February 1, 2005
Some thoughts on Bruce Chatwin's fabrications, from Crabwalk
At Crabwalk yesterday, Josh Benton had an interesting entry about travel-writer/novelist Bruce Chatwin.
"Chatwin occasionally made things up," Benton writes. "Parts of his books were fabricated. At times he tried the old dodge that a certain amount of fabrication was, well, expected by readers. Some of his books he labeled fiction in hidden places, but the fact they were all about this fellow named Bruce who was talking to real people in real places made it clear he had no intention of tearing down the fourth wall.
"Chatwin was writing books, not works of journalism. For better or worse, people have grown more used to fibbing in books than in newspapers and magazines. (Does anyone really think David Sedaris' stories are all literally true? Come on.) But the basic lie of it all remains -- people like Chatwin and Ryszard Kapuscinski told falsehoods much larger than anything Jayson Blair did. And they're globally acclaimed. (It also helps that they had roughly 1,000 times the talent Blair did.)
"I don't have any wise summary points here -- just that people have different expectations of objectivity from different sources, and that some people manage to work outside those expectations. A lot of the time, they produce brilliant work -- Chatwin and Kapuscinski alike. But it's unfortunate that every time a journalist writes something of great value, it seems to be tainted, either with perspective or with fabrication. Maybe our expectations are off. Or maybe the writers' expectations are. [David Cay] Johnston wants the imprimatur of The New York Times on his stories, but isn't willing to play by the down-the-middle rules most newspapers enforce. Chatwin wants the bracing power of non-fiction but doesn't want to play by the rules of Always Telling The Truth.
"(A quote about Chatwin's most famous book, The Songlines, about nomadic Aboriginal Australians: "In Songlines, Chatwin takes leave of the facts about the people he met and the places he went. Had Songlines been fiction this would have been forgivable; but Chatwin refused to have his theory regarding the nomadic nature of man reduced to fiction. [Biographer Nicholas] Shakespeare took the time to interview the many people Chatwin spoke with while researching The Songlines. It is very clear they felt completely betrayed by Chatwin. More damningly, they point out Chatwin did not, in fact, spend much time with actual Aboriginals.")"
Comments (6)
And your thoughts on this?
Posted by Annette | February 2, 2005 1:35 AM
Posted on February 2, 2005 01:35
Shakespeare's biography is Chatwin is excellent and discusses this issue at length. I highly recommend it. It illuminates his writing and life.
Posted by cquirk | February 2, 2005 3:16 AM
Posted on February 2, 2005 03:16
Sorry to be slow on the reply here, but as for my thoughts on Chatwin and his writing, I thought of the following passage, which I recently read in a foreword that Bob Shacochis wrote to C. Peter Ripley's Conversations With Cuba:
"Objectivity, for someone trying to understand the most complicated and difficult things about the world -- politics and power, the human heart, betrayal, sacrifice -- is a false or at least an inadequate science. In its stead, fair-mindedness and open-mindedness expressed in the envelope of the writer's own value system, are the best we can hope for -- are what we should hope for. A writer shapes what we know as much as any other player invested in a story -- policy analyst or historian, spin doctor or diplomat, leader or peasant exile or anyone else, and to report from a vacuum of self becomes a political, and perhaps ethical, sleight of hand. * To have a direct, unobstructed view of the person writing, to have access to his or her inner thoughts and moral universe, is a vital component of our ability to judge a work clearly, judiciously, responsibly. Correspondents as separated in place and time and sensibility as Mark Twain and Martha Gellhorn knew this instinctively: that they were not some sort of truth machines -- not neutral transmitters -- that what they saw and heard and, just as significantly, what they felt and believed, mattered. That they had a point of view, and it was as much a part of the story being told and interpreted as anything else. Rather than diminish credibility, point of view places the writer's integrity on the line and diminishes the fiction -- the self-righteous bluff -- that objectivity invites onto the page."
So, with Shacochis, I think that injecting the personal into a travel story is not just acceptable, but more honest than presumed objectivity.
Making up people and situations to flesh out the story, on the other hand doesn't really jibe with the parameters of nonfiction. Though I've read many critics who don't mind Chatwin's semi-fictional style -- claiming it still captures the "truth" of the place...
Posted by Rolf | February 16, 2005 8:48 AM
Posted on February 16, 2005 08:48
I certainly don't have any problems with injecting the personal into a travel story. (Although I'd argue that it's become too much of a fetish in recent years. Finding a travel book that isn't pitched as "Follow Jane's adventures as she crosses the Hindu Kush, having just broken up with her long-term boyfriend" is harder than ever.)
The irony here, of course, is that Chatwin's "In Patagonia" kills off almost all of that personal detail, prefering a more restrained and abstract voice.
Anyway, my problem isn't with authorial perspective -- it's with authors making things up. If lies can do such a good job at capturing the "truth" of a place, imagine how good of a job actual honest facts could do! Whenever I see a critic say something silly like that, mentally substitute "what I imagine the 'truth' of the place might be, sitting here in the comfort of my study" for "truth."
Posted by josh | February 18, 2005 3:23 PM
Posted on February 18, 2005 15:23
Making up facts is acceptable if the writer acknowledges that he is doing that, that he is not wrting non-fiction. But
to pass off invented meetings, conversations, and events as fact is deceptive and a cheat.
It's a cheat because because we seek different things from journalism and non-fiction than we do from
fiction. Non-fiction claims our attention first on the premise that it is factual, not made up. If it fails in that premise - no matter how much its claim to a greater truth -
it's unworthy.
I remember this issue rising years ago when the Canadian writer Farley Mowatt attempted to pass off as true accounts of wolves that were at least partially made up. Many people rushed to his defense, but I felt he was a fraud. I've occasionally read make-believe about animals (Black Beauty and Old Yeller come to mind) but that is different from reading make believe presented as if it were true. Mowat's stories were of no interest if they weren't factual.
Posted by eleanor | February 18, 2006 2:51 PM
Posted on February 18, 2006 14:51
i found shakeseare's biography of chatwin quite terrible. he trolls inexhaustibly for facts but misses the essence of the man
Posted by romila | June 21, 2006 6:17 AM
Posted on June 21, 2006 06:17