The Stories We Tell

It's ironic. I finished writing my thesis, swore I would never speak to Orlando again, and now find myself pondering some of the same questions it forced me to ask.

Namely, who has the right to tell someone else's story, and to what end?

I've been stuck on a particular passage from Dave Eggers' Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. I won't repeat it in full, but a few lines stand out. Out of context, this may not make much sense, but the novel is something like a metafictional fictionalized autobiography, if that helps.

Okay, continue.

"We're not talking about me."

"Yes we are, of course we are. We always are. In one way or another, we always are. Isn't that obvious? ... I mean, how much do you really care about me, outside of my usefulness as some kind of cautionary tale, a stand-in for someone else, for your dad, for these people who disappoint you ... I'm just another one of the people whose tragedies you felt fit into the overall message. ... But see, you cannot move real people around like this, twist their arms and legs, position them, dress them, make them talk--"

"We are all feeding from each other, all the time, every day."

"No."

"Yes. That's what we do, as people." (423-5)

Telling someone else's story and making it part of your own seems natural. Sometimes, with permission and in context, it can do a lot of good. But I think the temptation, for writers as well as storytellers, is to use people as characters and fit them into a narrative of our own design.

I know I do that.

Without getting too Derridean for a Thursday morning, I think there's some truth in saying that every testimony carries the possibility of fiction. Being aware of that propensity -- call it exaggeration, manipulation, embellishment, what you will -- shouldn't stop us from making sense of events and relationships or sharing experiences, but I think it does require a pause, a second thought to consider the effects of our storytelling on the real people whose stories we tell.