Wishful Truth-Telling

In an interview for the Paris Review, John Cheever once said that 'The telling of lies is a sort of sleight of hand that displays our deepest feelings about life': an opinion with which I'm inclined to agree.
Whilst a lie can often be mistaken as purely an act of deception and deceit, by fabricating the facts, a writer who lies is revealing a great deal more about themselves than could ever be achieved through a purely truthful account of reality.

And then of course, there is the matter of intentional lying versus misremembered facts. A infamous example of intentional fabrication can be found Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea, in which, under the pretence of a non-fiction account of his travels in Kashmir, Mortenson claims to have promised to build a school in repayment for the help he received when he became stuck during an ascent of the K2 mountain in the region. It has since come to light, that this claim and many other comments in Mortenson's book are no more than elaborate falsifications. However, whilst much of the truth presented in the book may appear to be no more than tall-tales, if as Cheever suggests, lying 'displays our deepest feelings about life' then we can perhaps at least gain some insight into what Mortenson would at least like to be the truth.

Perhaps therefore, a writer can inadvertently be at their most truthful when they're exercising the most deceit.

The Writer: An Artist or Their Art?

Do we, as a society, favour writers who we're familiar with and thus award them greater respect as artists? I for one, know I have often found myself to harbour an unnatural bias in favour of writers, and other figures of artistic merit who I've previously encountered, or as it were, I feel myself drawn towards familiar names and titles over those which I've not before heard of. That's not to say by any means that I feel my taste in literature, and the arts in general, is even remotely refined to the point of being so comprehensive that I have no need to discover new authors and artists. Nor does it necessarily mean that I inherently consider writers special or more credible as artists based on how I already perceive them, or what I previously know about them or their biography.

What is it then, that makes a writer special as an artist?

I'm sure for many people, a book is enjoyable regardless of what they know about the author, but for others it may be what they do know about the writer that influences their enjoyment of the text: or as Barthes put it in his celebrated essay, 'the sway of the Author remains strong'.

There's long been some speculation, for example, regarding whether the author of a certain collection of books concerning a girl who finds herself lost down a rabbit hole, ever possessed less-savoury thoughts about the girl on which the character in question is supposedly based.

Personally, the matter of a writer's personal life and biography are not something I try to let influence my enjoyment of a text and if possible I believe it's probably best to approach a text with no prior knowledge of the author so as to appreciate the text as it stands.