Monday, February 4, 2008
We discussed falsity today in class and it made me think of a controversy that took place over James Frey's book A Million Little Pieces. Read about it here. I really liked this book when I read it, and I couldn't believe when all of these issues arose with it. I don't believe that you should lie and say that details are factual when they aren't, but I also strongly believe in literature as art. Falsity is part of art. The exploration of truth is part of art. The blurring of this boundary might be what makes art wonderful. What was important in this novel was the emotions presented and the feelings created, not about dates and facts. It is often necessary to create details or images or experiences in order to give a reader the "truth" about life, the truth of the emotion. Creativity should never be stifled with the regulation that stories must be told exactly as they happened. Who is to say exactly how an event happened anyway?
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Falsity is part of art
--yes, and falsity is real; once perceived, once encountered, can influence, configure
realities that perhaps exist (in other configurations of fact, reality) in imagination
an incredible complex framing system.
And truth varies according to so many variables, so many framing systems intersecting/interacting in so many ways, for so many different periods of time, and so forth, complicating when/where/how to apply, whether to continue to apply what has been framed true in particular circumstances.
Continue the path of influence/configuration that error/partial truth/misinterpreted, and so on, information can have.
And imagination can reconfigure something presumed known, can produce impossible forms
that do exist within imagination.
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