The Lit Pimp
Chris Robinson
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Exit Ghost, by Philip Roth (Viking Canada), 304 pp.
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Throughout his work, Philip Roth, the famous American novelist, has always toyed with the notion of identity and the rather foggy border between fact and fiction. Near the end of Roth's latest book, Exit Ghost - which he says will be the final book featuring his alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman - Zuckerman says: "Isn't one's pain quotient shocking enough without fictional amplification, without giving things an intensity that is ephemeral in life and sometimes even unseen? In short, aren't our lives already filled with enough comedy and tragedy? Do we really need to embellish it more?"This blurring of fact and fiction has always fascinated me. When I first heard about the controversy surrounding James Frey's fake memoir, A Million Little Pieces, my initial reaction was, "So what?" All memory is by nature fiction. If the reader gets something out of the book, what the hell does it matter if the voice is Frey's or not? Besides (not to get too philosophical), what is truth anyway? Plato, for one, believed that those who rely on their senses instead of their intellect are living in caves. These people see only the shadows of things (opinion), not the things themselves (knowledge). I prefer to think of truth as something a bit more murky and subjective. My truth, for example, may not necessarily be yours.
In Nick Tosches' brilliant biography of Dean Martin, Dino, there are passages that include details about Martin's inner thoughts. Obviously, Tosches couldn't have known what Martin
was thinking. It doesn't matter. Tosches' poetic moments conveyed more about the essence of Dean Martin than any number of facts. And what about the scores of writers who have oh-so-thinly disguised their own lives behind the mantle of fiction? The list is endless: Marcel Proust, Jack Kerouac, Richard Meltzer, Charles Bukowski, Philip Roth etc. Would Kerouac's Big Sur or Bukowski's Ham on Rye, for example, be any better or worse if the reader knew that they were reading fact, not fiction? Ol' Popeye used to brag: "I yam what I yam." But the Spinach eater had it all wrong because he assumes that identity is something static and unchanging. In fact, it's not. Identity is a constantly fluid movement that's fixed only by a static name and physical traits. By the time you read this I am not the Chris Robinson I am at this moment of writing. Sure, I might have the same name and physical resemblance (although even that will not be exactly the same), but my ideas/thoughts/moods will have changed, however minutely, by now.
We never really know anyone. We always think we do. We think we know some people inside and out, only to discover that we know very little. I guess most of what we project to people is an illusion or a dream world to begin with. We all wear masks, even those who think they are open and honest. We, generally, choose what we want others to see. Conversely, we also define those around us. The person we see is in a lot of ways a projection of ourselves. We are all authors, creators of the characters in our lives.
So, in a sense, it really doesn't matter if you call yourself Philip Roth, Nathan Zuckerman, David Kepesh (another Roth alter-ego) or Bob Dylan (Todd Haynes' new film, I'm Not There, a film about Bob Dylan (or is it?), deals with these themes head-on). It's all the same and it's not.
For Zuckerman (and Roth?), the choice is easy: "[Fictional] amplification evolving uncertainly out of nothing, constitutes their only assurance, and the unlived, the surmise, fully drawn in print on paper, is the life whose meaning comes to matter most."
Between uncertainty and nothing, you always take uncertainty.
The Lit Pimp is a new, monthly column written by Chris Robinson concerning all things literary. Enjoy.
