A Story Untold

Jump to Comments

I recently finished reading Stephen King’s On Writing, a sort of autobiography/aspiring fiction writer’s manual. In it, King writes that it is the fiction writer’s duty to be truthful. The story may be fictional, but it must reflect the truth of how we act, and speak, and live our lives. This duty is in line with what I have always thought about art in general: that it ought to reflect some sort of deeper truth about life which is not easily expressible in words. Of course, King is a wordsmith. His truth must be expressible in words, or he is out of a job. This line of reasoning is well and good for the fiction writer, but what about for the writer of non-fiction? This question arises because I have been reading a fair amount of autobiography lately, and because I have recently started this blog. Of course, the writer of history books need not be concerned about the effect that brutal honesty may have on his/her reputation; in fact, the more objective and honest a history writer is, the greater also is his/her credibility. But what about one who chooses to write about his/her own life? The truth is, if most of us were to write about our own lives with the same dispassionate honesty with which many have written about historical horrors (the Spanish Inquisition, the reign of the Nazi Regime, the persecution of minorities in our own country) we would be considered sociopaths with no regard for the conventions of common morality. Although few of us have committed such serious crimes as these, it would be considered in very poor taste to air even our relatively modest failings in public. In doing so, we would tarnish not only our own reputation, but the reputations of those with whom we associate. 

I suppose it is appropriate to ask why anyone would want to tell the world about everything they have done wrong in the first place? We have all done things we are not proud of, so isn’t it best to forget about them and move on? I think part of the reason is the same that those of us who choose to write about ourselves do so at all: simple vanity. But it is more than that. For me, writing about myself in an honest way is a cleansing experience. Much like confessing one’s sins to a priest, it is spiritually cleansing to be honest with someone else about the reality of things. The difference, of course, is that confessing to a priest keeps our sins private. Perhaps this is best. No, it is certainly best. It comes down to the fact that none of us has the right to implicate others, in public, of our shared misdeeds. 

Still, I feel that there must be some merit in this need to express truth. This belief is not unprecedented. The best example I know of is Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist. In his youth Joyce slept with prostitutes on a regular basis and, largely as a result of his strictly religious upbringing, he felt great shame in his actions. He also felt the need to express his actions as well as his shame publicly if he were to produce an honest autobiography (it should be noted that Joyce was heavily censored for his decision to do so). And this autobiography was later celebrated. Now, I am no James Joyce. But I feel a kinship with the man in our shared desire to be truthful about our vices as well as our virtues. The obvious implication in this discussion is that neither of us would be faced with this moral dilemma if we would simply stop being such unabashed sinners. But this seems unlikely.

The irony that I am really trying to point out is that the fiction writer has more freedom to explore truth than does the writer of non-fiction. This strikes me as something of a paradox. Perhaps this is why we tend to know little of the personal lives of historians, while novelists have the freedom to expose their own souls in the guise of their characters. Unfortunately for me, I have never been much of a storyteller. The only story I could ever really articulate is my own and, because of the  consequences it could pose for those I know and love (let alone myself), it seems that this will always be a story untold.

2 Comments

Filed under Literature, Personal