Back from Hiatus
Don't you just love those days when you find a bit of extra money in your jacket pocket? Or when your publisher mails you an
anthology, you didn't even know you were in?
Go figure.
Fellow Bastard,
Denise Ryan impressed the hell out of us with her story in the
final Summer Fiction Issue of Toronto Life Magazine.
The rigorous editorial process at TO Life included fact-checking. And though I agree that having a work of fiction fact-checked can prove somewhat useful (especially if you don't want several anoraks emailing you to inform you that Sheer pantyhose weren't available in Canada until blah-blah-blah,) I had to protest when Denise mentioned that TO Life fact-checked her locations. Is nothing fictional sacred?
Convinced that this was yet another milestone in the advancing tyranny of nonfiction, I called
Laisha, who concurred with, "No, no, no, that's wrong, that's very wrong." To cheer me up, she recounted a conversation with her poetry editor in which the editor responded to Laisha's dilemna of whether to set her novel pre-9/11 or post-9/11 with the suggestion that the novel might be set in the present, but in a version of the world in which 9/11 had never happened. Apparently, it takes a poetry editor to understand fiction.
The TO Life fact-checking also reminded me of a recent trip to the movies. John and I laughed out loud during the previews when three out of four previews claimed to be "based on a true story," while the fourth was "based on one hell of a true story."
Is it journalism, academia or reality television that people would like fiction to emulate? What on earth is wrong with making things up? I'm reminded of that urban legend wherein Olivier tells Hoffman, "My dear boy, why don't you try acting?"
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