I think liberties can be taken with one’s own experiences and family; David Sedaris comes to mind - I don’t expect people to provide the unvarnished truth about their own stories. I also think the truth may be exaggerated or slanted for comedy or - maybe - in an environment of known bias, like a political convention.
But I think it’s reprehensible to misrepresent and lie in either fiction or non-fiction*. If the writer can’t be entertaining and either truthful or imaginative to invent something whole cloth, s/he might want to look into another career. Or another editor.
(* I’ve read plenty of historical fiction that tweaked timelines or used character composites, and they typically begin with disclaimers and end with appendices. And non-fiction should start or end with, “as the legend goes”.)
At one of my jobs (counselor at a science camp), we touched on this point at training: To those kids, we are the voice of authority. If we say something, then they will believe it. Therefore, we have a positive duty to make sure that we are not telling them anything wrong. That means that if you have to make a guess, approximation, or other imperfect answer, you make it clear that that’s what you’re doing. If you don’t know, then say that you don’t know. But we should never, ever just make something up and pass it on as fact.
Well, I think we’re dealing here with a couple of different things. As chappachula’s cite points out, Bryson does not always intend to be taken completely seriously. You’d have to be a remarkably literal person to be upset if it turned out that there was never an actual Stor-Mor refrigerator, or if this exact conversation actually never took place. It’s just a funny description of a conversation that never was. It gives me insight into the fifties in the US (I wasn’t there), and it fits what I know about that decade from other sources. It doesn’t bother me at all to accept that Bryson is riffing here and that he is not adhering–and does not mean to adhere–to the truth.
It’s also worth pointing out that Bryson is part of a loooong tradition of writers who pass off things-that-didn’t-quite-happen in the guise of nonfiction, at least in the United States. David Sedaris is one modern example. James Thurber did it in My Life and Hard Times, which I believe was published as an autobiographical account when it came out in the thirties (it’s only autobiographical if you believe that people can die of the chestnut blight, among other implausible details). OP, I believe you and I were involved in a thread about Betty MacDonald’s The Egg and I a little while back, a book which I think you liked a lot; it had a whole bunch of composite characters and was written long after the fact, and its veracity is…well, shaky. Shirley Jackson’s Life Among the Savages is another example from many decades ago. Maybe “Charles” is true in vague outline, but I don’t believe for a moment that the story happened just the way Jackson told it.
And to me, that’s more than okay. None of these books came out with any kind of disclaimer saying that the events were not strictly true, but I don’t think very many people are or were bothered by that. I certainly don’t hold these books to an especially high standard of truth. Could people be fooled into thinking they’re 100% accurate? Seems unlikely to me, despite the lack of “Warning: SATIRE AHEAD!” stickers on the cover…but I guess I’d never say never.
Now, for a less light-hearted piece of nonfiction, my take would be different: a biography of Famous Musician X or an examination of the policies of President Y ought to stck directly to the facts. But drawing the line is tricky. As a general rule, I don’t have a problem with the Humorous Memoir/Funny Travel Adventure type of book deviating from What Really Took Place. So I’m fine with what Thurber, Bryson, MacDonald, Jackson, are/were doing.
I find this kind of hilarious as a criticism, since that is entirely what you’re doing in your OP and this follow-up post. Why can’t you just provide a few specific examples of things he wrote in the book that you took issue with? I could barely keep my eyes from glazing over reading all of your tedious circumlocutions and deliberate vagueness. Please try to be concise.
I’m sure we can all think of examples of particularly dumb people taking obvious satire and fiction for truth. But if it’s clear enough to be difficult and unlikely for reasonable people to do so, I think that’s acceptable, and not in contradiction to the standard I described.
But there’s nothing implausible in the Bryson I’ve read. At the time, I assumed it was trustworthy.
Okay. Thing is, your “this is a good argument for fiction” comment was in response to Bryson’s quote (given by **chappachula **) about refrigerators in the fifties–a quote that clearly is not to be taken seriously as fact.
Your comment wasn’t in response to misinformation in another of Bryson’s less obviously humorous books; it was to this made-up scene.
As a result, it sounded to me like you were saying that fiction should never appear in books marketed in any way as nonfiction, and that was what I was responding to. Glad I was wrong.
Actually I meant to respond there to chappachula’s argument in a broader sense, which is why the Bryson quote was snipped out.
Now, I haven’t read the “autobiography” with the refrigerator scene. If I had, unless there were cues elsewhere, I expect I would have understood that scene to be intended as nonfiction. That the young Bryson really did witness conversations that were, probably not verbatim, but substantially as depicted.* There’s nothing obviously implausible about it, to me, who was not alive then. It’s presented in a humorous tone, to be sure, but nothing is as funny as true life, viewed from the right perspective. Why should I not understand Bryson to be telling a true story here? And if he’s not… well, what’s the point? If it’s not genuine social observation, that makes it a lot less funny, too.
I do read the brand names as a bit of a joke, but not as a signal to disbelieve the whole scene.
I wasn’t surprised – knowing what we do, about Bryson’s way of going about things – to learn that there are inaccuracies in 1927.
I do feel – although there is plenty in Bryson’s writings, that pee’s me off – that Douglas Brinkley’s “brutal review” is harsher than is fair or reasonable. If I have things rightly, Brinkley is attacking the book and the author not about misinformation / inaccuracies, but for its overall banality. This strikes me as demanding in a way that’s over-the-top. Bryson does not claim to be a heavy-duty historian, or a heavy-duty intense litterateur of genius: he is a popular writer, and a populariser, and in my perception, doesn’t claim otherwise. The book is clearly not Brinkley’s cup of tea, and that is fine – but I can’t go along with his assertion that it is, in every way, total rubbish.
Essentially, I agree with all the above – as you say, “liberties can be taken with one’s own experiences and family”. Otherwise, I concur that an author has a responsibility to try his best to get his facts about the wider world, right – and / or to make appropriate disclaimers.
I’m with you, mostly; but I feel that when a writer (even if, as with Bryson, a jocular style is his trademark) is attempting a basically serious exposition of some issue – as with the matter which annoyed me as told of in my OP – he ought to take some care to get right, the data which he cites as back-up for said exposition.
I am aware that my writing tends to be prolix: a fair number of people, as well as yourself, have rebuked me for that fault. Believe it or not, I do try, on and off, to curb the tendency concerned. It probably doesn’t help, that I don’t always act on the wise advice that “drinking and posting don’t mix”.
Old dogs and new tricks – though I may try, there’s no way that I’ll ever become a master of terse conciseness. Perhaps you’d be happier putting me on “ignore”.
I have no experience with Bryson. But I have no problem with Cracked.com and what they do. I think it’s quite clear that they are giving a very glossy overview and telling stories in interesting ways. I don’t think you need a big disclaimer when it’s clear by the style presented what is going on.
Though I admit that this is tempered by the fact that they have a comments section, where you can disagree.
Years ago I read his Short History of Nearly Everything. Going through the chapters on topics I don’t know much about I thought it was interesting. When I got to the chapter on computers (my area of expertise) all I could see was errors and that he had no idea what he was talking about. I asked my girlfriend, who has a background in chemistry, what she thought of it. Her opinion was basically “interesting, but the section on chemistry was rubbish”. We concluded that basically nothing in the book could be treated as accurate and it went straight into the charity bin.