banane

Writing Fiction

True or False? Who Cares?

Two interesting articles/blog entries on the reality of writing fiction. Malcolm Gladwell’s defense of “how opal mehta got kissed… “, and a hilarious review of it. Thanks PSB for the link. (The Opal book has the worst title in the world, can I say that now?), and James Frey admits that, hey, “everything was made up.” Frey acknowledges fabrications in sequel. My favorite quote in the article:

“I did not spend ninety days in jail, and Porterhouse is a fictional character,” he writes. “Many of the other characters’ names and identifying characteristics have been altered or fictionalized, as have major events in their lives.”

I wonder, would I be compelled to read this, if it wasn’t real? Because there is skill in writing fiction that just doesn’t exist in non-fiction writing. Suspension of disbelief, and all that. Now that I’ve been so abused by him, would I give any sympathy to his made up characters? Doubt it. Sorry Frey.

Before ranting about that, here is the great review of Malcolm Gladwell’s defense, yes, he is defending perhaps the easiest plagiarism case EVER. But the reviewer is really funny, and here is where he so aptly talks about why all of us are a bit perplexed by Kaavya & Gladwell’s defense:

Most of us feel strongly about this (as in, we spend more than 10 seconds mulling over it), is because we find it kind of tragic that someone who is not only devoid of talent but also dishonest enough to copy freely from another’s book would be paid 500,000 bucks, a sum we could only hope to make after a lifetime of blogging while at work.

The Kaavya/Opal thing: to me, it was valuable that it even happened, because it opened up a world of writing that readers were unaware of. It’s not just that someone stole the Da Vinci Code plot about weird Christian symbolism and the Masonic stuff, but that, if Brown was an elegant writer, someone could steal his phrasings, meter, punchlines, etc. Some good chicklit is getting some cred, AND people are realizing there’s more to writing a good book than just a noir plot and alcoholism. Oh god, if that were only true!

Share and Enjoy:

This entry was posted on Friday, May 12th, 2006 at 11:39 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. View blog reactions Stumble it! You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewing 1 Comment

Count de Forez 2 years ago 1 point
Please login to rate.

Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.

I suppose this should be the subjest of a blog-of-my-own but we'll make do as a mere comment for now.

A lot of these defense of the indefensible I believe are the product of the complete inability for moral reasoning.

It's easy to know one is himself lacking in scientific literacy [do i know if the electron is positively or negatively charged? do i know it
is charged? It's easy to discover somebody is geographically ignorant [What country has beaches on the Atlantic and Indian Oceans?].
But it's not so simple to observe somebody lack the ability for moral reasoning, and it certainly isnt the kind of things people will cheerfully admit as they might with something like "I've never read any Shakespeare".

Another recent example of this was this
"In Defense of Barry Bonds" column
by this dullard Ken Garcia (Examiner
Sports columnist?).

He makes the point [sic] that Babe Ruth and Kobe Byrant were not great people but seems to miss the obvious point that thier conduct was not related to the rules of the game ...
boozing is not the same as "juicing".

To take a highbrow example [see Bernard Williams: Moral Luck, or
google(bernard williams paul gauguin)], the revelation Gauguin abandoned his wife and kids to go frolick in the South Seas perhaps does not need to be factored into an artistic assessment of PG, but if it turned out that he copied some obscure native artist even though painterly plagerism might be a lesser moral offense than condemning your kids to penury, it is more relevant in the art crit context.

--psb

reply edit reblog flag record video comment

http://www.blogger.com/profile/22555133