| Thursday, April 26, 2007 10:16AM | | | | History and The Truth of Fiction | Posted By: victoria redel
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| Tags: Jamin , Monso, LaLami, Wallner, History and the Truth of Fiction |
Four novelists-Arthur Japin, Laila Lalami, Michael Wallner and Imma Monso-took on the question of their relationship to historical and personal events. Colum McCann moderated the panel with wit and generosity. Of the four I was only familiar with the work Laila LaLami's fiction (Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits) so it was treat to be introduced to three new writers-Japin from The Netherlands , Wallner from Germany and Monso from Spain. This panel was one I was really excited to attend because it twined most specifically with questions with which I've been grappling in the novel I've just published The Border of Truth. The novel is both based on a refugee/ship situation in 1940. My father was aboard the "real" ship and one of the central character's journey from Brussels is based on my father's. I've always been interested in playing the boundary of real world and fictional world-invented and historical characters inhabiting the same text. In McCann's introduction he delivered the quote: "The Real is as imagined as the Imaginary." Though the quote was just floated out there-- I think it was central to the entire discussion.
Each of the writers had wonderful things to say as they grappled with the demands (ethical, personal, political) of their own work. Ultimately it seemed that what was really being discussed is something essential to all writing - the necessity to imagine character and to feel deeply the limitations and possibilities (social, political, physical, emotional) that shape action and necessity for the character. Since this is fundamental to all great fiction--maybe what wasn't said is that any writer engages with history-- be it current or at some distance. What was also made clear is that the writer moves toward subject because there is a known or unknown connection that provokes the self.
Monso (who struggled valiantly with her English) spoke about the turn to the autobiographical, claiming that everything in her current novel was fact. She described how struggling with grief she began keeping a journal and at some point felt the return to the pleasure of language. it was at that point when an engagement with language occurred that she realized that she had leaped from the diary to this recent novel of grief.
McCann asked the question: is there something you wouldn't write?-a place, a character that is wrong or impossible to enter? Japin discussed the conflict between the writer's desire to go for what is "right" or "useful" for the text and a sense that some choices are not correct for him to "use". Wallner and LaLami claimed there was no subject matter that they wouldn't enter if it felt essential for them as writers. But the question of how writers make use of the "facts" of those personally close to them (referring to Monso's novel) lead to an interesting discussion. For some on the panel it seemed that the "closer" their actual proximity to the character the less comfortable they were to making the selections and characterizations involved in the fiction enterprise. Invention seemed less problematic than treading on violating that which we know through confidences or personal proximity. Lalami made the important point-- clearly wrestled with by each of the writers during the making of their fictions-- that "people's lives are not Product."
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