Wednesday, July 30: Tune It Or Die!
AND NOTHING BUT
by Rob Lopresti
A long time ago someone on an e-list I belonged to spread an old urban legend about a corporation. I don’t remember which one it was. Not the ancient claim that a well-known manufacturer of consumer products shares its profits with a Satanist church, but some story of that kind.
I happened to know that this story wasn’t true so I e-mailed the guy with evidence and sat back to bask in the satisfaction of a job well-done. Then the story-spreader astonished me with a reply.
He wrote: So what?
Does truth matter?
He said more than that, of course. He didn’t like corporations in general or that one in particular and, while he hadn’t intended to spread a lie that would hurt their reputation, it didn’t bother him a bit that that was what had occurred. So what?
I was taken aback. Come to think of it, I have no fondness for corporations in general or the specific one in question. Worse case scenario, the stock might drop a point or two. Who cares?
Well, I did. I still do. Because in my heart of hearts I believe that every unchallenged lie makes the world a little dumber, uglier, and more dangerous.
No soap, radio
There’s a show on National Public Radio on Saturdays called Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me. It’s a news quiz, and I enjoy most of it. But at some point each of the three panelists read an alleged news story and the contestant has to guess which one is true and which are made up.
When that part comes on I change the station. Because I know that in a few days I will remember whichever of those stories are the most interesting, but I won’t remember which one is true.
I’m not alone in that limitation. There was a recent study in which people were asked to guess whether certain statements were true or false. They were then told which were which. A few days later they remembered the statements, but not their veracity, or lack therefo.
And by the way, I can’t find that study on the web. So maybe I am remembering it wrong, or making it up. See what I mean?
Telling lies truthfully
So what does all this have to do with writing fiction? Well, fiction is a special, privileged kind of lie, because it admits that it is a lie. You, the reader, begin the reading experience by suspending disbelief, which means you agree to pretend to believe that which you know is untrue. If your brain is wired properly you will not believe that Sherlock Holmes really lived, even if it amuses you to go hang a plaque on Baker Street.
But I am currently writing a historical novel, a sequel to my first historical mystery, and each one is packed to the gills with real events and real people. I work very hard to make it clear which events and people are real, but it isn’t always clear. For example, one of the killings in my first novel really happened just as I described it, but since most people have never heard of it (or of the victim) they don’t always figure that out. That’s what author’s notes are for, I guess
But rumors on the Web don’t come with such notes. Too bad.
Sometimes we’re just on the same wavelength, aren’t we?
Great article!
Minutes before I read your column, I was pulling my hair out in TWO discussions in which the other parties are saying, “So what if it’s a lie?”
Logic sometimes doesn’t work.There’s got to be an easier way to deal with such situations.
I love the illustrations James chose for this column, especially the subtlety of the first one (it is the symbol that got the allegedly Satanic company in trouble).
Leigh says “Logic sometimes doesn’t work. There’s got to be an easier way to deal with such situations.” There is, Leigh, but as Pete Seeger wrote “you can’t kill all the unbelievers.”
Although it is common knowledge that Alexander the Great was a homosexual, there’s not a shred of evidence for its veracity. N. G. L. Hammond, a British scholar of ancient Greece who focused on ancient Macedonia, points out that the earliest written accounts of Alexander can be found in Cicero, written some 300 years after Alexander’s death. Cicero’s sources were the sparse records of Alexander’s reign kept by his scribes, none of which chronicled their leader’s sex life. Hammond addresses the “homosexuality thing” by writing that what we know is that thousands of men followed Alexander in his ten-year campaign of conquests, leaving their wives and families, to live and slaughter together. What they did to quell their sexual desires in a group of men can only be guessed at. We can at least say it was culturally abnormal. Alexander’s scribes may have pioneered the concept of “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”
The recent movie about Alexander gives him a wife and a young and hunky male lover, and there is historical fiction (by Edith Hamilton, I think) detailing long conversations between Alexander and a male consort. Maybe it’s true, but we can’t be as sure as we are about Rock Hudson and Liberace.
