Author: rcsmith

Blogger Responsibility in Literary Truth

In her speech given at a LITA (Library and Information Technology Association) conference in October of 2005, Blogging Outloud: Shifts in Public Voice, Danah Boyd draws on the metaphor of blogs as paper. Suggesting that blogs are used for anything from insightful articles to grocery lists to scribbles.

Boyd defends bloggers’ ability to navigate the tenuous line of journalism, literature and “self involved whining”:

By calling bloggers “the unpublishable,” it is difficult to tell if the comparison is purely journalistic or also referencing professional authors and academics. Y’know – the ones who “publish” at the whim of capitalistic-minded publishers. On one hand, we have esteemed authors who have navigated the vetting process (translation: those who have figured out how to market their writing); on the other, we have self-involved whiney brats who bring their friends into their drama. Should we note that people publish Howard Stern and that numerous bloggers write serious commentary about everything from local politics to the process of becoming a doctor in this country? Perhaps not.

This article is now more or less out of date (written in 2005) but it does manage to capture some of the problems that the memoir style blog (or any memoir) presents for literary truth.

This article from CNN tackles some of the problems that people have always had with memoirs. A few years ago, James Frey author of, A Million Little Pieces (documents his struggles with addiction/crime/ rehab facilities, etc) was (still is!) the subject of intense scrutiny for his literary fabrications in his non-fiction memoir. In his interview with CNN Frey says:

“There’s a great debate about memoir and about what should be most properly served, the story or some form of journalistic truth. Memoirs don’t generally come under the type of scrutiny that mine has.”

Unless Oprah is reading your blog, it probably won’t come under this kind of scrutiny either, but what kind of literary truth do we, as bloggers, owe to our readers? And why do I trust so (very) deeply in the truth of the blogs that I read?

I read A Million Little Pieces and trusted completely in its truth but I wasn’t let down by the fact that Frey may have fabricated or embellished because he told a great story that was intensely personal. I don’t read memoirs as autobiographies because I don’t care whether or not these things actually happened to the author- I only care that their story is personal, meaningful and well told.

I trust in (most) blogs for three and a half reasons:

1. They are spur of the moment
2. If they were fiction they would be boring
3. They are often extremely self-depricating or as Boyd writes,”self-involved whiney brats”(Which can sometimes be misleading given that self-deprication/dramatic irony are both just super popular in blogosphere)
4. What’s the point of lying? You’re not making (a lot of) money.

That said, fabricate your memoir all you want, bloggers… we will know.

Hopefully I will have a chance to write more on this later seeing as I didn’t really answer any of the questions I laid out for myself.

Want to write your memoir? Check out this great book from McSweeney’s:

http://www.amazon.com/Autobiographers-Handbook-National-Writing-Memoir/dp/0805087133