How Do You Define Fact?

At first, one would think this trompe l'oeil mural at Oakland Children's Hospital is the real thing. But the idea is to give stressed parents and their kids a brief mental escape from the reality of illness.

In the art world, trompe l'oeil murals are designed to fool the eyes into thinking they are seeing something that isn't there. It can make windows appear on a bricked up building, generate a more scenic view, or even frighten the viewer into thinking the building is about to collapse. At first glance, trompe l'oeil can seem very real unless it has been designed to create a fantastic world that cannot possibly exist. We tend to excuse trompe l'oeil as "art" and accept what it tells us.

This trompe l'oeil mural on a wall in a run down neighborhood makes perception look like reality.

However, when it comes to employing the written word to generate a possible world via narrative nonfiction, purists tend to be dismissive. They contend that there is no way of knowing who said what to whom, what someone was wearing, or what their emotions were at the time. I believe that creative biographies give the reader the sense of a time, place, event and person that an academic work cannot. Let me explain.

This 1924 portrait of Edna St. Vincent Millay by her brother-in-law Charles Ellis (1893-1976) is in the National Portrait Gallery. But photos taken of Millay at that time do not look like this. Which image is truer? The one painted by an intimate family member or a staged photo for a magazine?

I could have written Young Vincent as a standard biography. It's simple if one is willing to do the research about a person. But then I would have been competing with the dozen or so biographies of the poet, playwright, satirist and activist written by people who are more famous and well-connected than I am. I would have also lost well over half my potential audience. Lastly, it would not have been as much fun.

This is a close up from a picture taken in 1923 when Millay went to Washington, D.C. to present the Women's Magna Carta to the president. As you can see, she looked less blond, less tense and her eyebrows are quite different than in the painting by her brother-in-law. Which of the two pictures are more realistic? I say both. It depends on the day and the observer.

I have studied Millay for 58 years. I have met her sister, lovers, friends and world-renowned experts on the poet. My award-winning and very academic master's thesis was on Edmund Wilson's relationship with Millay, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Mary McCarthy. Consequently, I know how to research and provide proof of an argument in an academic way.

But people are usually measured by their day-to-day lives. How were they with friends? How were they with family members? How easy were they to work with? Were they truthful, kind, thoughtful, talented, stressed and funny? The only way to truly capture a person's humor is to set the stage for the joke. A humorist does not start with the punchline. She starts with the set up. To me, that's what narrative nonfiction does. It allows the reader to spend moment inside the subject's head before revealing the final act.

For example, most people say, "Good morning," when greeting their housemate at the start of the day. Do I know for sure that Millay said, "Good morning" to her husband? No. But it's an educated guess that allows the reader to imagine themselves greeting her with a "good morning," and get a sense of what it must have been like when no one was around to greet them back because everyone has woken up and said "Good morning" to someone and knows what it would feel like to get no reply.

If I take a letter that says something like, "It hurt me when you told me the other day that you didn't think I could translate Baudelaire," then take the letter in reply that says, "I never said you couldn't translate Baudelaire. I just just it would be very difficult," I have two options for how to handle it. I can say, "George said this in a letter and Edna told him he misunderstood in her reply." This way I have taken most of the potential drama out of it but I've been 100% academically truthful. Or I could create a face-to-face conversation replete with "stubbing out her cigarette" and "He turned his head away and grimaced" and other likely actions because I know she smoked heavily and letters mention grimacing. Yes, that's not 100% factual. It was an exchange of letters, not a face-to-face meeting. I get that. But I also know that there's a certain pleasure that comes with feeling like you're a fly on the wall watching two people argue. It helps the reader see both points of view and thus get to know the characters. My feeling is I am inviting a deeper look into my subject if the portrayal is about 94% accurate but puts the reader in the action.

Put another way, think about your own family. Do you all agree about what Uncle Bob said about Aunt Mary's pie last Thanksgiving? Probably not. If you were sitting looking directly at Uncle Bob and he said, "Nice pie, Mary," but was making a face like he hated it, you'd remember the scene quite differently than sister Louise who was wiping her daughter's nose and only heard, "Nice pie, Mary." Perspectives differ and so do the impressions of a person or event.

A case in point: Looking at the painting above, would you think Edna St. Vincent Millay had a great sense of humor? I doubt it. Some of her personality is captured in the photograph below the painting, but because it depicts a solemn occasion there's not much humor. But when you read her satires, or see photos of her laughing with friends in her swimming pool, you know for certain she had a wonderful funny bone. Besides, how would academic describe how swimming felt unless he assumed everyone had the same experience he had?

Whether you call it narrative nonfiction, historic fiction or creative biography, works that invite the reader into a subject's life are more fun to read. So what if it was a letter and not a face-to-face conversation. If the author can back up the gist of what happened the precise communication vehicle and wording is moot. Letter or conversation, the fact is the subject of a book communicated his or her feelings, impressions and ideas. That's the only way we can understand what happened and why. Since no films or recordings exist of the face-to-face conversations Millay had with George Dillon, we will never know if she stubbed out her cigarette or he made a face. What we do know is what our own life experience has taught us. Smokers stub out their cigarettes and people make faces when they are disappointed or displeased. Like the old television show, "You Are There" a work of creative biography like Young Vincent or my latest and unpublished A Ghost In Marble can only guess exactly what was said and how, but it does give the viewer basic facts. (For the young folks who don't know about this show, here's a link.)

On August 1 at 11 a.m. you can discuss this with me and let me know where you think the line between fact and fiction is. Let's talk!