Story Truth

"Sometimes story truth is truer than happening truth." Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried.

Have you ever told a story or related an event to another person and discovered yourself bending the facts just a little? Have you stretched the truth to make the story end in a more interesting way? Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried raises these questions in such a compelling way that it makes the reader question the veracity of his/her own storytelling practices.


Ostensibly a book about the Vietnam War, TTC is also about the art of storytelling. In O'Brien's opinion, there are rules to telling good stories, one of the most important being to make the story interesting. In fact, he suggests, the story itself is often more important than the facts of the event at the heart of the story. This leads one to question O'Brien's storytelling tactics.


In interviews about the book, O'Brien has insisted the work is fictitious, yet he dedicates it to the men of Alpha Company, and names each one in the introduction. He does another thing to make the reader question his truthfulness. He openly admits to lying in several chapters. He states each event as factual then, contradicts himself in subsequent stories. How can a reader believe an author who admits to using a lie as a narrative technique--this is a rhetorical question, of course.

Personally, I think there's more truth here than he would like us to believe. He'd prefer readers to take the the book at face value and he'll probably never reveal just how much of it has been fabricated, but it's impossible to miss his literary sleight of hand. (Read the now-famous O'Brien interview (about the book) at:
http://www.wooster.edu/artfuldodge/interviews/obrien.htm )

Besides, O'Brien's theory is, readers are story lovers, and we'll accept most anything if the story is told well. Right? My theory is, we live such interesting lives, storied lives that seem to follow plots that aren't always clear to us, that we don't have to fabricate. It's the old notion that truth is stranger than fiction. We are a storied culture--we make sense out of life by casting events into fables, parables, short stories, poems and other literary forms. Most of us create stories out of the very events that comprise our everyday lives.

So, my guess (and I stand pretty much alone with this idea) is, O'Brien's story is grounded in more truth than he'd ever admit. The stories he tells in TTC are so powerful, they don't require fictionalization.

If you've read this book, I'd like to know what you think about it.


Tim O'Brien's website is at http://www.illyria.com/tobhp.html
Read

NY Times Book Review of O'Brien's book. http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/09/20/specials/obrien-carried.html?_r=1

What's So Important About Stories . . .

"People create stories create people; or rather stories create people create stories." Chinua Achebe


We love stories. We tell stories, read stories, listen to and watch them every day of our lives. Not just the big, majestic stories, like the ones we were assigned to read in literature class. We enjoy the stories about the hair stylist's fourteen year old granddaughter's arrest on charges of DUI.

More importantly, we tell stories about our own lives and, in the process of the telling, we create ourselves. Often, the stories we tell are based on the most mundane things, such as making morning coffee, getting the car inspected, or paying the mortgage. Not very exciting? Think about the morning you were making coffee and discovered you'd run out of hazelnut-cream and had to settle for that generic breakfast blend stuffed in the back of the refrigerator, behind the milk you meant to throw away two days ago. Didn't that get you started on the wrong track and didn't you yell at everyone who nudged in front of your car on the way to work? Hadn't the twinge in your head blossomed into a full headache by lunch? That's how an everyday event becomes a story.

Why do we prefer to convey life experiences in stories? We live in a storied culture. Some of our most cherished beliefs are shaped by ancient mythology, religious and political ideals, passed down to us in the form of stories. Granted, we aren't aren't mythical gods or goddesses, and most of have never met a prophet or apostle, but some of our life battles could make Odysseus rethink the notion of war. Thankfully, we live quieter lives, but we still have a penchant, a need for story on a daily basis.

Most of us begin the day with news from a local or national newspaper. Then, we tune into the weather channel for meteorological predictions (some of which seem more mythological than meteorological) on which we base our daily routines, read letters from family and friends, compose email messages (or blogs), partake in office gossip, listen to headlines and Hollywood gossip, and, with family and friends, share the stories that unfolded (partially or completely) during the day.

It's the process of constructing these stories about daily, weekly, monthly, or lifetime experiences that helps us to see connections between the menial and more dramatic events of our lives. Trying to turn life experiences into stories demands that we come to terms with them, even if in a linguistic way. As we select the details we want to share, we begin to incorporate these experiences into our concept of who we are and how others fit into our lives. As we give shape to stories about the unexpected and unpredictable, we begin to feel a sense of power. Although some insist that we have no real power over life, I believe we have the power to shape the stories that constitute our lived experiences. We have the power of selection over the stories to be told, over the emphasis we want to place on one event and the point of view from which the story is told. As we tell these stories, we gain some control by choosing sentences, phrases, ideas, concepts, questions to contain them. We do this as a process of trying to make sense out of them and, sometimes, inadvertently, create some meaning for ourselves. As we construct these stories we reveal ourselves, our character, whatever that may be.

As we tell stories, we create and re-create ourselves as characters in our daily lives. So, as Chinua Achebe suggests (strongly), we need to pay attention to stories to see who's doing the creating--the story or the person telling the story. What do you think?

Classroom Stories

One morning in the summer of 2006, I was preparing for composition class, thinking about the wonderful stories my students would be sharing during the next few weeks in the semester. A poem began to form in my mind and, as it did, I wrote, making several edits over the next few days. Finally, I submitted the poem, "Disclaimer (for english 015 students)" to Richard Hansen, publisher of "Poems for All," (http://www.sacfreepress.com/poems/) an interesting Sacramento-based publishing company that circulates poems in little chapbooks the size of matchstick covers. Here's my poem:

Disclaimer (for english 015 Students)

You won’t find this in the
course catalog, and it’s not
on the syllabus. But it’s best
to know. If you come into
my english classroom,
you’d better leave (T)ruth
at the door.
For it’s not (T)ruth but
something else we’ll study
this semester. I don’t deal
with (T)ruth in English class.
And I don’t give high marks
for (T)ruth, because I’ve been a
liar all my life.
Don’t come to me with
questions about page
length, number of sources,
or mis-spellings. This is not
the stuff of my classes.
In this room
we write stories.
About love, death, hope,
betrayal, lies and other
broken promises. Don’t bother
telling the dean your professor
tells lies. I’ll deny it. Besides,
it won’t help you much
in this class.
You’ve read my warning, so
if you still want to enter this class,
bring your memories, dreams,
questions. And leave all your
(True) stories
At the door.

The poem is a confession by a college composition instructor, who prefers content over form. Although I do evaluate students' written work on the usual standard requirements for language use and grammar, I tend to respond to the story told in the work they've submitted. That's because, in my opinion, it takes a lot of courage to tell good stories and when the story is good, I see and admire the writer's courage. And, don't take the word truth too literally here. It alludes to the sort of official truths being taught to students who have been overly eager to accept everything told them by authority. Learning is about questioning those truths and tuning into the process of self-discovery. My classroom supports that kind of learning.

But, back to the point about stories. Why would a teacher care about stories? Story often shapes the content of my courses (sometimes, in spite of my efforts to keep it out). Each semester, new students find their way into my classroom, find each other and me and we begin with a typical English class dialogue. That dialogue goes something like this: "How many pages, how many sources, can I use wikipedia as a source?" All important questions, I'll grant you, but not the most important ones.

The really big questions I hope to hear from students are about story. "Can I write this story, How should I write this story? Is this a good story?" When their questions settle down around story, we have a class and a class dialogue. We have the beginning of our class' story.