DH (dear husband, damn husband–whichever applies at the time) is a history buff. I have a hard time with historical info unless it is something “I” am interested in.
Years ago, we went to see Untouchables–the movie had barely started when he said, “It would have been nice if this was historically accurate.”
During Castaway he noted in one scene wheat doesn’t grow that time of year.
I of course, didn’t notice either and wanted to SCREAM who cares? I didn’t because that is important to him.
I hate those email things and always look it up because I am anal. I care. Some subject matter some may call a “lie” while others just see things differently. Politics, religion, and the nature of law come to mind. It’s all in the translation.
I am wondering these days about “truth in advertising”—I mean my border collie nearly died from Science Diet doggie food…..
Loved the article. Thought provoking.
All right, let’s get into those National Inquirer headlines, which face me weekly over the belt as I wait to pay more and more for my groceries. My two favorites are “Baby walks and talks at birth — doctors and nurses are surprised” and “Goat is raised eating only tan cans and rags.” The stories always come from some place like Saudi Arabia where no one could ever find the source.
Taking the wives and daughters of the defeated was a common practice and they may have had camp followers as have many armies throughout history.
The Sabine history may be pertinent here, not in the popularized legend but in Livy’s history when the Roman upstarts wanted women, they first negotiated with the Sabine fathers and then abducted their daughters.
The Spartan culture had a reputation for martial homosexuality and I was surprised recently to learn that part of German pre-WW-II brown-shirt leadership (possibly including Corporal Hitler himself) was raunchily homosexual before Hitler’s purge, the Night of the Long Knives.
I agree with Dr.Harris that Alexander’s alleged homosexuality is 21st century myth rather than a 4th century BC fact.
Thankfully we have snopes.com to turn to.
Great column. In fiction, we are in the market of falsehoods. But as you suggested, there is an unwritten contract between reader and writer that these “made up” characters and events are there for our entertainment and edification, and after we’ve wiped away the tear shed for our protagonist, we return to “real life” with the knowledge that we’ve been experiencing someone’s fantasy.
I’ve always said, “Never let facts get in the way of a good story.” But when the boundaries between history and fiction get muddied, I get nervous.
Wow! Thanks for a post that made my day! One must get period detail right whether the story is set in 1608 or 2008. Factchecking must be a major priority. Years ago here in Kansas an out-of-state interest group gushed about their meeting with Governor Finny and said he was a man who agreed with them and they needed more men like him. (Joan Finney wasn’t a man.) AND I’ve been to a taping of “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me.” And I remember paranoia about the symbol of the moon which would have been laughed at in 1908….
I agree that snopes.com deserves three hearty cheers.
Homosexuality is such a hot button topic that one hardly knows where to start. With anybody in the past, without a first person statement, or someone peeping through keyholes, how can we say what they were up to?
Lincoln shared a bed with his landlord for three years. Today the assumption would be obvious, but can we make the same assumption about people 150 years ago?
When the movie Braveheart came out a lot of people were outraged because Patrick McGoohan\’s character casually
tossed a gay man out a window, in a scene that provoked laughter in some audiences.
I thought that was missing the point. McG was the villain; he was supposed to do bad things. What they should have been outraged about is that the gay prince was played as a stereotypical swish when in reality his big suspicious habit was an interest in rural architecture (considered very weird in a royal person) and his one alleged lover was hated not because he was fond of pretty clothes but because he was a lower class upstart who could defeat any of the nobels at jousting or (as it turned out) in governing Ireland..
I haven’t seen the movie 300 but I understand it also made the heroes more straight and the bad guys more gay. Sigh…
End of speech. Sorry.
I haven’t seen the movie 300 but I understand it also made the heroes more straight and the bad guys more gay. Sigh…
I feel I should warn you…it is rather….naked and sweaty as well.