There are at present several interesting debates going on in the literary world over "fact" and "fiction". Most of you have heard the uproar over James Frey fabricating a great deal of his "autobiography" titled A Million Little Pieces. It wasn't even a case of faulty memory, or others disagreeing with his interpretation of events that's not that uncommon in life stories. After all, an autobiography is defined as the story of a person's life written by that person and is open to the interpretation of events by said person. Mr Frey's transgressions do not fall in that category. He simply made up large portions of his 'life story' to make his book more exciting or possibly to get a better movie deal. That's where he crosses the line. "A literary work based on imagination and not necessarily on fact" is the definition of fiction. There's a reason we have these designations. It's so we know how to process the information we are taking in.
In another example, there is the blurring of lines between fact and fiction in the book "The DaVinci Code". This book's basic story line is taken from an historical legend that has been proven false on more than one occasion by historians, but because the figures in the book really lived in history and many of the events are historically accurate, quite a few people assume that Mr. Brown is presenting truth. He is not.
Mr. Brown and his publisher are now being sued by yet other authors claiming he has stolen their story. I'm not completely familiar with the totality of their suit, but it seems weak to sue simply because someone else wrote a book about the same subject as you did. Just because two people write a story about Abraham Lincoln doesn't mean one stole the other's idea. But I digress.
This blurring of truth and fiction is especially evident in movies. It is a well known fact that Oliver Stone played fast and loose with historical events in his movie "JKF". But since many people "saw" the events played out in the theater in Mr. Stone's version, they believed it to be the truth of what "actually happened".
We are in the midst of a bio-pic craze now as well. With the stories of Johnny Cash and Ray Charles winning big awards in Hollywood, expect many more. I also want you to expect to take them with a grain of salt. Movies are made to keep your attention for the duration. A well-lived life is often not all that entertaining. Would you sit for two hours and watch a movie with an average family going about an average life with no crime, illicit affairs, drug addictions, or hilarious precocious children? Of course not. It's boring, it's average. That's my point. They have to play it up to make money. Remember that.
So back to truth or fiction. We can't make excuses for James Frey. He lied. He should have said his book was a work of fiction based on his life or something like that. If truth can be restated just to be "better" it's no longer truth, it's fiction. It's how we know what and who to trust. We can't have it any other way.
