(Non)fiction

Memoirs, personal essays, autobiographies, personal narratives, journals— all of these genres distinguish themselves from fantasy, science fiction, contemporary literature, etc. because they tell a true story. Or rather, they contain a higher percentage of truth than the latter list of genres. As Emily Bernard writes in her essay “Scar Tissue” from Black is the Body, “Memory lies.”

In her dissertation on truthfulness in memoirs, Caroline van de Pol argues that all nonfiction includes at least some fictional elements, citing psychological research on memory that revealed memory, in fact, does lie: 

“[T]he process of remembering is not a passive one and constantly evokes a reinterpretation of the past in the present.”

Van de Pol also states that part of the drive and motivation behind writing and reading includes mixing fact and fiction. However, she believes it is the writer’s duty to tell the truth as part of an unspoken “contract” with the reader. But van de Pol defines truth differently than the conventional concept of it by arguing that facts are only one small part of the whole truth; truth concerns itself more with “authenticity and integrity.” Therefore, the author should aim to portray an “emotional truth” rather than an objectively factual account.

Throughout the dissertation, van de Pol refers to examples of memoirs and other nonfiction works and discusses her own experience in writing in the genre to support her argument. Overall, her argument is strong, not only because of these examples and references, but also because she qualifies her thesis. She acknowledges the complexity of the concept of a pure truth and does not suggest a black and white answer to the question of whether memoirs contain truths or lies. Rather, she suggests it is somewhere in between and, more importantly, that that is part of the art of writing, even, and perhaps especially, in nonfiction.

“[T]he art of storytelling, the construction of language, the blurring of fact and fiction and the role of the reader are among the most prominent of the imperatives that drive us to write and to read.”

-       Caroline van de Pol