Truth In Memoir
To me a memoir has to be almost 100% accurate, with a few exceptions here and there. If a few minor details are changed or left out i'm okay with that, but when the author puts themselves in situations that never happened to them, then I have a problem. Especially when that situation is serious like a car crash or death of a person.
Half-truths are okay if you tell the reader that some of the details in the story were altered to make the story more interesting. There not okay when you claim these things actually did happened to you when really they did not. If they bend the truth but still claim it actually happened then its not okay.
I think David Shields idea is interesting however I still think we need genre labels like fiction and non-fiction. There will always be people who want the hard facts, and people who just want to hear a good story. Having non-fiction and fiction helps people determine what they want so getting rid of these labels seems rather pointless.
No comments:
Post a Comment