The many different faces of journalism

Besides reading Undressing Victoria by Erika Vidal and feeling real down about my upcoming English degree and wondering, Will I too be working at a place that I never really expected myself to be at? Like a person sitting on the cold concrete ground of Grand Central Station playing the guitar badly and asking for change and to get even more change, will perform a Britney Spears choice of dance?

Yeah, besides that sharp feeling digging into my mind, the piece made me realize what literary journalism looks like. Or at least, how some might write it.

Stripped for Parts by Jennifer Kahn presented literary journalism as a piece that introduces you to the world of organ transplants. She opens her piece with a hook that makes the reader want to read on. The television playing a reality television show in the dead man’s room. The color of the dead man’s skin. The twitch the foot makes when it’s scratched. It pulls the reader in who would not nearly read about organ transplants. But that’s the thing, isn’t it? Kahn doesn’t tell the reader that she will be writing about organ transplants until the third paragraph and it feels like a good right jab in the face. The reader was reading along, probably believing they were about to read an interesting story (which it was, but still) about dead persons and how they got that way.

In the news journalistic examples we get from newspapers across the country, the journalist has to state their purpose of their article in the beginning few sentences, they can not string along the reader for as long as Kahn displayed in her piece.

Vidal’s piece is 98% story and 2% fact. She fills the piece with her personal feelings and her experience about going on a job interview at Victoria’s Secret. The first person usage of ‘I’ is of course present and of course, such a thing will not be seen in a news journalism piece. The reporters report what they see and use their words to create an atmosphere for the piece. In what I’ve read so far about literary journalism, it seems as though the author’s use their words to tell how they feel. Kahn used her piece to almost slant the reader’s thoughts about organ transplants and Vidal decides to take a look at the backstage workings of retail giant, Victoria Secret.

The difference between a memoirs and personal essays is that literary journalism offers facts. Somewhere in the piece will be some form of fact and research. In memoirs and personal essays, such things might be omitted.

Truthiness is Everywhere

The memoir I’m writing focuses upon the subject of depression and mental institutions. A big chunk of it will be about my arrival to the hospital and what occurred afterward: my deployment into the psychiatric ward and what happens there. I decided to focus mostly upon the days I spent there. What I did. How I was treated. How the food was. And maybe an appearance of a “colorful mixture of vomit” done by my roommate. The only thing I see in my writing that could be taken as maybe untrue would be the dialogue. Each person that spoke to me said almost the same words, but I’m positive it isn’t word for word – my memory isn’t that good. I have phrases floating around in my mind, but I connected them to make them sound more appealing. Is that fabrication? I remember my brother talking about the Turkey sandwiches and the 40 year old man stalking the hallways and the nurse telling me to swallow the charcoal in big gulps, but don’t remember their statements word for word.

The way my memoir goes is just a boring stay at the mental institution. I had my journal with me at the time and I documented most things that happened. Just not word by word sayings that people said to me throughout the day. I remember the waiting and doing nothing. On Sunday’s it was quiet – no groups to go through and all we did was either wait in our rooms, watch television, talk to whoever on the phones, wait for cigarette break, or play cards. I learned how to play Hearts there.

This all happened three months ago. Things are getting a bit fuzzy around the edges. I’m forgetting people names and some of the situations that happened. Or maybe I wanted to forget. That’s what happens to me sometimes. The memories that I want to forget drip away to the point where I think “Did that really happen?” Those memories I try to go around writing about. But sometimes, they slip in.

What I have so far doesn’t seem to include those memories. I remember them concretely. I see my roommate’s matted hair and dazed eyes. The boy’s 25 or so cuts that line the inside of his right arm. The Spanish language darting from one mouth to the other. The book Dry by Augusten Burroughs I read while being there. The art class and Amy. The woman who always carried a bag stuffed with her belongings everywhere with her. The woman that had a drug problem and had her two little ones taken from her. But I might not write about those people.

Memory Memory oh sweet Memory

I believed that memory envy was something that the author themselves believed to be true, but it isn't. If I believe that I fell down a flight of stairs and broke all the bones in my right hand due to my cousin "accidentally" pushing me, then to me, that is the truth. Of course, my cousin could refute such statements in a court of law when I sue for assault, but since this is my memory as I believed it to have happened, it’s true to me.

Binjamin Wilkomirski in his novel, Fragments, believed that he was a child of the Holocaust. He fully believed that he lived through the horrors and was directly affected by such events. Is he a liar? Well…no. Not really.

He didn’t purposely tell lies in his memoir – he believed what he wrote. His memory instead played tricks on him to the point that it made him believe that he went through events that he never did.

