Amazing story
Does it matter?
In a couple of days three articles appeared in The International Herald Tribune about fake-memoirs, especially about the one by Margaret Seltzer and the fake holocaust-memoir by Misha Defonseca. The article by Steve Almond was basically an overview, the one by Mark Leyner was funny and the article by Daniel Mendelsohn, the most interesting one, was more a short essay.
He writes: “That pervasive blurriness, the casualness about reality that results when you can turn off entire worlds simply by unsubscribing, changing a screen name, or closing your laptop, is what ups the cultural ante just now. It's not that frauds haven't been perpetrated before; what's worrisome is that, maybe for the first time, the question people are raising isn't whether the amazing story is true, but whether it matters if it's true.”
Maybe it’s time for a pamphlet “In defense of reality”. Maybe a novelist should write this pamphlet. Not only is it in the interest of the novelist to defend reality, it is something that he or she should be good at.
The subject has interested me for years even on the small scale of colleagues. What has always stroke me was the fact that the frauds act the most convincing and retrieved the most success from their stories. True victims mostly behave uneasy, shy and even implausible. Frauds act more accordingly to the expectations of the public.
A tough subject. A research about the sources is always necessary.
in defense of reality
What reality? Facts and figures?Whose reality? Yours or mine?
Vera
That's exactly the point. Please, read Mr. Mendelsohn's article and you will see that it is quite dangerous to think about this thing called "my reality."the real real, fake real, really fake and fake fake
i think the mistake mendelssohn makes is to confuse history and literature. history is about facts that should be reported truthfully - while literature consists of a vast area of possibilities to play with reality and identities. the addition of the sentence "this story is based on actual events" at the end of a film serves as a kind of stamp to make the experiences of the viewers deeper, more long-lasting.Kameleon
A memoir is in my book about facts, among other things.With my two questions I wanted to say that reality is a thing of facts and figures, scales... and that you and me have a different 'interpretation' of the same facts and figures - so in that sense we have our own reality.
Which of course is something else than fraude.
Amazing story
I think the Mendelsohn essay is about whether absolute truth exist. I think with him, it does for sure. F.I. Jews have been systimatically persecuted and brought to gaschambers by the Nazies, during the Second World War. This is true whether the Palestinians believe it or not.Nowadays , the Internet era, people talk about everyone living their own "virtual reality" , all experiences, perceptions are relative to the beholder, so there is no absolute truth. It suggests that there are no rules for live, and that no lessons from history need to be learned. Everyone can live in their "virtual reality" as they please, to maximise the multitude of their experiences.
I don't think so. People need to learn from History, other people and themselves in order progress to a more humane kind of species. Hopefully a less cruell one.
Greetings to all.
