Usually, I won't use this space as a place for random thoughts on current issues, but I thought this relevant to the writers here at Dotde as it may connect to travel writing in an interesting way.
Oprah, since when have we supposed memoir to be absolutely honest? And how come you look younger now than you did in 1986? You must lather it on to look good, right?
Nonetheless, you may catalogue your readings here at Dotde under the realm of "mostly" nonfiction. If you are able to penetrate the fabric of reality we at the office attempt to pull taut, at least don't cry at us on National TV. Not only do we produce 99% biographical work, but any embellishment is purely for your entertainment. Most embellishment, I might add, takes place in the comment box from those mysteriously anonymous quips.
And we mention this now because we fear concern of this type from our readers. If there's any need for concern or anger, let us here redirect you to humph and humph. These two links will satisfy your needs (for anger or entertainment, depending on your mood).
Yes, we are in Mainz. And yes, I'm taking another road trip to play ultimate near Munich this weekend. D will hold down the office, and hopefully we'll have more reports from Chocolate Mombach (not to be confused as Nagin's mini-practice-plan for New Orleans) while we close down January and reopen the second month of the year.
posted by j at 10:44 PM
2 Comments:
It would seem to me that the issue brings too much importance to the media. What we watch is what we now assume to be fact and that the presenters have an obligation to be honest. Springer, the Fox News station and others have long since gone over that line. Now comes this issue that seems to give Oprah far too much importance in evaluating and presenting the writings of others. Please keep in mind that her validity come from a group of people who have the time and/or the lack of interest to watch her show. Thus the ratings of that show now give her some sort of moral acceptance. Careful.....the masses have never shown good judgement on their own.
9:31 PM
I've been interested in this kind of thing for awhile now (for a time I thought my dissertation would be on biography - now it's a little more complicated). Anyway, this is my favorite kind of thing - people "fabricating" their lives. All narrative is fabrication - the idea of a true narrative strikes me as an oxymoron at this point (though I admit I may be taking things too far - at this point I think language = lying; so I concede that this may be a bit ridiculous). The attempt to narrate your life in any way is always false - to narrate is to place meaning on something & if you're narrating your own life, you are imposing that meaning; I'm not sure I can think of anything more subjective than that. Besides, there are far more interesting versions of this scenario. There was Binjamin Wilkomirski who wrote a Holocaust memoir, and then it turned out he'd been nowhere near a concentration camp. So what? Frey added a few days to his prison sentence and was wrong about how long he'd been in a relationship with a woman who killed herself (and he changed the method). This guy is a small timer; it sounds like his most egregious action was to slip outside the arbitrary human notion of time. Memoir must have roots in memory and memory is weird place. Anyway the point is I blame language in general.
11:11 PM
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