Everyone has memories. Everyone remembers things differently from others. If you have a group of people watch a robbery, surely you’ll get many different reports of what happened and how the robber looked like. Hell, even when 9/11 happened, you had reports of people stating that it was a helicopter or a small plane that crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center when in fact it was a Boeing 767 – a huge plane that should not have been mistaken for such small aircrafts.

The memory is such a tricky place, but can one be held accountable for things they thought was true, but in the end, found that it wasn’t? I myself, will say no – but how can you prove that the person wasn’t just lying and fell back on that defense: “I believed it to happen.” How can you really know the truth?

If you're going to lie, please, please, PLEASE do not involve the police

Oy, practically wrote my blog in Matt's comments. Took a look at it and said, "Hey, that'll make a good blog entry!" And so here it is. With as much truth as possible.

"Lying became part of my life." James Frey, A Million Little Pieces

Oh Mr. James Frey, how true you are to those words.

The line between truthiness (thank you, Stephen Colbert!) and non-truthiness in memoirs and personal essays are a thin, thin line. Sometimes, that line is downright blurry.

If you write about an event in which only you have witness too and no one else to back it up, what's stopping the author to embellish a bit, or maybe lying to boost up a point for entertainment?

You know what it is? The author's conscience. If you don't feel bad about lying a bit here and there (aka James Frey) then you will have no problems publishing those non-truths. Or maybe you will, but if those non-truths make your book the #1 book on the New York Times Bestsellers Booklist and that equates money, maybe those bad feelings will melt away.

James Frey not only embellished, he straight out made things up. The Smoking Gun reported that he tried to ship his manuscript as fiction first and as it all boils down, it turns out half of his words were fictions. The funny thing is, if he didn't go on Oprah, this probably would have never went down.

But still, it seems like the reader doesn't want the truth after all. Even after the blow up with Frey, A Million Little Pieces still remainded in the top 10 (even #1) on the New York Times Best Selling List for the Nonfiction Paperback editions. Heck, right at this moment, it's #25. I won't lie, I even bought the book when this was going down to see what the whole brouhaha was all about. Frey is a good writer - very good writer and even though I read his work as fiction, I still enjoyed it. Sometimes, bad press = MONEY and FAME. Hell, Hugo Chavez could even sell books for Noam Chomsky (as witnessed by the Amazon.com and Chomsky's #1 position on it at the time) after calling President George Bush an idiot and insane in the membrane. This society almost thirsts for controversy and having Ms. Queen Bee Oprah use Frey as a whipping post made more money in his pockets.

But the worst thing about this entire situation? Frey had followers who were in his situation and thought that he could make it, so can they. He even gave talks and according to TMS, people had tattoos of 'Hang On' - Frey's belief saying in his book - printed on their bodies and shirts made up. If Frey lied about his recovery, he let down all those people that believed in him.

On the notion of changing individuals names in books, I’m all for it. If I write the truth about Bad Times with certain people and don’t want to get sued by those certain people, the smart thing to do would be to change the names and probably change characteristics so those people who I’m writing about don’t certainly know that I’m writing about them. Now, making up whole situations and basically lying, not so smart a thing to do.

The major thing I learned while watching the James Frey public dogging unfold was that it’s wrong to lie in your memoir – especially if you’re going to involve anything that leaves a paper trail like old police records. And to take assloads of cocaine. And to go to Jail. But right now, Mr. Frey is lying up in his multi-million dollar apartment in Manhattan just laughing all the way to his fabulous bank.

And for your viewing pleasure, the origins of the word 'Truthiness' as demostrated by Stephen Colbert:

Brainstorming for Memoir

I wanted to focus upon the day that I realized that Santa Claus did not exist. Like any other kid on the block, I believed that a guy with a beard broke into my house with a knapsack of all the presents I ever wanted for that year and didn't make one sound while placing said presents around our 7 foot tree.

Even if Santa rounded my family up and tied us up underneath the multi-sparkling Christmas tree, I wouldn't have minded as long as he had my Polly Pocket house set all wrapped up with a pink bow.

I used to have these dreams about going to the North Pole, getting a job as a toy maker and work side by side with Santa Claus himself. I can imagine making (or not-so-making) toys and maybe get a cut from Santa. Like every 10 toys I made, I get 2. Or something. Hey! I deserved it - I was a super, super duper good girl that year, you know. Or you don't - in which you, well, don't. Just take my word for it.

I want this memoir to be a picker-upper than the personal essay I wrote, so I decided to focus upon something lighter from my childhood.

