Fiction, History and Truth

I'm beginning with a quote in a book that I found on a L'abri bookshelf in Switzerland, called "A Short Story Writer's Companion." Written by Tom Bailey in affiliation with the University of Iowa's Writer's Workshop, it seemed a bit funny to travel all the way to Switzerland to retrieve a book from the school in which I was already studying. This is what he opens with:

"Fiction is a lie" Eudora Wlty reveals to us in her essay "Place in Fiction," and we're forced to admit it's true. It was Picasso who said, "Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth." (It is worth noting here that though this idea that fition is a lie is a much-used and generally accepted notion we don't mean lie in terms of a deception, usually with bad intent. A mentor of mine believed strongly in fiction as a construction that attempts to reaveal the truth of humanness. Of course, there is fiction that does lie, "fiction which disguises and distorts the nature of human experience. Fiction that lies is not the same as fiction being a lie."

I then went on to read a couple critiques of the post-modernist approach to history. As far as I can summerize, Post-modernists generally posit that any kind of "truth" in historical occurrence, particularly in the recording of history for future readers, doesn't exist because the events are so narrowly confined to the testimony of a single person. They're highly suspicious of the gathering of events in to a historical account chosen by the subjective and fallible human brain. History is simply "inventing meaning" by arranging a certain series of events. Post-modernists would say that discussing the "real" is impossible because the world is filtered with limited and human intelligence. In response Ian W. Provan and Greg Laughey take a position, which was new to me in terminology, called Hermeneutical Realism. They critique the danger of denying reality and thus removing moral obligation that comes with accepting that certain consequences are linked to particular actions. They instead suggest "epistemological openness" which would be the "exercise of controlling the intelligence (as in data) of testimony we receive with neither blind faith nor radical suspicion." They place testimony (story telling/narrative) and interpretation as central components of history making, acknowledging that though events have been subjectivity aligned, that particular testimony holds a resonance that falls somewhere in either far or close proximity to that oh-so-indecipherable truth of what is and was. With the world in relation to itself, some things can indeed be more or less true and thus certain historical accounts can be closer to the truth than others.

When I started writing this blog a week ago, this all seemed wonderfully relevant and now I can't recall at all why I felt like sharing any of this. If I wanted to do any of what I read justice it would require way more work and time than I currently care to give for a blog and I'm even feeling less obliged to make the verbal connect for you of why the quote on fiction seems to have everything to do with history, truth and reality. I think I was pleased about all this because I'm assured by the world making sense at least within its own system of inter-relating symbols, values, linguistic codes and its a reminder of how ordered the world can be and within this self context allows for certain certainties. I realize that an existentialist would dismiss this as complacency with my limitations... but I guess that's what it is. :) Anyway, since truth can't be hit upon finitely, narrative and prose win out, and I would even laud them as one of the best forms for us to discover what is beautiful and true. This is all the more reason to read good literature because the words can entwine and mold (perhaps in both senses haha) your brain until you slowly perceive a new layer of what it means to be human. So today, on this blowing jour de gris, I have here beside me "Lolita" by Nabakov and "Candide" en les deux langues. These are my choices, not out of any particular predilection or knowledge of these books, but because they were some of the few English titles that I recognized at the bookshop. I'm very pleased with how I get to spend my day: my bed (yes! see bellow photo- very little has changed!), my books and an eye on the sky.