Well, I was going to write about Metallica's video for One but since Dominik completely stole my thunder I guess I'll have to go in a completely different direction with this post.
The idea of the "authenticity" of the autobiography really struck me. Maybe because as an autobiography we are led to believe that this is the most authentic account we could be getting. It is the author's personal story being told, through eye witness accounts. What else could be more authentic a story? Yet a few examples were brought up in class where we see that maybe we could be giving the author too much credit on this front. Or are we?
During the class discussion I was thinking about the word "authenticity" itself. For example, with Lauren Slaters "memoir" she wasn't trying to give us a word for word account of her childhood. She was trying to give us a glimpse into the mental state she was in during this time through a clever writing style. And I think she succeeded extremely well in doing so. So in her case, while Lying may not be considered an authentic memoir, it can be seen as an authentic portrait of a troubled childhood. She even explained at the end of the book that she had to fight with her editors over the genre the manuscript fit in. Fact or Fiction? They weren't sure, and I don't think she was completely sure either. Even though a perfect genre may not exist yet for Lying, I still think Slater's account was completely authentic in that she reached her intended goal. So while Bauby's memoir might not be completely true, I do believe it is authentic in that he was trying to show his readers the deep despair he was in, and what he made of it, something he completely succeeded at.
Ok somehow this post shifted towards Slater, to bring it back to Bauby I'll bring up another example of questionable authenticity. When John brought up the fact that the reader is distanced from the book because it was translated, I couldn't help but think of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude translated by Gregory Rabassa, who actually teaches at QC and spoke to one of my classes...which I unfortunately missed. But one thing that I was told about his speech was that he told the class how Marquez had said that Rabassa's translation was actually better than the original text. That completely blew my mind - One Hundred Years of Solitude is one of my favorite novels of all time and to think that this entire time I had been contributing this genius on the page to Marquez when it all might belong to the guy who took it from Spanish to English? So hard to wrap my mind around.
Now Bauby's book was technically translated twice, you could say. Who knows what each of these people added to the work? And if I was Bauby, in the condition that he was, basically writing my last will and testament, and I saw that this person who was helping me was actually helping me to the point where my prose was improved upon...I'm not sure if I would actually say anything, I might just let it happen.
Comments (1)
Who knows who was capable of writing the masterful piece, really?
I absolutely agree with you on the point that you make about Slater's and Bauby's "fiction." At face value, they might be questionable in terms of factual value, but in that questionability, there is an underlying truth, especially in where the "fiction" comes from. You may tell a completely different story about an event in your life, yet that story might better reveal your true feelings about it as opposed to if you just told it "as it was."
But then again, there is no such thing as an absolute truth in terms of certain facts, especially with personal accounts of situations. Eyewitness accounts. Radiolab says this best: the mind is not a filing cabinet for memories; it constantly recreates and rebuilds memories, and each form of the memory differs with its reincarnation, if you will, depending on what you do remember and what your imagination is willing to fill in. So we might even be lying for what we think is the truth, the lie that we don't even know we're telling.
That's the beauty of memoir, and something that Slater brings to light, which is also one of the issues with intentionality in Bauby's piece.
Posted by Rebecca | December 11, 2007 5:24 PM
Posted on December 11, 2007 17:24