Freewriting to the Space Beyond

With this personal essay I wanted to focus upon my struggle with depression. Everything came to head this past Summer (and well, Spring and last Fall) and I'm trying to develop an essay that makes my point known. I think that I might also try to make the essay a bit more personal - about why I feel depressed and how I figured it all out. By looking at the autopsy, it ticked something in me that I really didn't realize. I didn't mind being dead and seeing the human body laid out like that - so, so very dead made me realize it even more. I'm going to bring that particular focus to a sharper point in the essay (or at least try to)

I'm not exactly sure who my audience is yet. I'm thinking along the lines of mental health. My experience with depression should fit well with that particular audience. But, I also want to find an audience that is outside that field. I think the essay could fit into an anthology of memoris/personal essays and do well.

Mimi Schwartz - My Father Always Said

Mimi Schwartz's memoir piece, "What Father Always Said" is about the clashing of two different cultures. The one that was way back when in a German town. The other in the present in Queens, New York.

Schwartz's memoir is split in six pieces.

The first piece introduces her father to the audience and his favorite line is, "In Rindheim, you didn't do such things!" We as a reader recognize that the father compares and contrasts the two very different cultures quite frequently. But as a young girl, Schwartz didn't seem to care about Rindheim or what they did there.

The second part is when the father finally gets to introduce his homeland to his American born daughter. On viewing the place where her father grew up, she denounces him a hick, but at least admits that her father's home town was prettier than Queens. When getting the chance of seeing inside the walls of the house her father grew up in, he bows out which is suspicious from a man who wants to share so much of his past history with his daughter. Later in life, the daughter does some comparing and contrasting herself with the realization that Asians are beginning to fill little Rindheim just like Forrest Hills, Queens. They’re more alike than her father realized.

The third part reveals that Schwartz’s father doesn’t necessarily wants to reveal everything about his homeland. It seems like he doesn’t what to relive all the horrors and tragedy his town suffered, but instead wants to remember all the wonderfulness he grew up with. And even when he was pushed by Schwartz to tell a story from back then (the Kristallnacht story for example).

The fourth part focuses on the school her father went to and talks of when her parents dated. The school was split into two - the Jewish had the first floor and only one teacher and the Christians had two floors and more teachers. Even though the father said that everyone got along, it probably wasn't true. This is the one time during her retelling of the story that things are relaxed and playful.

The fifth part is wrapped around the cemetery. Schwartz sees the places where her grandmother, grandfather, great grandfather and great great grandfather are buried. She can’t get a hold of who they were just by staring at their gravestones. She could only envision her living grandparents. But by placing rocks on the gravestones she realizes something. “Some connection had been made, he knew, the one he had run from and returned to, the one I resisted even as I lay stones” (Schwartz 221). She also connects to all the young lives lost in the cemetery to the life lost of her older sister. She also learns more about her family in the form of Aunt Rosa who was deported to a concentration camp where she died. But still, Schwartz doesn’t fully imagine all the death and mayhem – she only imagines the roles of actors and actresses portraying the people killed.

The sixth and final part describes how her father loses his favorite line of “In Rindheim, we didn’t do such things.” He instead tells his daughter that she should be happy that she’s in America whenever she’s sad. He doesn’t try to persuade her with talks of his homeland and the magical power it once held. He seems to not like to mention the town anymore than he has to. The town has lost its magic, as Schwartz noted.

Schwartz writes of a childhood spent in America with her father constantly telling her about his homeland and how wonderful it was. By taking her to Rindheim, all the memories rush back and by seeing the bombed out buildings and etchings of German marked on churches, he himself realizes that his fantastic little homeland isn’t what he imagined it still to be. He always told his children that Queens was so very different from Rindheim, but in the end, they were almost alike. But she also learned that it’s a treasure to learn your history and see what your parents have been through to make sure their family was safe.

By separating the memoir into six sections, we get a feel for who the father is. In the first piece, we see a father who is stern and flummoxed by his children and their behavior, comparing it to the children of his home town. The second piece shows a man that loses some of his tough exterior when faced with going into his own family home. And still yet, that unsureness is shown yet again when the father doesn’t want to delve into farther than necessary to explain certain parts of what happened in Rindheim. This memoir, to me, shows a man who was once so proud of his city to the end where he doesn’t mention it that much to his children. By stepping foot back into this city, he realized that everything great about it, wasn’t truly great at all – it was all ruined. He believed that everyone in his town did everything right, but realizes that they didn’t. No one is ever perfect, and neither was his town. Especially not a town that let their own citizens be deported to concentration camps so they could die there.

The father knocks down his timid walls about America and immerses himself with golf and with friends who never even heard about his city. His mouth doesn’t hardly speak of his once highly placed city. He seems to forget.