The Elusive Idea of "Truth" in Memoir Writing

Knee-deep into my memoir (some 50,000 words now), I've been thinking about the idea of what it means to "tell the truth." Immediately, the title of an Emily Dickinson poem comes to mind: "Tell all the Truth but tell it slant." Perhaps that's what James Frey was thinking--a slanted approach to truth-telling--when he made the conscious decision to call A Million Little Pieces, his fictional story, a memoir. Let's give credit where credit is due. Frey is NOT the first to play fast and loose with the real vs. fiction idea.

In 1983, the forger Konrad Kujau (in partnership with journalist Gerd Heidemann) published the "newly discovered" texts which would make up The Hitler Diaries. For this quickly debunked hoax that was originally praised as authentic by WWII historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, Kujau received nearly ten million marks. U.S.-born biochemist Margo Morgan wrote her memoir about a Midwest farm woman who magically appeared in Australia and went on a "walkabout" with Aborigines in Mutant Message Down Under (1994). The book sold to HarperCollins for $1.7 million. After great pressure from Oprah and Aboriginal tribes, she later resorted to the memoirist's ultimate admission of wishy-washiness: "What's true for me may not be true for you." My favorite literary hoax, though, is The Education of Little Tree (1976), supposedly the autobiographical tale of a "Cherokee orphan." It was eventually proven to be written by Asa Earl Carter, a KKK member.

Prior to starting my memoir, I worried that the real challenge would be confessing to and painstakingly detailing dysfunctional behavior (doesn't that sound a bit less nasty than "addiction"?). To my surprise, it's this shifty truth idea that's made things difficult. Now I'm not making up characters or scenarios like these other books did, but the obligation to tell the truth, to get it right, to pin down the facts like a Monarch butterfly beneath museum glass, feels strangling. I normally don't suffer from writer's block, but with this project, I find myself staring at a blank computer screen and wondering if a subjective truth is any type of truth at all.

So how do I ultimately handle it? My book is slowly becoming a meta-memoir, a tale in which I chronicle key moments of my life, but then I pull back and talk about what it means to try to chronicle key moments of my life. It's strange, I admit. At one point, I give myself the third degree in a self-interview. I also tell the whole story chronologically backwards. But that's the way my life has always been. It's the truth. Slanted.

Getting the Blog Underway

An avid gamer for the past twenty years, I've played them all. From Zelda to Everquest, from Mario Kart to Donkey Kong, from Halo to Q-bert, from Resident Evil to Grand Theft Auto, I have invested hundreds and hundreds of hours staring at video screens and computer monitors. Then I found MMOs (Massively Multiplayer Online games) and really started playing. The World of Warcraft (with 10 million players worldwide according to a January 22, 2008 press release from Blizzard), the big daddy of the them all, hooked me. At one point, I was playing WoW 40+ hours a week and trying to find ways to snatch an extra few hours beyond that from my already overtaxed life.

There are articles and blog posts online about video game addiction, but the stories and claims about video game addiction are quickly pooh-poohed by gamers who say "addicts" simply lack willpower and that video games aren't cocaine or Johnny Walker Red no matter how you look at it. Having witnessed first-hand how a dedication (let's call it what it was--an obsession) to MMOs can take absolute control of your life, I'm writing a memoir on video game addiction that takes a hard look at why it was so difficult for me to stop. Apparently I'm not the only who experienced a problem quitting a MMO. Check out http://www.wowdetox.com/, a "volunteer-run web site aimed at people with a gaming addiction to World of Warcraft." The tens of thousands of testimonials range from disconcerting to, in some cases, horrifying.

I intend to blog at least twice a week on both the writing of this memoir as well as to report on my ongoing research into video game addiction and game culture. In The Kids Are Alright: How the Gamer Generation Is Changing the Workplace, Beck and Wade claim: "Some 92 percent of American kids from age two to seventeen have regular access to video games." They add that "Americans now spend more money on video games each year than they do on going to the movies, and more time at home playing video games than watching rented videos." With the proliferation of new, better-designed games into the marketplace, the idea of video game addiction is becoming more relevant than ever before.

I welcome your feedback and comments.