds of lies he told. We came up with 4 different kinds of lies:

• lies about himself/his identity (posing as a classic "hero-rebel");
• lies that affected/represented other real people;
• what we called "lies of principle" that went beyond lying about a particular person or group - and moved to represent "the way things are" based on Frey's (false) experiences;
• and "meta-lies" or lies about the truth, source, basis of his writing

We then ranked the "evilness" of the lies Frey told and came up with the observation that in some sense - without the meta-lie that his book was true - all the other lies wouldn't matter.

So it seems -in writing CNF - in the very act of proclaiming the "truth" of your material - you take on an ethical responsibility - to examine, be forthcoming about, and reflect on the quality of truth in the material you present. Of course this is only a partial representation of what we did in class (a lie?). . . .

For Wednesday:

Blogs: Provide comments for whatever is posted for Draft 2 for writers in your rehearsal group

See you at Liberty Hall!

For Monday:

Blog 12: Post Draft 2 - a second "I" essay