The Truth is in the Nonfiction, or is it?

I was browsing NPR’s website and glanced at this title: Does Lance Armstrong Have the Right to Lie in His Memoirs?

I had to click on it, and what I read got me thinking about our responsibilities as writers when it comes to telling the truth. Now, I know Lance Armstrong isn’t a writer – he’s a writer (ba bum bing!). I’m sure most of the words on the pages of Lance’s autobiography were penned by a ghost writer.

If you don’t want to read the short NPR blurb, I’ll give you an even shorter blurb: some people bought Lance’s books, found out he took ‘roids, and are mad about it. They want to sue because Lance’s book is full of steroid-related lies.

We’re familiar with unreliable narrators. Can we trust Scout to accurately relay the events of Macomb, Alabama? She is not only recalling events from a time long past but also through the rose-colored glasses of childhood. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator is insane. Can we truly rely on her account of what goes on in her yellow room? How about Benji’s part of The Sound and the Fury. As a mentally challenged narrator, Benji’s stories have no sense of time or space. He may begin with a tale from his childhood and jump to an even from his 33rd birthday without the audience’s knowledge. Do we trust that his narration is true?

Is that what Lance Armstrong is to us now? Do we have to read his autobiography with a grain of mental salt? Or should he and other nonfiction writers, if we can even call Lance’s autobiography nonfiction after recent allegations, be held to different standards?

I’m currently of two minds and trying to decide which side of the fence on which I should sit: On one hand, I think that anyone’s autobiography is going to be tainted by personal bias. Even if the author is doing his or her best to retell the story truthfully, odds are that it will lean towards the inaccurate anyway. Autobiographies kind of masquerade as nonfiction, don’t they? Few people will willingly paint themselves in a negative light on purpose. If you’re conceited enough to write an autobiography, you’re probably self-interested enough to protect your life story by avoiding all negative connotation. All ideas of journalistic truthfulness are thrown out the window when the subject of the piece and author are one in the same.

But, on the other hand, I believe strongly in the power of books. I question what I read on the internet constantly, but if I find material in a book I would never ever accuse it of being false or misleading. Even with a work of fiction I expect a book to have a semblance of truth – a prevailing theme or idea that is honest even if it’s a sci-fi fantasy that takes place in a parallel universe. The setting and characters may not be honest in that they don’t reflect real life, but their experiences, emotions and the novel’s core message are all rooted in a truth. For some reason, if I were to read this Lance Armstrong autobiography in which he claims to have never used performance-enhancing drugs, I would probably believe him. Because it’s written in a book. And books hold all power. Books don’t lie.

 

So, I guess, if I had to choose a side, I’d give all those readers their money back. I know it’s probably not practical or even fully legal legal, but it upholds a moral standard for all writers – write the truth; don’t intentionally deceive.