HISTORICITY AND FICTION
Relativism with regard to truth seems to be a winning notion these days, one that is hard to deny as the grand narrative of the past splinters.
However, a disingenuousness ploy to pawn something off as real that clearly isn't real is offensive because there is a pretense of veracity as non-fiction. When the context is notably a fiction, like with Michael Earl Craig's work (see my review), invoking the historical real brings the intersection of the historical real and the pointedly imagined space of the writer into relief.
Much of this issue reminds me of the discussion that Harry Frankfurt provides in his book On Bullshit. Frankfurt bemoans the loss of the idea of truth. He feels the truth is ascertainable (even though it is very difficult, perhaps impossible, to get at without some complication). He believes the truth is ascertainable because there is a real world that behaves in a certain way that has clear causes and effects. People's interpretations of these events make it difficult to ascertain truth.
The problem he has with bullshit as (he tries to define it) is that bullshitters have no regard for the difficulty of getting at the truth. They tend to offer catch-all statements like "it's all story-telling" in an attempt to save face or curry favor. Advertising and politics are currently hotbeds of such rhetoric. Nothing is said without a nod to how it will be perceived, truth be damned!
For Frankfurt, bullshitting is different than lying. To lie one must have a notion of the truth and then avoid it. Bullshitting begins with the premise that anything goes as long one plays a savvy public relations game.
The interesting part of Frankfurt's book is the question he poses about why bullshit is more tolerated than lying when, in fact, bullshitting is perhaps erodes the public trust more.
Nowhere is there a better example of this than the condemnation of Bill Clinton for "lying" about having sex with Monica Lewinsky while George Bush II's declarations about Niger's uranium enrichment program and IRaq's movement towards nuclear weapons were made to sell the war and probably were not regarded as "truthful" by many intelligence officials. However, they played because they would sell well. This bullshit (as Frankfurt would define it) is not condemned (at least intitially by most and even now by many).
What ramifications does all this have for fiction or poetry? Does infusing a fictional world with elements of the real poison our attempts to get at a difficult truth?
Perhaps, but because it does not try to portray itself as verifiable, there is no deliberate intent to misrepresent. The richness that the fictional interspresed with the historically real can be observed in the way it forces a reader to contemplate the counterfactual (much the way Philip Roth does in The Plot Against America.
I have always been interested in how the surrealists have dealt with history. Most tend to invoke mythical places out of it, like Craig. Most stop short of invoking the historical real because the effect can be subtly political without seeming to hold true to the facts. In short, their work seems flippant (Aimé Cesaire an exception here).
The real value in invoking the historical real within a pointedly fictional realm is to engage with the counterfactual, to contemplate what the world might have looked like if inserted into a different context. I think this is always useful in establishing perspective on the past as well as the future, perspective on the place where you live now and the place one grew up, for example.
This "alternative worlds" view of the present and the past gets panned for being flaky. [Craig seems to resist it because bringing the serious historical real undermines the playful tone of his work.] The bias against flakiness is hard to overcome (even though this criticism is a lot like criticizing Fauvism for depicting a brown sun). Something that is perceived to be addled and dreamy has no business daring even to encroach on the serious real. Somehow, this is an aesthetic breach. Taking it on is risking something. For all that Craig does risk, he does not venture this far, presumably due to his disregard for the importance of history.
However, a disingenuousness ploy to pawn something off as real that clearly isn't real is offensive because there is a pretense of veracity as non-fiction. When the context is notably a fiction, like with Michael Earl Craig's work (see my review), invoking the historical real brings the intersection of the historical real and the pointedly imagined space of the writer into relief.
Much of this issue reminds me of the discussion that Harry Frankfurt provides in his book On Bullshit. Frankfurt bemoans the loss of the idea of truth. He feels the truth is ascertainable (even though it is very difficult, perhaps impossible, to get at without some complication). He believes the truth is ascertainable because there is a real world that behaves in a certain way that has clear causes and effects. People's interpretations of these events make it difficult to ascertain truth.
The problem he has with bullshit as (he tries to define it) is that bullshitters have no regard for the difficulty of getting at the truth. They tend to offer catch-all statements like "it's all story-telling" in an attempt to save face or curry favor. Advertising and politics are currently hotbeds of such rhetoric. Nothing is said without a nod to how it will be perceived, truth be damned!
For Frankfurt, bullshitting is different than lying. To lie one must have a notion of the truth and then avoid it. Bullshitting begins with the premise that anything goes as long one plays a savvy public relations game.
The interesting part of Frankfurt's book is the question he poses about why bullshit is more tolerated than lying when, in fact, bullshitting is perhaps erodes the public trust more.
Nowhere is there a better example of this than the condemnation of Bill Clinton for "lying" about having sex with Monica Lewinsky while George Bush II's declarations about Niger's uranium enrichment program and IRaq's movement towards nuclear weapons were made to sell the war and probably were not regarded as "truthful" by many intelligence officials. However, they played because they would sell well. This bullshit (as Frankfurt would define it) is not condemned (at least intitially by most and even now by many).
What ramifications does all this have for fiction or poetry? Does infusing a fictional world with elements of the real poison our attempts to get at a difficult truth?
Perhaps, but because it does not try to portray itself as verifiable, there is no deliberate intent to misrepresent. The richness that the fictional interspresed with the historically real can be observed in the way it forces a reader to contemplate the counterfactual (much the way Philip Roth does in The Plot Against America.
I have always been interested in how the surrealists have dealt with history. Most tend to invoke mythical places out of it, like Craig. Most stop short of invoking the historical real because the effect can be subtly political without seeming to hold true to the facts. In short, their work seems flippant (Aimé Cesaire an exception here).
The real value in invoking the historical real within a pointedly fictional realm is to engage with the counterfactual, to contemplate what the world might have looked like if inserted into a different context. I think this is always useful in establishing perspective on the past as well as the future, perspective on the place where you live now and the place one grew up, for example.
This "alternative worlds" view of the present and the past gets panned for being flaky. [Craig seems to resist it because bringing the serious historical real undermines the playful tone of his work.] The bias against flakiness is hard to overcome (even though this criticism is a lot like criticizing Fauvism for depicting a brown sun). Something that is perceived to be addled and dreamy has no business daring even to encroach on the serious real. Somehow, this is an aesthetic breach. Taking it on is risking something. For all that Craig does risk, he does not venture this far, presumably due to his disregard for the importance of history.
posted by Victor Schnickelfritz at 9:56 AM
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