The Mind’s Lie
A man and his pregnant wife got into a heated argument. The man stormed out. His story is that he went to the bar to cool down. When he returned home 45 minutes later, his home had been burgled and his wife had been beaten to within an inch of her life. Their baby didn’t survive the attack. When questioned at the hospital, the wife told the police that her husband was the one who attacked her. He was arrested and sent to Alcatraz with a life sentence. The couple divorced. She moved on and eventually remarried.
Decades later, a man convicted of several other home invasions and subsequent murders in the same area and at the same time of this couple’s tragedy learned that a fellow marine was doing time for a crime that he committed. Knowing nothing would change his future behind bars, the bonds of martial brotherhood compelled the real attacker to come forward and to set the record straight.
The husband’s conviction was overturned. He was given monetary restitution for the false imprisonment, but nothing could change the years his now ex-wife spent believing he murdered their baby and nearly killed her. (Never mind that nothing would change the time he or the family he lost.)
I remember watching this story on one of the true crime networks years ago. When I teach memoir, this is a story I love to recount to my students because it goes to show how deceptive and subjective our memories are. In fact, I may be remembering facts from the case incorrectly; I only saw the episode once, but the major facts…I do believe I have correct overall.
Why Memories Tell Sweet Little Lies
Experts believe the reason the wife didn’t accurately recall who attacked her is because one of the last things she remembers before being attacked is fighting with her husband. As humans, our brains are hardwired to fill in the blanks of a story. The trauma of the attack possibly erased the truth in her mind forcing her mind to make logical connections and to fill in the blanks so much so that she believed the falsehood and actively pursued putting the man she once wanted to spend her life with behind bars for the remainder of his.
We Also Kinda Don’t Want to Know the Truth (Because the Truth Sucks)
Mary Karr in her brilliant book The Art of Memoir writes of her friend David Carr “tried to track down the facts about his most deranged coke-fiend years in The Night of the Gun”. She writes, “The high-light concerns a faceoff with a gun-toting maniac in an alley. The big reversal? It turns out Carr was the maniac wagging the gun.”
Needless to say, this scares the bejeebus out of me because after drinking my way through complex grief in early widowhood—the final months of 2019, and the first five of 2020—I feel sure that my memories are spotty at best and whatever narrative my psyche constructed so I could move forward with life without melting into a puddle of shame and regret are probably candy-colored lies. So, while I didn’t project wagging a gun at others onto a maniacal stranger (talk about an out-of-body experience!), I feel sure I was a terror in many stories where I only see myself as a victim (my husband died for Christ’s sake…pass the Jameson) and not an unholy terror.
I digress. My point is this my truth has become whatever I believe happened. Without recordings or a more reliable source of information or participant in events, I cannot say that what I said or did was what actually happened.
Can It Be True if It Didn’t Actually Happen?
Were I to write my memories as I remembered them, would I be lying or telling the truth? Would David Carr, had he not investigated those drug-fueled years by interviewing others who were there, have been lying if he recalled with absolute conviction that the maniac with the gun was a random stranger?
I’m willing to argue that no he wouldn’t have been lying; however, that said, we have a responsibility to try to figure out “what happened” to as great of an extent as possible. In other words, if there were other people present for my drunken escapades, then I should—painfully and humiliating though it might be—interview them to try to figure out what actually happened.
At the very least, I would need to admit to my intoxication in the scenes, which means that the reader is entering the watery “truth” of a drunk’s memories, which should be taken with a grain of salt (followed by a shot of tequila with lime for good measure).
The Essence of Truth in Memoir
While Mary Karr goes into so much more detail in her book, the essence of truth in memoir is the author’s commitment to representing events, feelings, experiences, etc. as authentically as possible by having conducted research in the forms of interviews, video and photo review, journal readings, and even therapy in order to construct a realistic portrait of people in specific times in their lives.
I agree with Karr that nuances are less important than actual events. For example, if you can’t remember if Cheryl’s dress was black or white or if it was even a dress is immaterial. If you can’t remember exactly what Hugh said to Frank isn’t a big deal. It is a big deal, though, to be able to recount what happened.
Equally, a true memoirist will not construct falsehoods nor will they embellish the truth. In other words, if Hugh shoved Frank but the author writes that Hugh decked Frank who knocked over the China cabinet as he staggered backward, blood dripping from his lip, the memoirist is not writing truth.
When I teach memoir, I adhere to this most simplistic principle: write what you know and believe to be true. Do your best to clear up questionable memories, but don’t over-construct or try to reconstruct too rigidly when and if you cannot recall. Be willing to doubt your own memories (they’re usually incorrect) and be willing to discover the truth, and only ever write that which you believe in your knowing to be true to your story.
For more on truth in memoir, read Mary Karr’s The Art of Memoir. If you have read it, let me know your thoughts on telling the truth in memoir.
Until next time,
peace, love, and prose