Gene Lyons on whether it is truth or fiction

[mooseandsquirrel]

snip

That crack-fueled brawl with redneck sheriff’s deputies that left him beaten half to death and facing felony charges of “Assault with a Deadly Weapon, Assaulting an Officer of the Law, Felony DUI, Disturbing the Peace, Resisting Arrest, Driving Without a License, Driving Without Insurance, Attempted Incitement of a Riot, Possession of a Narcotic with Intent to Distribute and Felony Mayhem” ? Never happened. The cop who booked Frey for DUI says he went along like a little lamb.

snip

http://moose-and-squirrel.com/gene/gene.html

[Igel]

1. But, you see, you're missing the point.

For many, Truth has little to do with facts. But you have to capitalize the 't' in that particular word; if you leave it lower-case 'truth', then it's completely fact-based--at least based on the best facts we have, and to the best of our ability.

So the choice "truth or fiction" makes sense. But Frey's book wasn't truth; it was Truth, and the choice "Truth or fiction" is like asking if somebody wants "pasta or spaghetti".

[Demit]

2. I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not

You seem to be espousing the "choice" of truth or fiction with your analogy. At any rate, the categories important here are fiction and nonfiction. Frey portrayed his fiction as nonfiction in order to get published, and that's dishonest.

[Igel]

3. Yes, and no.

I think of the truth (with my ill-advisedly chosen lower-case word) is roughly equivalent to non-fiction, and that non-veridicality is necessary for fiction. Fiction may contain veridical statements, but need not; non-fiction may, through inadvertence or ignorance or dishonesty, contain non-veridical statements. I think that stating things that way is fairly accurate, and useful, and gets at what I think is the real problem.

I believe that fiction can be entirely non-veridical (include no statement that is factually true), and yet have some implication or show something about humans or reality that is accurate, and true. "Crime and Punishment" comes close to that. The same can be said of non-fiction: Tolland's or Tuchmann's books. A CRC handbook may have fewer large Truths in it, to use the capitalization kludge. But the latter, non-fiction works consist of almost no knowingly non-veridical statements, i.e., include only true statement, while the former is entirely a figment of Fyodor's epileptic imagination.

I agree: saying fiction is non-fiction (or non-veridical statements are veridical) is dishonest. More than that: The defense Frey's been given is disheartening, not because it confuses two genres in the publishing industry, but because it suggests some people really don't care that they've been lied to, and the veridical/non-veridical distinction is meaningless. This is handy for some purposes, no doubt, but not for sound policy or reasoned discourse. They've taken non-veridical statements as veridical, and said, ultimately, not only that there's no problem worth attacking, but that others' attacking it is itself worth condemning! Will they care the next time? Do they like the idea of lies being presented as fact? Do they even see the difference? I don't care why they do it--conformity to their peer group, ideological or doctrinal allegiance, grasping for hope in the throes of existential Angst: It disturbs me. And it's done far too often in American discourse today.